How to Keep your Property Manager Motivated

Employee turnovers cost businesses a lot of money every year. You have to provide training, at least, which costs you a lot of time and possibly costly mistakes. The best way to keep your business running smoothly is to work on keeping your employees happy and motivated.

Whether you have an entire property management team that keeps track of many buildings and rental properties or you have just one live-in property manager, there are ways you can help keep up morale and your business on track to success.

Attractive salary and benefits

By far the easiest way to keep employees that manage your rental properties is providing an attractive salary and benefits. When hiring, make sure you take a few points into consideration.

• How many years experience do they have?
• Do they have good references? Ask about occupancy rates at previous rental properties.
• What are their credentials? Are they licensed real estate agents?
• Do they have their own set of contractors? This can be huge since they can save you time and money working with people of confidence.
• Make sure you are paying at least market average wages.
• Is there a way you can create incentives for your employees?

Career advancement opportunities

Another great way to keep employees happy and motivated is by giving them the opportunity to advance their careers. This will help you retain employees longer as they can easily see that they can grow personally and professionally within your organization.

Some things you can offer are:

• Learning opportunities such as sending them to conferences, webinars and offering paths to obtaining professional licenses.
• Create a “corporate ladder” system, if possible.
• Offer incentives to earn bonuses and promotions.

Ensure that you have a friendly work environment

Nobody likes working in a hostile work environment. There are many ways you can create a great place to work. Some ideas include.

• Provide positive feedback whenever it’s due. It’s easy to provide positive reinforcement to keep your property managers happy such as rewarding them with gift cards, free lunches, prizes and cash..who doesn’t like cash?
• Show genuine interest in getting to know them and their families personally. This will create great bonds that will transfer to the workplace.
• Create projects and encourage your employees to participate. A good idea is to create a charity event and actively participate so you can create rapport and build trust with your employees.
• Spend a little leisure time with your employees. Join them for a bowling night on a Friday evening or go watch a baseball game.
• Make sure everyone has a voice and make sure everyone uses positive communication techniques. There is no bad idea or dumb questions.
• Casual Fridays, Favorite Sandwich Wednesdays, Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, Silly Sweater Thursday, Halloween, Christmas, Valentines Day, etc., etc. These are all great opportunities to make work fun!

Work on communication skills

The more you engage with your employees, the better your overall communication skills will improve within your team. Don’t hide behind a desk and just email. Show up. Talk to them and proactively participate in problem resolution. This will help tremendously because the more you participate, the more criteria they build to handle issues the way you would.

• Encourage two-way conversations and avoid lecturing. They are adults and should communicate like one.
• Be open to employee opinions and ideas. A single person never has the complete picture.

Working on improving your property managers motivation and happiness plays a vital role in their overall job performance. Motivated employees will give you, the boss, an advantage over your competition.