Preventing Property Manager Burnout in the Multifamily Industry
Since properties are only as strong as the site teams who run them, recognizing and addressing property manager burnout is important. Property managers are the face of your brand and should feel healthy and supported in their efforts.
By investing in technology, showing employee appreciation, and supporting your staff, you can promote an exceptional experience for your staff and residents. Follow these techniques to keep your staff energized and prevent property manager burnout.
Leverage time-saving technology
One of the most efficient solutions to prevent property manager burnout is technology designed to target site team’s most time-consuming tasks. These include tasks such as lead management, organizing application pipelines, and resident requests.
Digital solutions from property management software to chatbots and package management systems help property managers better organize their work, reach their quotas, and strategize for their team’s success. Property managers who are supported by innovative technology have more time to keep up with site team and resident needs.
Check out these property-driven technologies that will support your property managers.
Property management software
Property management software is a versatile solution that property managers with teams of all sizes can leverage. Whether the software is used it to run a property’s entire operation or just one portion of the resident experience, property management software can be customized to help manage the workload.
If your properties already uses property management software, managers should focus on integrating the software directly into their team’s everyday routine. Here are a few ways companies like Yardi, RealPage, and Entrata use technology to champion site teams and prevent property manager burnout.
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Promote, organize, and follow up after property tours – Offer in-person and virtual property tours, schedule tour dates and times with prospects, and follow up by email or text to boost conversion rates.
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Manage resident applications – Create a digital workflow to efficiently screen and sort prospective residents, decrease wait time for prospects, and stay in touch with leads during the application process.
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Own rent week – Simplify one of the most stressful weeks of the month with software to promote and organize secure online payments through a property’s portal, app, or website.
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Prioritize maintenance requests – Expedite and monitor maintenance requests from a resident portal, mobile app, or desktop and allow residents to send photos of their requests directly to the maintenance team.
AI chatbots
Chatbots are robots that live on your website and learn to answer your visitors’ questions. These bots take pressure off of site teams who work tirelessly to keep up with requests that come from a property’s website. Here are just some of the ways chatbots can support a team’s workload and marketing efforts.
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Categorize and direct inbound requests from prospects
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Funnel promising leads to your leasing office
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Help prospects navigate your website with ease
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Answer simple questions with immediate responses
Package management
With UPS delivering nearly three million packages every day, the process for organizing and scaling package delivery has become a huge time investment for site teams. To help avoid property manager burnout, offer solutions that help site team and residents manage their packages and mail.
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Smart lockers – Connect residents with their packages directly and securely with a smart locker that alerts resident when a package arrives and then alerts staff when the locker is free for use. Some of the largest property management companies have adopted smart locker technology.
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Updater – A platform that helps properties manage their move-in experience from mail forwarding to transferring utilities to promoting a property’s preferred renters insurance. By helping residents quickly and accurately forward their mail, site teams avoid missing package requests from new residents and misdirected mail from former residents.
Emphasize employee appreciation
Employee appreciation is crucial to encouraging success amongst site teams and discouraging property manager burnout. Workplace burnout is one of the most expensive costs for employers and is associated with poor employee health and performance. To help alleviate stress, follow these tips for stellar employee appreciation.
Recognize extraordinary performances
Taking the time to recognize and reward property managers and their site staff promotes a strong sense of community and a feeling of optimism. There are many strategies for recognizing employees. AvalonBay Communities, for example, recognizes employees with regional and quarterly awards including Best Customer Service and Best Leasing Percentage. These awards reinforce the company’s culture and keep managers happy and motivated. Here are some other appreciation ideas.
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Leasing agent of the month award
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Quarterly and annual retreats for property managers
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End of year party for all employees to celebrate their achievements
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Prizes for meeting quotas or personal goals
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Employee shout outs at meetings and on social media
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Celebratory team lunches
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Personal or handwritten thank you messages
Invest in team building events
Team building fosters a sense of community that not only impacts site teams but residents as well. As Greg Lozinak, executive vice president of Waterton Residential, puts it, “If I can create a work environment that adds value to our associates’ lives, then the residents feel they are living in a community… The brand in a strong company gives the associates something to rally around.” Check out these additional team building events that help properties unite their employees.
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Branded gear
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Team lunch hours
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Potluck dinners
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Group off-sites
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Book club
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Friendly competitions
Encourage recharging
Property manager burnout can be a direct result of employees feeling overworked without time to rest and recharge. Employee fatigue is bad for the health and moral of a site team. To help combat its effect, encourage employees to use their vacation time and allow property managers to set time away from work where they are not available by phone or email. Working to provide a first-class experience for residents is a demanding task and encouraging the proper time to recuperate helps property managers avoid burnout.
Property management companies of all sizes recognize the importance of implementing solutions to prevent property manager burnout. While all of the techniques mentioned above are good places to start, it’s important to remember that these strategies should be monitored and adjusted to work for the needs of your property’s employees. Solving burnout has benefits that range from strengthening a property’s brand to boosting employee happiness and overall resident experience.
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