At a time where businesses in the multifamily industry are striving to minimize costs, productivity among your staff is a chief concern. 

It’s no secret that decreased productivity can cost your property, but with the internet inundated with “helpful content” and an endless stream of advertisements, you might feel like the right productivity tools for your team are, in fact, a secret from you. 

Let’s pull back the curtain and chat about productivity tools that will actually make a difference in the efficiency of your staff. 

Task Management Tools for Multifamily Properties

Implementing a task management tool for your staff to use on a daily basis can help keep them focused and productive — whether your team is working from home or not. 

As with the nature of a multifamily business, whether your in-office or not, your team is likely distributed. Task management allows regional managers who are out of the office or in a different location to keep tabs on the progress of their individual property managers. On the flip side, it allows property managers to communicate with regional managers if their workload is too high and priorities need to be shifted.  

The major changes happening in the multifamily industry may be highlighting inefficiencies within your team — pushing you to become more efficient. This is not a time to place blame on others or dwell on past mistakes, but a time to make improvements to how your team makes progress and completes tasks. 

If you’ve tried a task management tool before and it didn’t stick, we suggest you try again.      

Improve the outcome this time around by making it mandatory for all staff and utilizing it yourself. 

As a property manager or owner, you must set the example; your staff will follow what you do. 

“The three most important ways to lead people are… by example… by example… by example.” - Albert Schweitzer

“Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others, it is the only means.” - Albert Einstein

Here are the task management tools we recommend based on personal experience: 

• Trello
• Monday.com
• Teamwork 
• Asana
  
  

Don’t let the excuse “I don’t have time” stop you from implementing a new tool to help with productivity. 

If you sacrifice one hour a day for one week to learn the task management tool of your choice, you can enjoy higher levels of organization and productivity for years to come. 

Shared Google Drive

Though it seems simple, this is a quick property management tool that we couldn’t leave out of the mix. 

If Google Drive isn’t an integral part of your internal structure, you’re missing out on an incredibly easy organization tool.

With a shared Google Drive, you can store important documents pertaining to  every aspect of your multifamily business in a single place where it can’t be “lost” or “misplaced.” As well, with the ability to give all employees access, they can quickly locate the documents they need without halting their workflow. 

As well, Google Drive is a secure way to safely store your information and data. 

If you’re looking for Google Drive alternatives, Dropbox, Sync, and OneDrive also serve the same purpose!

Employee Communication Tools

With fewer people in the office and more working remotely, different avenues for communication are necessary to keep everyone updated and in-sync. 

We recommend downloading a communication channel with a desktop and mobile version. An app version of your communication tool is key because let’s be honest, it’s inevitable that your employees will step away from their computers and be on their phones. With the communication app installed, they can respond to important internal messages while on-the-go. 

We recommend utilizing Slack, a direct messaging and chat tool. It helps us feel together even when we’re not. With Slack, you can organize group channels for each department, video chat with team members, and install various plugins.

An added benefit you can enjoy with these types of communication tools is they will tell you when people are online and offline. While we do not recommend you use it as a way to monitor your employees, it can be a way to keep everyone accountable — including yourself. 

Online Rating Generator

At this point in time, getting new online apartment ratings is probably low on your staff’s totem pole. As well, when things get chaotic, tasks like regularly asking residents to leave a rating get pushed to the side.

That is why we suggest you implement a tool that generates ratings for you — similar to how certain online reputation management tools automatically respond to Facebook messages or resident reviews for you. 

With this type of tool, your staff can focus on other high-priority tasks and not spin their wheels trying to get the same resident to leave a review over and over again. 

Higher Staff Productivity

Something we have yet to mention is how staff morale can impact productivity. Did you know that happy employees are 12% more productive and unhappy employees are 10% less productive than average? 

While there are many factors that go into employee satisfaction, open communication, organization, trust and employee recognition for the hard work that they do play a huge role. If anything, taking advantage of the top multifamily management tools for 2020 will help you create a more positive workplace for your staff.

To close, we will leave you with one last recommendation… 

Don’t be afraid to leverage technology and make changes in your internal structure. A year from now, you’ll thank yourself.