The new year is here, filled with promise and expectation for all that is to come. While challenges remain, there is something a bit magical about entering a new year. It’s an opportunity to take stock, reevaluate, and then shift to new ways of thinking and working.
Change can be hard, but it’s not always a bad thing. And in the current employment landscape, what really matters is how you and your business adapt. Is it different? Sure. But let’s focus on the positive and consider some opportunities to strengthen your teams.
A renewed focus on the basics – particularly regarding employee training and development – will be essential to your success in 2023. The good news: You’re not in this alone; Grace Hill can help.
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The New Dilemma in Hiring
We get it. There is a very real struggle around all aspects of the employment process. Since 2020, employers have been in (what feels like) a never ending cycle of change. And if we’re being completely candid, it’s exhausting.
In listening to customers over the past year, we’ve seen a hiring trend emerge, and it’s that hiring from outside the multifamily industry is becoming increasingly common. So why does that matter?
Well, before the pandemic, that simply wasn’t the case, which meant new hires often brought with them a certain level of multifamily industry knowledge and expertise. But with new talent now coming from various industries, experience, and educational backgrounds, HR teams and managers now find themselves needing to “start from scratch” with training.
For organizational leaders, this means not only rethinking “how” training needs to be delivered for maximum effectiveness but also reevaluating content to ensure your team has a solid foundation of understanding.
Yes, it adds a new dynamic to the hiring process and employee development, but for many reasons, that’s a good thing. In fact, following a back-to-basics approach with your teams allows you to emerge better and stronger than before. If you’re feeling reluctant – or just worn out – about making changes to how you train your team, consider these wise words from Henry Ford:
“The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.”
Not sure about where to start? Consider these three simple steps for setting the stage for success with your team with this fresh take on the basics.
3 Steps That Will Drive Your Team To Succeed in 2023
It can be tempting to stick with the status quo, assuming knowledge will come as a natural function of “learning the ropes,” leadership, and generalized training. However, there is a better way.
To set your team up for success in the new year, you must:
1. Set Clear Expectations
First, ensure your new hires know their role and are comfortable with their responsibilities. Take the time to get to know each individual and their unique skills. Doing so will help create a sense of trust and camaraderie, two essential elements for any successful team. Second, outline a clear vision of success and develop SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based) goals to provide direction and motivation for success. In the multifamily space, it’s also vital for employees to have easy access to relevant and up-to-date policies. And in an environment where legislative and regulatory changes can create an ever-evolving policy landscape, this is not an area that should be left to chance.
Grace Hill understands these challenges, which is why our comprehensive policy management solution stands out among the competition as a pivotal partner in your success. Our policies solution empowers your team to succeed by delivering industry-specific policies to your team on an intuitive platform that is easy to manage. With access to company policies at any time and on any device, team members build confidence in their roles, knowing they can rely on policy details that are relevant and up-to-date.
2. Train For The Behaviors You Expect
The benefit of adding employees from outside the multifamily industry is the opportunity it provides for embedding desired behaviors from day one. When employees come from within the industry, you often have to reframe (or unlearn) attitudes and ideas that might conflict with your corporate culture or mindset. However, regardless of your team’s composition — industry newbies or seasoned veterans — you must be clear about what you expect from your team. And utilizing a learning management system (LMS) that provides engaging, customizable training content will be the linchpin of your success. With the right LMS, you can ensure everyone on your team trains toward the behaviors you expect but with a learning plan that tailors the content to each employee’s needs. No more boring, cookie-cutter training modules that are quickly checked off and then forgotten.
When you incorporate Vision, Grace Hill’s proprietary LMS, into your training repertoire, you can access robust courseware focused on onboarding, compliance, and skill growth. Your LMS plays a critical role in maintaining compliance, mitigating risk, reducing employee and resident turnover, and increasing revenue. Vision helps you and your team move toward success in these areas. Even better, it easily integrates with our policy management solution, so you can incorporate company policies and multiply effectiveness.
3. Assess Your Progress
Training your team is not a “one-and-done” task. Too often, leaders dismiss assessment and continuing education, and in truth, it’s tempting to want to do. After all, life is busy, schedules are full, and there is work to be done.
It’s important not to overlook assessing your team’s progress. For one, it provides a way for team members (and your team as a whole) to gauge how far they have come and how much further they have to go. But it also helps identify any issues preventing your team from progressing. You can’t address what you don’t know, and that’s where Grace Hill’s KingsleySurveys and Validate come in.
With KingsleySurveys’ comprehensive survey tools, you gain important insight into what is working and what is not and build employee engagement. Engaged employees are the secret sauce behind a company’s success, so don’t leave it to chance.
Of course, KingslySurveys is much more than just an internal survey tool. As an industry leader for over 35 years, KingsleySurveys features a robust reporting engine that translates critical performance data into actionable insights for your team with a benchmarking database you can use to level-set, compare, and track your property performance against industry standards.
And with Validate, Grace Hill’s robust mystery shop program, you can utilize a tool built specifically for the multifamily property management industry that blends technology with assessment best practices. It’s easy to administer and uses proven sampling strategies to deliver timely, unbiased performance assessments. The short training courses address specific skill gaps identified during the shop, which helps cultivate a well-versed, proficient team.
As John F. Kennedy once said, “Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” The two actually do go hand in hand. You can’t effectively lead your team and remain blind to the things that keep your team from succeeding.
With a comprehensive survey solution and/or a mystery shop program at your fingertips, you can address the challenges as they come and remove any obstacles impeding your team’s success.
Because let’s not forget that assessing your progress allows you to celebrate successes, which helps motivate your team and keep everyone on track.
Many things in business are complicated, but your training shouldn’t be one of them. By following these three simple steps, you and your team will be poised for success.
So what are you waiting for? Let 2023 be the year you drive your team to reach new and exciting goals, and let Grace Hill help you get there.
Contact us today to see a personalized demonstration of the solutions that best fit your property management business!
