Knight Frank is reducing staff numbers with up to 100 roles in consultation.
Alistair Elliott, senior partner and group chairman at Knight Frank, told EYE:
“In response to the market challenges faced as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have conducted a review of our operations which has highlighted the need to make a limited number of roles across our UK business redundant.
“These decisions are never undertaken lightly but, given the extreme circumstances, are essential to future-proof the firm and ensure we are in the best possible position to continue to deal with the ongoing challenges.”
Allsop has apparently put 26 roles into a consultation process and is reported as saying:
“This is a highly regrettable outcome of the Covid-19 crisis, which Allsop – like most property firms – has not been immune to.
“While both our auction teams have fortunately been extremely busy during lockdown, some other transactional markets in the UK are being far slower to recover.
“As we are largely a transactional business, we are inevitably having to respond to the sharp drop in volumes across some areas of the business, such as capital markets and leasing.”
In the commercial property world, JLL and CBRE are also said to be reducing the numbers in their workforces.
The news comes a fortnight after EYE revealed that consultations are under way within BNP ParibasReal Estate, the holding company of Stutt & Parker.
It is now thought that 250 jobs will go by September.
Comments (6)
Very sad. But EA is like any other industry-in hard times you need to become slimmer and fitter and focus on the future. Larger Firms that have been saying they will be making no redundancies and point scoring short term are either not being upfront with their staff or its not their money to lose.
In dependants in the main run slimmer anyway.
MajorTim – another veiled reference to Connells I suspect. Well, thanks for giving me another opportunity to ‘point score’ on behalf of Connells .. although paying all furloughed staff their full basic and commission from lockdown to present day; providing industry leading support and guidance to 7,000 staff; paying all suppliers in full and in good time (unlike some firms I could mention Tim!), NOT imposing pay cuts on staff (unlike some firms I could mention Tim); returning to full opening of their branches swifty and safely to take advantage of a fantastic market (unlike some firms I could mention Tim); not closing branches and instead re-affirming their commitment to high street agency rather than working from bedrooms (unlike some firms I could mention Tim) .. is surely a bit more than point scoring????? I do appreciate your help in teeing up these ‘point scoring’ opportunities, but I suspect your PR dept at Colchester would rather you kept your head down??
Its Majortom
I wasn’t actually talking about any specific firm to be honest Chips and you obviously are jumping to conclusions yet again.
However as you mention Connells -you are not making any redundancies at all as you have consistently said and I actually congratulated your company some time back as saying that was the complete intention.
As to flexible working. EA is changing and people want sometimes the flexibility to work form home or in the office but that is their choice. To suggest traditional high street agencies are the complete future and there is no place for a creative half way house is a bit premature. If people want to be managed by spreadsheet after spreadsheet and dont want to work using their own initiative with great tech support and physical branch support if they want it then the model you are slating is not for them
You do it your way and others will do it theirs. Ultimately if the people are good enough both will probably work.
.. arent Knight Frank the same people who have been publicly declaring on this site what a strong market (pent up demand, bounce back, levels of enquiries blah bah blah) it is at the minute, publishing all sorts of weird and verbose statistics/percentages on performance, or am I confusing this with another company?
I feel really sorry for all the people who will be fired, they’ve had to regularly come into the office early (and stay late) to play Mr Corporate, dressed to the nines to hear some senior partner waffle on about the global brand, thought leadership and the like THEN be forced to gobble stale sandwiches and sip warm fizzy water at networking events, because that what we do you know while talking total nonsense to someone from another office you will never see again.
….and now all to be kicked to the kerb with sweet FA.
KF, CBRE and JLL have huge exposure to commercial property and that business is stalled currently – would you buy an office block in this market? Or retail? Its only warehouses that are trading really. Tough times for lots of good professional people out there.
Heartbreaking to see our industry going through another tough patch. Keep focused and positive everyone.