Building a successful management team for your association is difficult. This is incredibly important for the owners of the communities and the residents. The efficiency and unity of your management team are essential, and only 31% of leaders and small business owners say their teams are effective.
Over and over again management companies have found they cannot retain valuable employees. Turnover within these offices allows for things to slip through the cracks and creates distrust in your association.
The question then becomes, why can’t our companies keep valuable team members that are dedicated to the overall well-being of our residents and business?
There are a few steps that can set your management team up for success.
- Create and communicate with the best team for your specific business needs
- Define and collaborate with your team to set goals that are both measurable and attainable
- Provide your team with the necessary tools to be successful
CREATE & COMMUNICATE:
Creating your dream team of people to manage, care, and build your business is the first step. One of the main issues is that employers are trying to hire “high performers”. Instead, employers should try to hire individuals that are going to collaborate and strive for the success of the business.
Hire the right people, not “the best” people.
Communication needs to occur within every dimension of your community. From the board, property managers, and amongst residents within the community, everyone should be collaborative and communicate with each party.
Management should focus on creating a “feedback loop”. This is a process of improving a product or process by constantly collecting and reflecting on operations. Creating a free stream of information will keep things within your community transparent and allow all members of the community to have a voice.
The last item of creating and supporting a team should be reminding everyone that a team is stronger when everybody delivers on their individual roles.
DEFINE:
Remember your team wants to be great. When it’s not clear how their role contributes to the overall success of the team or company, it can cause a potentially great teammate to turn into an employment casualty.
Better defining roles and responsibilities amongst the team will create better collaboration and reduce frustration when tackling the day to day duties of managing so many communities. The “divide and conquer” strategy makes any workday manageable as duties are spread through a number of employees instead of one. This also helps with coverage if someone is out sick, as everyone is clear on what coverage is needed while that person is out.
In addition to better-defining roles, set up SMART goals foreach person on the team. Knowing what you are responsible for is only half the battle, the other half is knowing if that team member knows they are doing a great job. Setting SMART goals will create a clear communication channel between you and your team on their progress.
Make sure all SMART goals are:
Specific: Simple, Sensible, Significant
Measurable: Meaningful, Motivating
Achievable: Agreed, Attainable
Relevant: Reasonable, Realistic and Resourced, Results-Based
Time-bound: Time-based, Time Limited, Time Sensitive
After you outline your “SMART Goals” your team should come together and define their specific responsibilities!
PROVIDE:
Training is an essential tool your team will need! According to the Association for Talent Development, companies that offer comprehensive training programs have 218% higher income per employee than companies without formalized training. Some benefits of providing your team with training are improving the morale of employees, increased productivity, and fewer misunderstandings.
Equipping your team with the necessary tools for success is a critical component of building high-functioning teams.
Does your accounting software specifically allow for community managers to work collaboratively on an account? This may seem small but these inconveniences over time cause a lot of frustration amongst your staff. Make sure the software solutions you have in place work in concert with your staff and not against them.
Providing your team with a software that houses and maintains all resident data is paramount to setting them up for success. The right software solution should reflect any account changes to the rest of the team immediately and even better automatically send the appropriate update to the resident.
The right software should also allow your team to work collaboratively with the residents they serve. Provide residents with a single location to submit their work orders, questions, and assessment payments. This, in turn, will help to set your staff up for success by keeping all resident requests organized in a single location.
In conclusion, creating an amazing management team can set your communities above the rest. Focusing on creating a group of the right people, defining your communities’ goals, and providing the tools for your team will enable them to thrive! Interested to see how our software can help your teams? Request a demo today!
