LSL, which last week announced a major restructure involving job losses and office closures across its Your Move and Reeds Rains brands, has allegedly ‘whited over’ some of its branches.
We have been told that staff are continuing to work behind the obscured glass.
This picture could apparently be found on social media at the weekend, seemingly showing an obscured window and a notice on the door, while the branding on the fascia seems to have been erased.
The picture was accompanied by the words: “People are still in their consultation period & working in these offices yet the company thinks it’s appropriate to white wash the windows round you and your staff. Let all your friends and family know how LSL (Yourmove/Reeds Rains) treat their staff.”
Also spotted on social media at the weekend was this – apparently the Reeds Rains office in Abergele, Wales:
How it did look:
We have approached LSL for comment and hope to be able to update this story today.
Separately, the company has confirmed that it is getting rid of its in-house IT system.
It will be replaced by Reapit – representing a huge win for the firm. The change-over will take up to two years to implement.
Reapit’s systems will now be in the 280 Reeds Rains and Your Move branches expected to remain after the cull, plus the 64 offices belonging to nine brands in the LSLi wing of the business. Reapit is already in Marsh & Parsons.
A spokesperson for LSL told EYE: “We can confirm that we have begun the process of replacing our legacy in-house developed residential sales and lettings system with Reapit which has already been operated successfully by Marsh & Parsons for a number of years.
“The investment in the new platform and tools is expected to provide better functionality and processes for our estate agency colleagues in the newly established keystone branch networks.
“This solution will also be rolled out across the LSLi group of companies.
“The replacement of the legacy in-house platform will be more cost effective and will enable us to better align our systems across our estate agency brands, enabling us to respond more flexibly to the technological advances being made in the estate agency market.
“These changes will take place during 2019 and 2020.”
LSL is known to have a sizeable IT team that supports the legacy systems in-house, and sources say they expect further redundancies. We did ask LSL about this.
The LSL spokesperson said: “It isn’t appropriate to comment whilst consultations continue to be in progress.”
Comments (11)
As said above the decision is already made.
Following redundancy procedure is lengthy if you are trying to cut cost as quick as you can.
The whole thing has been handled unprofessionally.
There will be plenty more branch closures from other companies in 2019.
There have been 9 office closures in the last 12 month’s in a 1 mile radius of our office. Sad times ahead for agents who are not proactive.
I think that last sentence sums it up. The days of being a ‘Nice agent’ waiting for word of mouth to spread and relying on referrals and them being above canvassing, calling out, being persuasive – Those days are numbered.
You need motivated owners and staff. The agents that are a little long in the tooth, the journeymen are going to be the ones that really suffer. Its going to be a hard couple of years. I bet many do not have the fight left in them.
4 years with LSL was enough. Unless you’ve worked for them you’d never understand what a shambles they are. MD’s, RD’s and AM’s particularly. Clueless management.
Reeds Rains since 1868, then a corporate takes over and !
Redundancy is a horrid thing and there is no easy way of going about it; but this seems rather clumsy.
I have heard story’s of branches not getting on the phone call being told they were safe. Then end of the day being told they are indeed closing the office.
An ex colleague received an email saying he was safe and was told on conference call the next day that he wasn’t.
The Employment Tribunal will likely take a dim view of this if an ex-employee wants to claim that their redundancy was a foregone conclusion rather than the result of a formal redundancy consultation process.
Make no mistake whilst LSL are following ‘procedure’ the decisions have already been made. The consultations have been ridiculous. There is a clear vision for the future which sadly culls staff, offices, departments. The consultation has already been done at board level behind the scenes and this is simply ticking boxes. Nothing will change.
How must the other staff that aren’t in the closing branches feel? If people are working behind those windows it’s a truly horrific way to treat people.
I can speak from personal experience here (having worked for LSL for 7 years) when I say that it will be probably eve more horrible in the affected branches than you might think…not only will decisions be being made over the future of staff in closing offices, but it is highly likely staff in branches being retained will also be re-interviewing for their own jobs…
Basically very few people at LSL will be feeling safe right now, only those who over the years have made themselves favourites with the people with power!