Search Results for: hiring
Early Warning Systems
The National Weather Service tracks indicators of hurricanes, tornadoes, major storm systems, and other weather-related events using an intricate process that assesses meteorologic conditions and storm progression. Radar images, alive with motion, show developments in vibrant color, informing and encouraging the populace to prepare.
Early Warning Systems are critical to providing people with the lead time to safeguard their homes and businesses against potential damage. As situations progress to imminent danger, Emergency Warning Alert signals are broadcast through television, wireless, and weather apps in the affected areas, warning people to take cover and get to safety immediately.
Front Lines
The global pandemic has created conditions in several sectors that coalesce into an early warning system related to labor. Members of the medical profession have been on the front lines of this crisis since its inception and the toll is well past the early warning stage. Medical workers report burnout and many are leaving the profession entirely. So much so, that it is fair to say the medical labor situation is in a full-blown emergency. It wasn’t hard to see this one coming, but the solutions are much more complex.
Another sector in distress is the tech industry, where workers report chronic burnout, limited career progression, and unrealistic demands. According to research by TalentLMS and Workable, nearly three-quarters of tech and IT workers surveyed report that they intend to quit within the year. IT workers keep all the systems of our world functioning, and they were then tasked with immediately transforming physical workplaces into remote work without the lead time they needed, and they did it beautifully. So much so that we failed to recognize the toll it was taking.
We called them heroes – these people who worked beyond their capacity for months on end with no relief in sight. The flip side of ‘hero’ is a human whose life is out of balance, who is forgoing personal care and investment in relationships. The novelty of heroism has worn off. It doesn’t compensate for exhaustion, personal sacrifice, and frankly, lack of compensation for the extraordinary effort.
Small Signs of Big Trouble
In the multifamily space, we need to consider our early warning systems when it comes to team member burnout. Manager relationships, smart listening, and intentional connectivity are some internal tools to detect early signs of disengagement. The manager/team member relationship is of prime importance to employee engagement, but it only works when the manager is fully aligned with the cultural values of the organization. Every leader needs to have their ears attuned to any small comment that could indicate a bigger problem. Remarks that reveal dissatisfaction can masquerade as sarcasm, or complaints about extreme ‘busyness’, or even dark humor. Those types of comments should tickle the ear of the listener and encourage a quick check-in – something like, “Hey, sounds like you’ve got a lot on your plate. I want to check in with you. What can I do to relieve the pressure and help you get your balance back?” Those soft small check-ins are a huge tool in the effort to create harmony between stated core values and the team member’s experience of your company culture.
One of our Collective Conversations featured Jen Piccotti with Swift Bunny, a company that offers feedback, insights, and actionable plans that serve as an early warning system for employee satisfaction. The Swift Bunny system gives a line of sight into team member engagement and provides leading indicators of potential turnover risks. Retaining talent has always been a priority, but in a tight labor market, it is all too easy to shift attention towards attracting and hiring new people to fill vacant seats. Existing team members need and deserve recognition, support, and appropriate compensation. Neglecting your current team is a sure path to more employee turnover.
Stay Interview
Many companies employ an Exit Interview process to help them learn from soon-to-be-former employees. A far more innovative and useful early warning system is the Stay Interview. The stay interview is a periodically scheduled conversation between a manager and a team member designed to learn the drivers that keep an employee on board and to suss out opportunities for company improvement. Consider the stay interview as a performance review for the company, not the employee. What should we keep doing? Stop doing? Do better?
Stay interviews work best in companies that value trust and candor, and where the stay interview is a safe space to speak honestly without fear of negative consequences. Managers should come prepared to ask meaningful questions, seeking to build trust with and accept constructive feedback from the team member.
Danger Zone
There are some indicators of late-stage disengagement. When an otherwise communicative team member goes silent. Or when a regular PTO pattern changes abruptly. By then it may be too late. Once an employee decides to interview with other companies, you’ve lost them. While you can try your best to overturn that decision or offer incentives to stay, the immediate-, mid-, and long-term success rate for that hail Mary play is low.
What are your early warning systems when it comes to talent?
