12 New Year's Resolutions for Your On-Site Staff
… and how to get the most out of them in 2020!
Last year, we reached the conclusion that your on-site staff CAN and SHOULD be running the show, leaving you as the property manager with more time to focus on your clients. So what better time to set and stick to these 12 New Year’s Resolutions to get the most out of your on-site teams during the coming twelve months?
01. Nurture
Spend more time on-site this year. Put set days in the diary, stick to them, and work from site for the whole day. You can be sure that the staff will finds lots to tell you it’s a great chance to get to know them better as people – not just as a concierge, cleaner or estate manager. Publicly praise them when they have excelled by making sure all the residents know how well they have done. If they are particularly praiseworthy, consider entering them for an industry award.
If they are our (Cledor’s staff), we will visit regularly, making sure they are content and productive in their role, and we’ll feedback to you as necessary.
02. Give them the knowledge
There is always more that your on-site staff can do for the residents – and for you. How well do they know their own site? Do they truly understand the fire strategy for the building including evacuation plans? Can they decipher the fire alarm system? What about lift entrapments – what is the procedure? Can they use the CCTV system to provide a copy of some footage to the local police?
Working with you, we will compile a manual which we call a ‘standard operating procedure’ that shows everyone working on site just what to do when it comes to routine matters or unexpected emergencies. We also provide e-learning courses as well as bespoke training on-site, so the staff REALLY get to know their patch inside and out. Scenario role-playing for actual eventualities helps to arm them so much better when that emergency happens, whether there is a total loss of power, a resident trapped in a lift, a huge escape of water or a terror threat from outside the block.
03. Inspections
Depending on what was decided in the management agreement, it could be that your own quarterly or monthly inspections are insufficient to know truly what is happening on site day to day. So why not give your on-site staff the gift of tablet technology and one of the state-of-the-art inspection apps such as Csite? You set the inspection fields and the frequency, and your site staff take it from there. They could use the inspection app/tablet to carry out regular health and safety checks, e.g. of the common parts fire doors. If you chose an inspection tool linked to your estate management software, you’ll see the results of the inspections and can turn ‘issues’ into job orders.
04. Fresh Facilities
As any good property manager knows, a planned maintenance programme (PMP) helps to formulate capital expenditure years ahead. But does your plan include for a refurbishment or décor refresh to the estate management office or porter’s lodge? Get your client on-side to the idea, agree a timeline and go for it! Your on-site staff will thrive with a freshly refurbished hub.
05. Go Paperless!
We see hundreds of estate management offices laden with paper: Visitors’ books breaching data protection regulations; Parking policies; Key waivers; Forms galore. An investment in the right software can help your staff to go genuinely paperless… That may mean changes to how the residents interact with the staff but that is usually an entirely positive experience!
06. Package Deal
If you’re reading this after the Christmas festivities, your on-site staff may still be reeling from the onslaught of online shopping deliveries. It would’ve been a similar feeling after Black Friday, which is now a whole week of Amazon couriers working overtime. Resolve to lessen your site staff’s stress with market leading software and hardware to ensure packages arrive safely, stored securely, are assigned to a flat/individual resident and collected swiftly. Speak to us about our recommendations for package management.
07. Delegation
What more could you delegate to the on-site team that you don’t already? If you use cloud software, why not give them a certain level of access so they can help you with your day to day tasks? Perhaps they can log maintenance faults, conduct weekly fire alarm bell tests or take initial details of an insurance claim. Communicate regularly with them to ensure matters stay on course.
08. Save a life?
The next few years will see defibrillators installed in many communal areas. Why don’t you consider installing one in each of your blocks and having the staff trained to use them? The correct and timely use of a defibrillator increases the chances of saving a life many fold…This will be a separate blog topic we will tackle later on in 2020.
09. Keys Management
How may keys does the average estate manager need? Often hundreds. Ensuring keys and fobs are held securely, appropriately labelled and carefully distributed to contractors, takes some organising. And if keys are held for individual flats too, secure retention, tracking and distribution of keys goes up a notch. There is software and hardware that can transform how keys and fobs are managed. Speak to us.
10. Equip with the Right Equipment
Make sure your on-site staff have the right tools for the job. If they complain of a slow computer, look into it and resolve. If you want the staff to help you more, upgrade their ageing PC to a rugged laptop. Knowing that support for Windows 7 has been withdrawn by Microsoft may give you the impetus to ascertain what they REALLY need. Perhaps that is a smart phone or tablet instead of a computer.
11. Attire
Some members of staff complain they must provide their own clothing for work. If you provide the uniform, you can ensure as much as possible that the on-site staff are appropriately, smartly and consistently dressed. When they are doing more physical work, they ought to have a change of clothing. Especially in the darker months of the year, the staff should be wearing hi viz which helps them to be visible and provides deterrent effect to criminals.
12. Money Talks
All the above will help to ensure the staff feel valued, trusted to do an important job and ultimately kept busy. But money talks so ensure their pay is at least on par with the market rate. And if your client is suitably forward-thinking, you may wish to pay them significantly above the market rate helping to ensure loyalty and longevity. Remember that even a small increase will have a negligible effect on most service charge budgets.