TOM 12 2023

Page 9 INTERVIEW December 2023
„Experience, empathy and creativity are
back in demand among center managers“
Skills shortage in the retail real estate sector too - interview with HR expert Jutta Heusel
Everyone is talking about the
shortage of skilled workers
and it affects all sectors; the
question is rather how badly
the respective sector is affected.
„It has certainly affected
the retail sector,“ says Jutta
Heusel, who has been working
as an independent personnel
consultant at Kollmannsperger
Executive Search in the
real estate sector for over 20
years, in an interview with
TOM. Due to the rise in e-
commerce, bricks-and-mortar
retail has been in a difficult
market situation for years. It
has been hit correspondingly
hard, which is why it is very
difficult to recruit good employees.
Other asset classes
have been booming for a long
time and have therefore been
able to attract the top people.
TOM: Ms. Heusel, how is the
personnel issue currently affecting
the retail real estate
segment?
Jutta Heusel: Shopping centers
in particular have gone through
various developments, changes,
expansions, repositioning,
etc. and with these have always
come the corresponding personnel.
Originally, one center manager
and his or her team were
responsible for each shopping
center (and thus the corresponding
center advertising association).
For cost reasons, the team
was first reduced and then, for
reasons of efficiency, the communal
area to be managed was
reduced until today‘s development,
where one center manager
is responsible for several
centers at the same time.
In a fundamentally good market
situation, there are large,
successful centers in busy locations
and smaller centers that
are more tailored to local conditions
and their players. The difficulty
of this task of managing
several centers at the same time
is evident in the current market
situation.
TOM: What are the personnel-related
challenges?
Jutta Heusel: Smaller centers
Jutta Heusel, Managing Partner Kollmannsperger Executive Search
GmbH Photo: Kollmannsperger
in particular currently require
a lot of attention and a high
degree of time and creativity in
order to process contracts, implement
insolvencies and redesign
spaces and find new tenants
accordingly. This is the technical
side. The personnel side is
finding suitable staff for the role
of center manager. The focus is
on people with experience, but
they are hardly available on the
market. The shortage of skilled
workers is having a major impact
here. In the past, few new
positions were advertised, so
there are too few and the experienced
ones are usually valued
and satisfied. The smaller
centers are at a disadvantage
because, on the one hand, they
have fewer attractive and larger
tenants and, on the other, they
are in less frequented locations.
Nobody wants to manage difficult
centers either, as it is not a
very promising task to bring about
change here.
TOM: What does that mean
in concrete terms?
Jutta Heusel: If in the past a
center manager was primarily
defined by the size, level of
awareness and therefore also
the location of his center (and
his experience could also be
read from this), we currently
have new challenges. As there
have been more young, inexperienced
center managers in
recent times, they have not yet
been able to experience a crisis
and are not used to breaking
new ground. At the moment,
locations are very different and
are drifting further apart than
was the case in the past. Large,
well-functioning centers, which
are controlled by the center manager
from the tenant side via
the head office, contrast with
small, very regional centers that
function via local players and
also have their difficulties here.
Individual action must be taken
here. It helps to have a good and
trusting relationship with the
tenants in order to rethink solution
concepts and changes in the
use of space together with them.
In this way, attractive and functioning
centers can be managed
again.
TOM: How have the tasks in
center management changed?
Jutta Heusel: If efficiency
and maximum space utilization
were the focus in the past, individual
solutions are currently in
demand. Center managers are
being taken back into their actual
management role because
they are no longer simply the
administrators of the locations
and organizers of the advertising
communities of centers,
but must approach tenants with
creativity and empathy and get
them on board in order to develop
a successful concept in
centers and also in the district.
The shortage of skilled workers
and the lack of crisis experience
are leading to a renewed focus
on seniority, which has been
dispensed with in many centers
in recent years for reasons of efficiency.
Experience was often
not and could not be afforded.
TOM: But why is all this so
difficult in practice?
Jutta Heusel: The main difficulty
is that many center managers
are not at all familiar with
a crisis situation. Even though
online retail has been booming
for a long time and is pushing
back bricks-and-mortar retail,
insolvencies on a large scale
have fortunately only been seen
recently. Working together with
the existing tenant to implement
the insolvency and being
open to pragmatic and new approaches
is uncharted territory
for many CM staff and tends
to be frustrating. Seniority is
once again in greater demand
here, because experience also
brings strength of nerve and the
awareness that solutions can
be found with pragmatism and
empathy even in difficult times.
Perhaps the shortage of skilled
workers is also forcing centers
not only to tackle new concepts
in leasing and space management,
but also to respond to
pragmatic solutions and flexibility
in center management staffing.
If managers were shown
more appreciation and were
once again the caretakers and
doers of the center, their position
would be strengthened and
seen as more attractive in the
market.
Of course, the shortage of skilled
workers cannot be denied,
but creativity and flexibility in
every respect can provide a remedy
so that new concepts can
be implemented in a different
way and difficult locations can
become more attractive.