Olivia Leigh on real estate industry
From Macerich Executive Urges REITs to Take More Creative Approach to Hiring Talent · · Nareit1
“One of the challenges that the real estate industry has is we're a fairly homogeneous group of people, so if you require 10 years of the same experience or five years of the same experience, you're going to pull from that same largely homogeneous group of employees.”
On , Olivia Leigh, Executive Vice President of Portfolio Operations & People at MACERICH CO, spoke about real estate industry during Macerich Executive Urges REITs to Take More Creative Approach to Hiring Talent on Nareit1.
About Olivia Leigh
In a September 2023 interview, Olivia Leigh, Executive Vice President of Portfolio Operations & People at Macerich, discussed strategies for building a diverse and inclusive talent pool in the real estate industry. She stated that companies should first understand their workforce baseline, including retention and turnover rates, before developing attraction or retention strategies. Leigh argued that requiring a specific number of years of identical experience tends to pull from a homogeneous candidate pool, and she recommended that employers instead focus on transferable skills and core competencies, asking whether a candidate can be an "agile learner" or "nimble." She described this as a necessary "paradigm" shift to avoid a "self-fulfilling prophecy" and a "closed loop system." Leigh also emphasized the importance of management training that goes beyond technical skills, noting that "managing people is one of the hardest things to do." She suggested that employee resource groups and cross-functional initiatives can provide broader collaboration opportunities and help employees develop skills for future roles. She added that when employees see others with similar backgrounds succeeding within the organization, they may feel more invested and likely to stay and develop their careers.