Retention is how you can unlock a sustainable, long-term income stream for your property management company. To achieve retention, you must first build a loyal, skilled team and then, using that team, build a loyal customer base.What follows are six proven strategies that guarantee team retention and take you closer to your ultimate end goal: financial freedom.
Recruitment
When you recruit new team members always remember: hire for attitude, train for skill. Why? Because experience is a liability, not an asset. I know many disagree, but let me explain. When applicants have the right attitude and are teachable, they are far better choices than applicants who are set in their ways and not flexible enough to align with your agency’s culture and brand.
Role Definition
You need to define, refine, and assign every role within your business. This means creating clear descriptions of what each team member does, your expectations, and the standards that must be achieved. Role definition includes describing how each position interacts with other team members’ positions and what and how tasks are shared.
Standards
Your business standards make your agency unique. Without standards, you are just like your competitors — you give prospective employees and clients no reason to choose you over another agency. As a result, writing your standards for every area of your business is essential. Some business areas that must have written standards include dress and personal presentation, service delivery, communication presentation, report presentation, vehicle presentation, task completion (including time frames), and customer relations.
Policies
Policies are what provide you and your team direction. As the business owner, you must write your business’ policies so you are in control of the who, what, when, where, why and how of your agency and its operations. Your written policies should encapsulate legislation, business culture, service and standards, processes and codes of conduct (as required by various bodies).
Induction
Your team needs to be inducted, and induction must never stop — it should only reduce in frequency. Thus you must have a program to ensure that new recruits are inducted into every area of your business and continue to receive training once their probation period ends. Induction must be ongoing.
Training
After induction comes training. Research shows that employees receiving planned, consistent and ongoing training from their employer are more committed to remaining in their current employment than if they are receiving no training and support. Therefore my advice is to train your team members, and don’t stop training them!
For more information on these six proven strategies and other strategies to retain your team and clients, download our free ebook: 26 Proven Strategies to Help You Retain Your Team and Clients.
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