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This was one of our favorite discussion points at the NARPM® Convention & Trade Show this year!
Property management automation saves many things beyond time and money: our favorite being the sanity of business owners and their employees. That sanity is why Geekly Media got into the property management process automation business in the first place!
We wanted to improve the lives of the people we work with—from the company owner in question to their entire property management staff.
During the conference, we were asked some of the ways in which automation can improve morale, so we're going to share four of our favorite ways property management process automation improves morale—and how that saves you money, too! Win/win? Count us in!
1. Better Tools to Do the Job
If you had to send a fax today, would you know how? Millennials and Generation Z to follow are a permanent part of our staff now, and they're only going to become a bigger pool of your potential employees moving forward.
These groups grew up mastering email, tech, and online platforms. These tools of the trade just make sense to younger folks, while 'dated' technology is frustrating at best—and downright impossible to navigate at worst.
New tools and tech move faster, do more, and get overall better results because they are the direct result of continued improvement that brought them about in the first place. Bringing in property management automation lets your employees know you want them to have the best tools to do their job with—and not frustrate them with inadequate 'solutions.'
These better tools equate to increased productivity, saving you money. You might even be surprised by the innovative solutions your younger staff members bring to the table when you give them the right property management tools.
We've seen firsthand how excited the tech-loving members of a property management company get when they are introduced to HubSpot—and some of their creations and solutions surprise even us!
2. A Better Work-Life Balance—and Workload
Updated and improved tools will reduce your employees' workload by cutting out the tasks that just aren't necessary. During the Great Recession from 2007-2009, tons of jobs were consolidated—and property management was no stranger to this consolidation. Sure, this is great for business owners with a bottom line—but it isn't great for the employees working more than their fair share of tasks.
Workloads can get to be too much, and when that happens, employees have a hard time enjoying their job or even tolerating it.
Employees will start picking and choosing which tasks get done, what slides by unnoticed, and missing crucial details when they move too fast to try and get it all done. This upsets you, your employees, your clients—and leads to the increased churn of clients, tenants, and staff alike.
Property management automation will reduce your employees' workload, so everything gets done—and gets done well. When tasks are completed thoroughly and on time, clients are happier and stay longer, ultimately saving you money on having to find new clients.
3. Fewer Upset Clients
Upset clients can be terribly expensive in the long run. When you consider the weight the modern consumer gives to online reviews, mistakes start to add up—and hurt your bottom line.
Upset clients cost you at least twice: Once in the lost client, and again in the future every time a potential owner decides to take their business elsewhere based on those reviews.
Upset clients also kill employee morale—probably faster than anything else. We work in service jobs at least partly because we want to do an excellent job for the people counting on us.
When those clients call in upset, not only does the staff member taking the call have to field the upset emotions from the client, they probably also feel bad that they can't do more to fix the situation.
On the other hand, property management automation can help your team get a whole lot right—faster than ever before. This means happy clients, and happy clients say things like 'Thank you,' 'Good job!' or even the now-standard 'I appreciate you.' These are total morale boosters!
4. The Right Kind of Accountability
Finally, property management process automation brings about the right kind of accountability. Sure, every job has accountability—but it isn't always the right kind.
When performance is qualitative instead of quantitative (based on feelings or ideas instead of facts), it is easy to get frustrated as an employee. Good employees want to do a great job, and they want to know exactly what a great job looks like.
When you provide good employees with a benchmark to hit and a way to prove their successes, you will be surprised how many of your staff happily rise to the occasion.
You'll also see the employees who have been skating by on others' work start to look for other places where there won't be a spotlight on their lack of productivity—which means you won't have to weed them out at all. This saves you money by making room for more employees who will thrive on hitting their number and genuinely working for your company.
We've seen property management automation bring big improvements in morale to the companies we've worked with. A staff that has great tools, the right kind of accountability, happy clients, and a normal workload are going to bring you ever-increasing returns.
Get a free automation analysis from the experts here at Geekly Media to see the returns you could be getting by implementing property management process automation today!
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