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Speed Dating for Talent
Just over a decade ago, I wrote this post about the need for savvy operators to build brand loyalty with their residents because of the impact the great recession would have on apartment occupancy. Today’s battle for market share is all about talent. Companies are fighting to fill the holes in their teams with the best available people. Facing a tight employment market where recruiting is becoming more difficult, it is time to fine-tune your culture. When everything else is the same – wages, benefits, etc. – culture is the tiebreaker. Smart job seekers know this, and it is critical that your culture stands out. Be vigilant about course-correcting any cultural dissonance. Your existing team and your future team are holding you accountable for it.
Swipe Right for Culture
Now is the time for innovations in recruitment and hiring. Potential candidates speed date through the endless options for employment and if you want to be the company that causes them to swipe right, you need to think in terms of the team member experience and how you ensure that your company lives up to the hype.
Zero to Ten – Where is your pain level?
Every company has some form of financial review process. It is an important measure of business health. I encourage you to add a cultural review to your routine. Ask good questions. Listen thoughtfully to responses. What is the story behind the story? Where are the cultural pain points and what can you do to relieve them? What is the temperature of your current team members? How connected are they to your culture?
Gut Check
The current employment market is not a call to hire whoever you can get. Top talent is still available and those are the people you want to attract. Avoid the panic hire – the one that you knew in your gut wasn’t the right fit for the position or the company. That path leads to an inevitable painful exit which further tarnishes the opportunity for brand loyalty. It isn’t fair to anyone and shakes the confidence of your team.
Passion Play
I don’t have a magic wand to produce key talent in this unusual market. But I do know that it is my job to ensure that our culture is healthy. It is the sort of work that is harder to quantify but it pays the biggest dividends in the end. My parents’ generation favored the stability of lifelong careers at one company. Workers today are less afraid of uncertainty and want to do work that feeds their spirits and their bank accounts. Passion is the name of the game. You don’t have to change everything about your culture, but you do need your company to be who you say you are.
What are you doing to ensure your culture delivers on your brand promises?
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Episode 786 | Hire Up
In this episode, we talk about the importance of hiring outside of your comfort zone.
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Scaling Up Keystone
Location, Location, Location – real estate types know this aphorism better than most. It’s the key to any good transaction. Always buy property with your exit strategy in mind and location for certain is part of that thought process. But don’t forget about the equally if not more important piece of the equation.
People People People
As Mills Properties journeys down the road of Scaling Up; we are becoming more and more aware of having the right people in the right positions doing the right things. Not unlike purchasing property with the end in mind; it’s critical to hire and train the right people. Also, with a distant time in mind.
Hire For Attitude
A number of years ago – too many to count – I had the awesome pleasure of working for Equity Residential Properties. A company and people I will forever hold in esteem. They have a real penchant for hiring right. Their mantra at the time, hire for attitude and train for skill, governed the overall sourcing and hiring process. It worked.
Hire For Character
But I think hiring for character is a much more powerful governor than attitude. While attitude covers a person’s way of behaving; I think it’s easily rocked and completely open to the winds of change. Not a bad thing; just a bit less stable for what I believe is a keystone to business success. Whereas character is a much deeper sense of self as governed by a solid moral center; it is less affected by the downsides of adversity and the upsides of awesomeness.
Scaling Up
The keystone message: hire for character, train for character and coach out for lack of character.
Your looking forward to scaling up multifamily maniac,
M
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Everybody wants what everybody wants
Makes a ton of sense doesn’t it?
I read somewhere that Wal-Mart hires people during the holidays to sift through DVD bins that are strategically placed in main isles. This creates a sense of want and need among consumers. In other words; if I think I am missing out on something special then I will join in the madness and buy.
Apartment translation
While I would not advocate hiring people to clamor over specific apartments; there is an apartment version of this concept. How about it; is anyone doing something along these lines?
Mills has a building in downtown STL whereby we are trying to create some version of this. We are building out a co-work space and study-room directly across from the leasing office. The spaces are divided by a lobby entryway that also plays host to the elevator and mailboxes. The theory being that potential residents will enter the lobby and see activity in the two spaces (if we design the right). This will incite the buying vibes well before we move to introductions and demonstrations.
You’re thinking about how to apply this Multifamily Maniac,
M