I work for a mid-sized owner/operator with properties in 5 states (most of them with strong tenant-friendly legislatures at the moment), and we've found ourselves devoting significantly more time to monitoring and implementing new legislation over the past decade. It seems that every few weeks, one state is adding a deposit cap and another is changing habitability requirements and another city is requiring composting, so our forms and processes are constantly evolving. While we've made significant progress in preparing for these changes in advance, we worry that that at the current pace, our on-site teams are having a hard time digesting the new content.
We typically send a high-priority e-mail for a change that is not particularly complex, like an FYI about a new addendum that they'll see in lease packets or a change to a single fee/deposit, and require that the topic be discussed and documented at their next biweekly team meeting. We host a short webinar for a more high-risk/intricate change or for a summary of multiple bills that take effect concurrently. We require attendance on these webinars (typically all office team members in a given market), have been working to make these more engaging with quizzes and visuals, and send a follow-up e-mail highlighting key points and linking to the call recording and presentation materials. All forms and SOPs are updated before we communicate the changes as well.
Many of our team members still seem overwhelmed and we're often surprised to get questions months later on topics that we thought were thoroughly covered. What best practices have you developed that might help us better support our associates on the front lines?
