Towards a better employee experience for onsite teams

The high turnover rate of property management staff in multifamily housing is an established fact. At a 33% average rate, it is a major contributor to the inefficiencies that the industry faces. The high cost of replacement of an onsite employee has now put a sharp focus on the employee experience programs at every large multifamily operator.

Understanding the Job

A job by definition is a task or multiple tasks that come together to achieve a goal. Many job descriptions for onsite teams may refer to the goal of assisting residents or prospects, they are less forthcoming in the descriptions of the task. And the reason for this is within the inherent nature of the job that property management is an industry that has a very long tail of tasks and yet needs excellent knowledge for the completion of this task. As a result, the lowest denominator role in the company which is often the onsite role is in fact the most entrepreneurial in nature. It requires someone to be able to problem-solve and be empowered to take decisions. This is a very rare quality to find. As a result, while there are 70,000 online job listings for property management roles in America today, the number of entrepreneurs who are a good fit for the job is scarce. At the same time, operators want to capture more front-line intelligence to also support their platform. This means that often the entrepreneurial onsite role is burdened with process and data capture responsibilities and as a result creates a conflict in the core competency expectation for the team.

Separating data from operations

****It is important that the onsite teams are focused on the job that provides the most satisfaction and also provides your clients the best service. And this means that the responsibility of data entry and process are separated from the onsite teams. Using technology platforms that leverage Natural Language Processing like Adam, allows your residents to engage in the most natural way possible while creating tickets for problem-solving for the onsite teams. Any items that are part of a process flow can then be automated with the use of technology without distracting the teams. It is also important to provide the onsite problem solvers with the time to think. A task list can help the team discuss a problem and also have all the information at hand before speaking with a resident with a solution.

Provide Intelligence to the field

Most properties aggregate information on the site level and report to the regional teams. Operators who want to retain the best talent in the industry will instead provide the aggregated field intelligence to support their teams in the field. Data capture through portals, digital employees, or communication should be analyzed and aggregated to highlight trends that the onsite team can miss due to their focus on completing a task and the day-to-day. The most crucial aspect to reduce employee turnover is not just training but providing the teams with the intelligence support to truly succeed at their jobs.