Outgoing Barry Plant Chief Executive Officer Nigel OโNeil plans to spend some time with his family and will likely continue his career as a change CEO when he leaves the real estate network.
The group announced late Monday that Mr OโNeil was stepping down after four years with the business, including 16 months as CEO.
Director Mike McCarthy has been appointed acting CEO.
Today Mr OโNeil said no date had been set for his departure but when it came he was looking forward to hitting the โpause buttonโ for a few months.
โI want to spend some time with my family,โ he said.
โI have a wife and three kids, so Iโm going to spend a lovely couple of months away doing stuff with them and then Iโll bring my mind and focus back to work.โ
Mr OโNeil said he was already being approached with future work opportunities, but he hadnโt made any decisions.
He said while he loved real estate, he wasnโt sure if heโd stay in the industry or not.
โI love real estate,โ he said.
โBut really Iโm a fixer, Iโm a change CEO and I love fixing businesses.
โReal estate is just one of many industries Iโve been involved in, and that I love getting involved in and fixing.
โFor me, inside or outside of real estate, if thereโs a challenge to fix then I want to fix it.โ
Mr OโNeil said there were many things he was proud of achieving in his time at Barry Plant, but the most rewarding was that he would leave with an excellent head office team in place.
โThe head office team and culture is fantastic now,โ he said.
โIโm very happy that Iโm leaving it in good hands in terms of the team thatโs working there.
โThat took a bit of time to get right, but Iโm very proud of that team and Iโm happy leaving, knowing those guys are very capable in what theyโre doing.
Mr OโNeil said he would also look back on his time as โCaptain Covidโ and leading the group through the pandemic favourably.
โIโm very proud of the way that we, as a group, managed that very well,โ he said.
He said he was also proud of the team for developing and launching its own registered training organisation from concept to launch within 14 months.
The training initiative followed a major overhaul of real estate qualifications in Victoria.
Finally, Mr OโNeil said during his tenure the group had transformed its focus on the customer experience, including for sellers, buyers, landlords and tenants.
He said Net Promoter Score, or NPS, was the benchmark they used and this filtered down to group leaders and agents across both sales and property management.
โAs of next year, all of our awards are aligned to the customer service element of our sales agents and our property managers,โ Mr OโNeil said.
โWe will still have the agent that sold the most homes and the agent that sold the highest value of homes, but weโre also going to have new categories such as the purchaser agent of the year, in terms of customer service, the vendor agent of the year and the property manager of the year in terms of their portfolio and the best NPS scores from landlords and tenants.
โItโs about how many raving fans youโre creating and that determines how much future business youโre going to get.
โI think weโre leading the way in real estate in trying to be more predictive of success going forward, rather than just looking in the rearview mirror saying, โYou did wellโ.โ