In a recent interview for the Belvoir Group website I described being a Belvoir franchisee as empowering, challenging and flexible. As a working mother, its important to me that I can achieve the right work life balance. My husband, Jeff, is incredibly supportive, although I have probably ended up working more hours than I bargained for! Equally, I have got lots of flexibility and I’m able to drop our daughter off at school and take her swimming, and go to school plays etc. Initially I worked a lot of Saturdays, but I have really cut that back so I have more time with my family. I still work very hard, and even on holiday I often have my phone with me. Nothing is perfect but I definitely have more flexibility.
This year’s International Women’s Day is focussed on DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality. It was my young daughter who reminded about Hedy Lamarr, the Hollywood actress who, in wartime, thought of creating a frequency-hopping signal that could not be jammed, effectively protecting the weapons from enemy tampering. The principles of this early version of frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication were incorporated into modern Bluetooth and GPS technology.
I am keen to embrace property technology to make life easier for the team, landlords and tenants and support inclusivity. For example, our maintenance reporting tool allows tenants to report issues in any language. And, during lockdown we embraced Signable, which allows us to send the majority of agreements and other documents for electronic signing providing a more convenient alternative to visiting our offices during opening hours.
I am interested in the development of Artificial Intelligence and how that can be used in our industry, I was speaking to someone recently who was explaining that the big players are employing people to test the bias of AI tools to ensure they are not in any way offensive. Whilst there is talk of AI taking our jobs, these tools are only as capable as the data they hold and do not have creativity or empathy so it feels to me that AI would be augmenting what we as people can do. The presentation I saw last week included some AI generated illustrations of “people speaking on the phone in the style of Picasso”, which were brilliant, and some of “salmon in the river” which were not (salmon steaks had been used rather than live fish!).
So, as we celebrate International Women’s Day I look forward to the innovation and technology changes that will help #embraceequity and inclusion in the future whilst feeling confident that I am not going to be replaced by an AI bot just yet!
