GREENVILLE, SC - Grace Hill, a provider of policy, training and assessment tools to develop and retain property management talent, today released results from a new benchmark report that highlights the practical challenges that multifamily property owners and operators face in implementing a comprehensive talent management system.
“This has been a difficult year, both economically and emotionally, for multifamily housing companies of all sizes,” said Dru Armstrong, CEO of Grace Hill. “But despite these challenges, the data continues to reinforce that people performance drives property management performance. We see again and again that companies that handle the fundamentals of talent management well are much better positioned to navigate and adapt to unexpected hurdles. Retaining and developing your best people is the key to success and resiliency.”
According to the 2020 Multifamily Benchmark Report, updated annually, while most organizations recognize that an effective property management talent performance program could lead to cost and process efficiencies, many lack the necessary tools to fully execute given their own real-world time and budget limitations. The greatest challenges reported by respondents included finding enough time in the day for training, linking policies and procedures to training courseware, and prioritizing underutilized tools like mystery shopping, which can impact employee performance.
Coping with COVID-19 is still a work in progress
While nearly half of respondents (45 percent) report that policies and procedures are fully updated for COVID-19, 48 percent say there is still more ground to cover. The report also found that nowhere near enough companies are surveying their most valuable (and vulnerable) stakeholders, with 38 percent surveying employees and 26 percent surveying residents about their experience during the pandemic. Uncertainty about the future remains, with 63 percent of respondents saying they do not anticipate a return to normal operations this year or anytime soon, and 22 percent saying they have “no idea” when business might return to normal.
More training yields positive results, but topic priorities vary by company size.
While more than 9 in 10 agree that training positively impacts turnover rates, many companies continue to experience practical challenges and suboptimal results. More than half of respondents (52 percent) say they do not have enough hours in the day to train, and nearly a third don’t have the headcount or budget to reach their training goals.
Training topics that are top-of-mind for senior executives vary considerably by organization size. Larger organizations are generally more focused on state and local Fair Housing laws and ordinances (74 percent), as well as front-line issues like diversity (57 percent) and comfort animals (44 percent). Medium-sized companies tend to place less emphasis on state and local laws, and more emphasis on sexual harassment (63 percent). Smaller organizations placed more emphasis on Fair Housing (74 percent) as well as issues like safety (50 percent) and a “drug-free workplace” (13 percent).
Mystery shopping is still a missed opportunity despite benefits.
There is strong differentiation between larger and smaller organizations when it comes to mystery shopping, and respondents reported a desire to make better use of shop results, both in terms of ease-of-use and application with other systems. Senior executives from larger organizations are far more likely than others to utilize, and find value in, mystery shops, citing multiple ways – from remediation (62 percent) to bonuses (55 percent) to adverse actions for the employee (30 percent) – in which the technique had impacted their people’s performance. While organizations of all sizes recognize the potential value of mystery shopping, with 7 in 10 acknowledging that it impacts employee performance, it is ranked last in terms of importance within a talent management program.
For more results and to download a complimentary copy of the report, visit gracehill.com.
About Grace Hill: Grace Hill provides technology-enabled talent performance solutions that help owners and operators of real estate properties increase property performance, reduce operating risk and grow top talent. Its industry-leading solutions covering policy, training, assessment, and data-driven insights are bolstered by years of real estate experience, in-depth service-level expertise and outstanding customer support. Today, more than 500,000 real estate professionals from more than 1,600 companies rely on talent performance solutions from Grace Hill. Visit us at gracehill.com or on LinkedIn.