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Industry Opportunities: Smarter, More Targeted Training
Our recent Multifamily Training Benchmark Report identified multiple opportunities for improving training and becoming more competitive overall. Most of these opportunities come down to a need for smarter, more targeted training. While training is up in many areas, there are distinct deficiencies: training for trainers themselves and maintenance personnel and more compliance training. Tracking and connecting performance, training and turnover will make it easier for property companies to identify these deficiencies and adjust course.
INCORPORATE MORE TRAIN-THE-TRAINER OPPORTUNITIES
Trainers are responsible for getting results—decreased turnover, decreased risk, increased customer retention and satisfaction. To get the best results, they need training. Currently, however, only 24% of companies offer any kind of training specifically designed for trainers. Trainers need opportunities to learn effective techniques for improving employee performance, not to mention mastering the subject matter they’re responsible for training employees on.
IMPROVE TURNOVER RATES
Turnover rates are up for most roles this year, especially maintenance personnel. And while you may think you’re already doing everything you can to improve turnover, our report revealed the importance of thorough and frequent training in reducing turnover. Maintenance was the only role for which monthly training hours went down, not up—a very likely cause for its jump in turnover.
IMPLEMENT MYSTERY SHOPPING
Mystery shopping is the most accurate way to evaluate how your employees are performing and how well your training is working; yet only 55% of companies currently use it. Mystery shopping actually saves money in the long run by helping target personnel coverage and training efforts. And it’s more effective than advertising at securing repeat customers.
DECREASE COMPLIANCE COSTS
Any amount spent on compliance violations is too much, which means most companies have room to improve. But mid-size companies, with an average compliance cost of almost double that reported by large companies, have a particular opportunity in this area. The best way to cut compliance costs is through frequent training that is kept current with changes in the law.
LINK PERFORMANCE TO TRAINING
Half of companies don’t currently link employee performance to training, which means they are missing opportunities to personalize training and measure performance gains. Companies should leverage their LMS to facilitate performance management and better demonstrate the impact of training.
The Multifamily Benchmark Report also shows that technology use like custom content and integration is up, which is a great sign for the future. Tying employee performance data to training is the next technological step property companies should take to ensure training is applied where it is most needed and no objectives get left behind.
