Apartment Talent
Winning Strategies in the Multifamily Talent Arena
How to Attract, Retain, and Develop Top Talent in the Multifamily Property Management Sector
Photo by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash
The multifamily property management sector is experiencing an escalating war for talent. With growing competition and a shifting landscape, attracting the right professionals requires a deep understanding of what motivates them and how to foster their growth. This brief note offers multifamily executives insightful strategies to win this battle, focusing on attraction, retention, and professional development. We will explore the problem of talent scarcity and present solutions with tangible benefits for your organization.
Finding and retaining top talent has become one of the most pressing issues in multifamily property management. The industry is increasingly competitive, and the demand for skilled team members is rising. The challenge lies in identifying individuals with the right blend of technical expertise, creativity, and passion to engage with residents. How do multifamily executives find these ideal candidates and keep them engaged? The problem is complex and requires a nuanced approach.
Solutions:
- Emphasize Culture and Values: By creating a workplace culture resonant with the values of potential team members, you can attract those who align with your mission. This alignment ensures a more harmonious work environment and enhances the likelihood of long-term retention.
- Offer Tailored Professional Development: Offering customized professional growth opportunities demonstrates your investment in your team members’ futures. By fostering their career growth, you enhance their skills and build loyalty.
- Engage with Team Members: Encouraging veteran team members to engage actively with new team members helps foster community. This connection enriches the working experience and promotes higher satisfaction among team members.
- Implement Competitive Compensation Packages: Salary isn’t everything, but it matters. By researching and offering competitive compensation packages, you signal to prospective team members your recognition of their value.
- Utilize Technology: Leverage technology to streamline hiring and ensure you reach suitable candidates. Utilizing appropriate platforms can make the recruitment process more efficient and targeted.
- Invest in Wellness: Focus on the overall well-being of your team members. A happy, healthy team member is often more productive and loyal.
Josh Swing | Collective Conversations
In this episode, I sit down with Josh Swing, a respected expert in the leadership development industry, to discuss the importance of leadership development.
We explore various aspects of the topic, sharing valuable insights, personal experiences, and actionable strategies to help you thrive in business and life.
Drawing from a recent article published on the @wildsparq blog, we take a deep dive into the following key discussion points:
1. Leadership development increases retention
2. Leadership development increases company culture
3. Leadership development increases engagement
Multifamily: Free Agents
Photo by averie woodard on Unsplash
In his book “The Free Agent Nation,” Dan Pink coined the term “Free Agent Nation” to describe a growing trend of workers who embrace self-employment and independence rather than traditional full-time employment. The concept of Free Agent Nation has gained significant attention in recent years, particularly with the rise of the gig economy and the increasing number of people who work for themselves.
According to Pink, Free Agent Nation is a cultural and economic shift from the traditional employer-employee relationship. It is a movement towards a more fluid, flexible, and entrepreneurial approach to work, where individuals take control of their careers, often by building their businesses or working as freelancers.
One of the key drivers of the Free Agent Nation phenomenon is the desire for greater autonomy and control over one’s work life. Many people today are disillusioned with the constraints of traditional employment, including rigid schedules, limited opportunities for advancement, and the feeling of being undervalued or unappreciated by their employers. COVID-19 accelerated the pace. By becoming free agents, they can set their schedules, pursue work that aligns with their passions and interests, and take ownership of their success.
Another factor contributing to the growth of Free Agent Nation is the rise of technology and digital platforms that make it easier than ever to work independently. Online marketplaces like Upwork, Fiverr, and Etsy have opened up new opportunities for freelancers and small business owners to connect with customers and clients worldwide. Social media and other digital marketing tools have also made it easier for individuals to build their brands and reach a wider audience.
Overall, Free Agent Nation represents a significant shift in how we think about work and careers. Whether it is a positive or negative trend depends on how it is managed and regulated in the years to come. But one thing is clear: the era of traditional employment is giving way to a new model of work that is more flexible, entrepreneurial, and driven by individual initiative.
