Staffing shortages are a major concern in multifamily, and the biggest struggle is clearly on the maintenance side.  With so many other opportunities for maintenance personnel, many at higher wages, the multifamily industry is losing ground.

I had a great conversation with Adrian Danila about the frustration of maintenance techs with on-call policies, with two glaring questions:  1) Do maintenance techs get paid to simply be on call, and 2) Do maintenance techs get paid at a higher rate for on-call work?  To get a sense of how the industry was approaching this issue, we polled the community through our Multifamily Insiders LinkedIn Group.  (Which is a fantastic group, by the way – click here to join.)  Here was their results:

In this highly competitive market, it is somewhat astounding that 20% of responders report no higher rate for on call work, and no additional pay to be on call.  This is truly astounding – to ask someone to be ready to wake up at 2am in the morning, even if they don’t get a call, is a mental drain.  I would imagine the group who pays for both must be eating their lunch when it comes to attracting maintenance talent and retaining them. 

What are your thoughts?  Are we missing the boat in acquiring and retaining talented maintenance talent if we don’t acknowledge the extra effort and difficulty of on-call work?