How to Minimise Growing Pains (NZ article)

 

Hamish Cropped Nov2014

An article by Hamish Turner (NZ)

At one time or another a property management business experiences growing pains. There are a number of actions that can be taken to avoid “the pain” of growth. When in growth mode, workflow can and does bottle neck at varying times throughout the year. For the most part we tend to see this when a new staff member is needed or there is a staff member leaving and a new one starting.

The main growing pain a property management department experiences centres around staff changes. Training new staff is very time consuming and it does take a good 3-4 months on average to get a new employee up to speed.   Are your systems and procedures up to date? Are they in a central location for all staff to access and are they easy to search? Training staff can hurt the business in terms of growing pains, as the general work load of a new employee is smaller initially together with the need for a management to provide one on one training. Time allocation can be minimised if systems and procedures are centralised, easy to review and detailed.

There are varying methods of sharing property management workflow including POD based (shared group), portfolio based or task based management. POD based or task based management does aid significantly when in growth mode opposed to the more traditional portfolio based management.

Outsourcing work. Be it routine inspections, casual letting or general administration. When experiencing growing pains you can easily outsource work. Routine inspections can be done by experienced property managers wanting to work minimal or varying hours. This role can also be outsourced to your handy man at a set rate per property. Casual letting and administration can be outsourced to experienced personal wanting to work minimal hours and happy to do it externally from the business minimising office requirement and expense.