Next-Gen Leadership
Next-Gen Leadership
Everyone begins their career at an entry point. The particular point of entry varies considerably but it is safe to assume that only the true entrepreneur starts at the top (and many of them also start at the bottom as in they do every job in the business from clean-up to fundraising). In the multifamily industry, most property management professionals begin in an on-site position and learn the fundamentals of the business there.
A Common Path
The long-held multifamily career path goes something like this: leasing agent to assistant manager to property manager with a similar trajectory for service team members. Whatever your L&D program, most focus on the skills needed to attain proficiency in the processes, systems, and protocols required in each position.
Beyond those primary task-related skills, it is important to focus on the cultural blend of core values combined with the humanities – a vital starting point for the personal growth tool kit and one that ensures ongoing alignment with cultural values. There are many educational options in the marketplace that you can bolt onto your existing L&D program to craft a well-rounded management education package. And those management skills are highly important to an organization’s operational success.
Even so, there remains the possibility that you could be failing your next generation of leaders.
Captains & Stewards
Leaders set broad direction and coalesce influence and inspiration around common goals. They motivate, encourage, and edify. They help others become their best selves. They are stewards of the organization, its team members, and of themselves.
Humanity At The Helm
Leadership development is personal development. Leaders are people first, with all the fault lines that come with a lifetime of personal love, loss, failure, and trauma. As humans, when under stress we have a tendency to default to reactive behaviors that don’t always serve us well. Anger, defensiveness, retribution, guilt, and enabling are common to us all – and each is destructive to effective leadership. Decent administration and visionary direction will eventually be undone by someone who mistakes being in charge for being a leader.
I once heard someone say that they did not trust anyone in a leadership role who wasn’t engaged in personal therapy. That person recognized the simple truth that to hold the care of others in your hand requires deep character work. It is hard – personally hard – and it takes a lifetime of dedicated introspection to recognize, acknowledge, and work through your own internal junk so that you can see more clearly the humans in your care — and lead from there.
If you want to grow the next generation of leaders – I encourage you to train more than the tactical skills. Invest in the humanities and build out opportunities for team members to engage in personal development.
Business is Personal
Photo by Bekir Dönmez on Unsplash
Business IS Personal
In The Godfather (1972) Michael Corleone infamously says, “It’s nothing personal, Sonny – It’s strictly business” when referring to the shooting of a colleague’s father. Far be it from me to tangle with a mob family but given the chance, I’d like to say, “You’re (dead) wrong.”
When team members come to work, either to the physical business center or through virtual/digital systems, they bring their whole selves with them. There is no imaginary coat hook by the door where the problems of real life are parked until the end of the business day only to be picked up and loaded on again before going home.
Businesses serve these whole humans. Pressures, which were mounting long before, have intensified over the past two years as team members’ personal and professional lives merged (and often cracked) under the pressures of the Covid-19 pandemic. The disruption of work-life balance, loss of workplace camaraderie, and lack of shared in-person experiences left many workers feeling disconnected from the business. Working parents experienced the additional burdens of juggling remote learning and feelings of constant guilt about not meeting the needs of either family or job.
As pandemic-related restrictions have eased and our lives returned to some new form of normalcy that never quite fit the original mold, businesses should be thoughtful about the path forward. Organizations better serve their people when they actively remove barriers to healthy, creative, mindful work including those physical, psychological, and cultural obstacles.
It is critically important to intentionally engage with team members and invite candid conversation. Develop an ear for what is not being said as much as what is. I encourage you to make it safe for team members to share pain points and develop strategies that adapt to meet the evolving needs of your teams.
Companies that invest in the true overall wellbeing of their workforce have better outcomes and higher retention. Team members feel the difference when the business views them holistically. In a time when talent is harder to source, companies have come to recognize the importance of working in service of the whole humans that make up their teams.
What are you doing to work in service of your team members and how has that changed in the past two years? Share your stories with us.
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