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As a property manager, few things match the importance (or difficulty) of finding and maintaining a team of superior staff members. Poor staff or high turnover negatively impacts every component of a rental property: property upkeep, renter satisfaction, the first impression of potential renters, and more.
Unfortunately, property managers in 2020 face several unique challenges - in both the initial hiring process and the continued retention of high-value staffers.
This issue is in part due to a mismatch between traditional rental property staffing structures and the preferences of millennial workers—but don't worry, these challenges have solutions.
Know the Challenges
There are two separate-but-intertwined areas related to staffing problems: Hiring and retention. Inadequacies in your hiring process can result in team members who don't pull their weight. They subsequently get fired and force property managers to go through the entire process again.
This cyclical process can discourage your existing high-quality hires by forcing them to pull extra weight during gaps in staffing, increasing friction with the employees you value most! Even when you bring in bright young talent high potential, you may find that it's challenging to retain such employees in the long-term.
This retention problem can be partially alleviated by looking at long-term changes in your company's work environment, structure, technology use, and overall culture.
Let's look at strategies property managers can implement to hire and maintain quality staff effectively.
#1) Plan Out Your Hiring Process Thoroughly
Thoughtful planning of your hiring process, from the job description to the onboarding process, is essential if you want to secure quality interviewees.
It's essential to start with a clear idea of what kind of person you need to hire; vague recruitment will get you hires who don't fit the position well. This sort of incompatibility creates inefficiency and leads to employee turnover.
Concrete goals, concrete questions, and plenty of quantifiable measurements should go hand-in-hand with a more intuition-based interview and recruitment methods. If you need a professional with experience in conflict management, create hypothetical scenarios to gauge how they would handle specific situations that have occurred at your property.
If you need an employee to handle a specific maintenance area of your property, state the specific licenses and certifications required for them to be included with any resume submission.
What do you need, and how are you assessing if a candidate can fill these? It's a simple yet often overlooked step in the hiring process.
2) Hire With People in Mind
You rarely hire staff who will not need to interact with other people - be they, coworkers, or renters. Make sure you're hiring people with social skills, even for positions that you wouldn't normally associate with these talents.
Personable maintenance staff, for example, can go a long way towards alleviating renter frustrations—the sort of issues that lead to increased tensions, which in turn drive away your most productive staff members.
When building your team, also, don't forget you're building a shared corporate culture. There's no right answer to company culture. However, there are plenty of wrong ones. Just make sure you're mindful of what type of workplace culture you're trying to create. Use your hiring process to recruit people who won't chafe against that environment!
3) Leverage Technology Where Possible
Most of your new hires will be millennials, between 20 and 40, who either grew up with modern digital technology or have long since adopted it as a daily part of their lives. To set yourself ahead of the competition, adopt a tech-savvy approach to recruiting, hiring, and onboarding. Creating a comfortable work environment for your staff by integrating smart digital tools can make a big difference!
Your workers will be people who found the job with technology, prefer to apply for the position with technology, expect technology to help with onboarding, and plan to use technology on the job daily.
Technology can also be of value in shaping a streamlined experience in your workplace. Millennial workers have been noted to value flexibility in the way they work to a higher degree than prior generations—even more than benefits or direct compensation.
Integrating the right digital solutions into how you manage tasks, schedule staff, etc., can allow you to offer that benefit pain-free.
The Importance of Streamlined Personnel Management
It may seem tempting to focus your efforts as a property manager on more immediate issues at hand, such as emergency repairs or property renovations. Just don't underestimate just how vital your hiring and staff maintenance operations staff can be to the overall success of your organization.
Renters will remember helpful, friendly, efficient staff interactions more vividly than the problems that lead them to those interactions—and they'll hold a grudge over poor ones more than nearly any other problem with your property.
Take the time to secure the best staff you can, put in the effort to keep that staff satisfied, and have a strategy to cope with turnover when it occurs, and you'll see returns well worth the investment of energy and resources.
In addition to staffing, it's also important to invest in smart renovations for your managed properties. Once of the most effective investments you can make to increase both safety and value are by installing impact windows and doors.
Learn more about growing your assets with our free guide just for Property Managers.
Impact windows are one of the best investments for property managers in Florida. These products offer numerous benefits, such as reducing property damage from storms, minimizing outside noise, increasing durability, and preserving interior elements.
Alco Windows and Doors specializes in installing impact windows for Florida landlords considering retrofit projects. We take pride in keeping Florida residents protected from severe weather while always focusing on offering the best customer support.
Contact us today to schedule a free consultation and learn more about the benefits of retrofitting impact windows!
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