There’s a lot to love about working in the property management industry, but the job can also be pretty stressful and emotional. We hear it all the time: property management burnout is real, and it takes a toll on your business. Workplace burnout is often caused by factors like overwhelming job demands, improper or inadequate training, and lack of social support. It can impact everything from performance to personal well-being, and property managers are telling us that they’re getting hit hard.
If you’re feeling burned out, it can be difficult to know what to do about it. Even worse, employees won’t always share when they’re feeling burned out—you might not find out until they submit their resignation. It’s tricky territory, but fighting burnout means not accepting this as the way things are. There are plenty of opportunities to take action, and it starts with a healthy dose of self-care.
No, we’re not going to insist you throw on a face mask and meditate your stress away (but meditation does help manage stress!). Instead, we’re sharing how to create a workplace that empowers you and your employees to achieve better work-life balance and be happier and more productive. We’ve learned that recognizing and rewarding employees, using the right technology, and increasing training is your best line of defense against burnout.
You heard it here first: Property management burnout is no match for an empowered workplace. Here are three ways to say goodbye to burnout in 2019.
Reward and Recognize Employees
Make this phrase one of your 2019 mantras: recognition leads to retention. Burnout is more likely to occur when employees don’t feel valued for the work they do. Property management is a fast-paced, demanding industry—it’s crucial for employees to know that their hard work matters.
In fact, research from Globoforce’s WorkHuman Research Institute found that 93 percent of employees who receive praise at work believe that the work they do is meaningful and purposeful, compared to only 72 percent of workers who have never been recognized at work. Reward and recognition programs help cultivate a more engaged, productive, and motivated staff.
You can embed recognition into your culture through simple initiatives, like shout-outs during team meetings or annual awards for stand-out employees. Worried about finding the time to keep up with employee accomplishments? Encourage employees to recognize one another in formal and informal ways.
Use internal resources, like your messaging system or email, for day-to-day, spontaneous recognition. For more formal rewards, create quarterly or annual programs that allow for peer-to-peer nominations. Remember, employee recognition isn’t all about performance: create awards that celebrate your core values and those who live them out every day.
Invest in Technology
Feeling burned out? One of the first things to go should be the mundane, time-consuming tasks that come with the territory in property management. If you’ve been putting off investing in technology to automate and organize your property management business, now’s the time to make the leap. Manual tasks like managing maintenance requests and tracking documents often feel meaningless and create frustration—two key ingredients in the recipe for burnout.
Although property management software is great for automating manual processes, it’s also about providing your staff with the tools they need to get organized and boost efficiency. Your employees can’t provide top-notch customer service to your residents when they’re feeling disorganized and unsupported in their daily tasks. The right property management software can make life easier for everyone from your marketing lead to your staff accountant.
Create Training Opportunities
When your staff is confident and knowledgeable, they’re more likely to have the skills necessary to manage stress and solve problems. Continuous training opportunities are important at all levels of the business, from the C-suite to frontline employees.
Learning new skills and acquiring knowledge is important to today’s workforce. In fact, millennial workers are so committed to learning and development that they’re willing to change jobs over it. That means it’s more important than ever to provide meaningful learning for employees even after onboarding is over.
What kind of training keeps employees engaged and productive? Micro-learning delivers bite-sized, focused training opportunities that address timely, specific topics. For example, a 15-minute eLearning course on 2019 real estate trends or a webinar on new ways to manage job-related stress. If your budget is tight, leverage the experts on your team to create mini-training opportunities, like lunch and learns or mentorship programs.
The key to preventing property management burnout is as simple as finding ways to show you care, and that doesn’t cost a dime.
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