As you should know, your employees come first – not your customers. After all, you can’t manage your property portfolio without a dynamic group of professionals who are ready and able to rise to the various challenges and curveballs.
Employees view their careers as an integral part of their identity. This is especially true for millennials who crave a sense of accomplishment and fulfilment in their working lives.
If you’re a perceptive strata manager, you’ll keep your employees feeling valued, provide them with goals to grow and encourage them when work is tough. Training and upskilling your strata management team improves productivity, morale and job satisfaction, upgrades customers service, and creates a sustainable workforce. What's more, it’s not as tedious or complicated as you think.
1. Attend seminars and webinars
Getting the job done and doing a job well are two very different things. Schedule time for your strata management team to expand their knowledge. Seminars are valuable learning experiences where they’ll learn industry information, gain insights from speakers and become privy to new business-enhancing technologies. Your strata management team will share your work enthusiasm if they feel you care about and invest in their career growth.
You can also recommend they attend webinars, which are more practical and require less logistical planning. Although they don’t offer the benefits of attending a seminar in person, they’re all online and more cost-effective.
2. Introduce a learning culture
Is your strata management team up-to-date with the latest technology? You’ve hired employees knowing they’re equipped to do the job, but as technologies improve over time, your team might develop gaps in their skill sets.
An ongoing plan of continuous skill development and renewal shows that you value your team, as nobody feels left behind. Upskilling is essential for the longevity of your business. If you and your team keep up with current skills, you can stay ahead of industry changes and continue moving forward.
3. Start one-on-one mentoring
Employees gain knowledge by forming close working relationships with each other across the experience spectrum. Seniors have knowledge that comes with experience, while juniors have new tech skills they can impart to seniors.
You don’t have to start a formal initiative to foster one-on-one learning. Ask your employees to set aside an hour each week to provide feedback, assist in decision-making and problem solving, and offer general support and encouragement. This is also a productive strategy to bring junior employees up to speed more quickly than if left unsupervised.
4. Delegate special assignments
An unchallenging job demotivates employees and affects productivity. Combat this with a “stretch” assignment, i.e. delegating a project or task beyond an employee’s current knowledge of skills. Putting a team member in a role that’s slightly outside their comfort zone is a superb way to upskill them.
Use this strategy to test the capabilities of your assistant strata managers. You’ll get a good idea of their leadership strengths and weakness, and they can hone their strata management skills. Ideally, you want to know that they can deal with queries in your absence and take on increased responsibility if and when needed.
The purpose of training and upskilling your team is to keep them happy and your business ahead. If they do well, so will your business, and you can focus on growing your property portfolio. Having a good team goes hand-in-hand with employing good contractors. Don’t make work difficult by using second-rate companies. All the best strata managers know to make use of Higgins as their high-quality property maintenance contractors.
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