Compass, the tech-forward real estate brokerage, announced on Monday in an internal memo to employees that it would consolidate the roles of agent success managers, product experts and IT support into a single point of contact dubbed “the agent experience manager.”
The reshuffling will likely result in the loss of several dozen jobs at the growing company, according to a Compass source who indicated that the brokerage is currently advertising approximately 300 job openings — after hiring more than 80 new employees in January alone — and plans to increase its total headcount each month.
“This new design is optimized to grow Compass agents’ business by providing long-term, personalized support and service,” a spokesperson for Compass told Inman. “As Compass modeled the ideal support team to achieve this, we focused on a consistent request from agents: a single point of contact for all of their support needs; from onboarding to leveraging Compass technology and programs.”
The agent experience managers will still be local employees, operating within the existing hyper-local support structure that Compass has built.
On the surface, the consolidation seems like it would have resulted in a massive loss of jobs, but a source insisted the layoffs would equate to roughly one-quarter of one percent of the company’s 18,000-person headcount, which comes out to approximately 45 jobs.
At the same time, Compass has been in constant growth mode over the past few years with no plans to change course as the company marches toward ambitious market share goals. Compass plans to grow its total headcount during each month of 2020.
The company’s robust engineering team will also experience no job loss from the re-shuffling.
The agent experience team structure will begin to take effect in March 2020, after extensive training for the new role, including training for each Compass agent.
Speculation has grown as to whether Compass would at some point in the near future seek an initial public offering (IPO). The company has raised $1.5 billion in venture capital funding, in part from the SoftBank Vision Fund, while increasing its valuation to $6.4 billion.
Given the struggles other SoftBank-backed tech companies have faced en route to initial public offerings, a streamlining of business operations ahead of an inevitable IPO would seem sensible. However, a Compass source said no immediate plans for an IPO have been discussed.
The source added that Compass’ other goals, including achieving 20 percent of market share in the nation’s top 20 markets by the end of 2020, remain top of mind.
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