Realogy prioritizes training with appointment of former Keller Williams chief learning officer to new learning center

Realogy Holdings unveiled a new integrated learning institute for its leading real estate franchise brands and NRT, its company-owned brokerage business, this week.

Bryon Ellington

The new learning center of excellence will operate under the direction of former Keller Williams chief learning officer, Bryon Ellington, who has been appointed senior vice president of learning for Realogy.

The journey to Realogy

Ellington comes to Realogy after serving in a number of senior executive roles at Keller Williams Realty.

Prior to his position as chief learning officer since 2014, he was COO for Keller Williams Worldwide and chief products officer for Keller Williams Realty before that. He had been with the company since 2002.

At Realogy, Ellington will lead the effort to integrate and strengthen the learning and development resources from across NRT-owned brokerages and the Realogy Franchise Group brands, which include Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, Century 21, Coldwell Banker, ERA and Sotheby’s International Realty.

What’s the learning institute?

John Peyton, Realogy Franchise Group’s president/COO, who joined from Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide in September 2016, said: “One of the exciting things about Realogy for me, coming in from an outside industry, is that in the training and development of talent, there are some core skills and competencies that agents require. The learning institute will be building that base and then the secret sauce is how make it brand-specific.”

The learning center will be a collaboration with the brands — an integrated process — he added. Ellington, based in New Jersey, will also be involved in Realogy Ascend: The Executive Leadership Experience year-long course, he said.

The RFG president said Realogy looked inside and outside the industry for someone to lead the learning center.

Ellington, who was awarded Training magazine’s Emerging Training Leader nationally in 2016, said it was exciting to work with the Realogy brands that have had such an impact on the industry and to build a bigger value proposition for the formidable franchise player.

His forecast for training challenges for agents in the next few years?

“In the last 10 years, we have seen the growth of the idea of real estate as a business not as a sales career and also the impact of tech on the brokerage and agent side. I don’t see either of those trends going away — what we need to do in the next 10 years is to focus on great training to incorporate that,” he said.

The new SVP of learning added: “My way of thinking after 15 years at Keller Williams is that training is about giving agents the skills and helping them put those skills into action.

“Where it fails is when there is simply a knowledge transfer. You need action and accountability,” he said.

Keller Williams awarded No. 1 training organization across all industries

Keller Williams, meanwhile has just been named the No.1 training organization across all industries worldwide by Training magazine, the business publication for learning and development professionals.

The Training Top 125 ranking looks at benchmarking statistics such as total training budget, number of training hours per employee program and its detailed formal programs.

Commenting on the No. 1 ranking, Chris Heller, CEO of Keller Williams, said: “This is an exciting time in training and technology. A decade from now, the way consumers search for and buy homes will be almost unrecognizable from the process today.

“Our success at keeping our agents at the forefront of this evolution, helping them differentiate themselves in their local markets, and providing an extraordinary customer experience will be determined by how well we train our people,” said Heller.

Email Gill South.