Efficiency has become the name of the game in multifamily in recent years as property managers strive to optimize operations while also combatting current labor shortages. Operators need to accomplish more with the teams they have, and that means leveraging technology to reduce the workload for associates.

On-site tasks once conducted by team members are now being assumed by tech platforms and smart home products that relieve the burden from associates’ shoulders, enabling them to focus on customer service. The efficiencies created have allowed management companies to streamline operations, manage their assets with smaller teams and even increase both associate and resident retention in the process.

Which technologies are allowing operators to do more with less?

Self-Guided Tours

Tours were traditionally considered a core responsibility of leasing teams, but the self-guided touring technology widely adopted in recent years quelled the notion that only people could lead tours. While the pandemic and social distancing objectives served as the impetus for many operators to deploy self-touring platforms, the technology stuck. Many prospective residents actually prefer the pressure-free tour option, and operators quickly learned that their teams could accomplish more when they weren’t spending all their time leading in-person tours. When leasing associates aren’t required to conduct every tour, operators can maintain operations without overtaxing associates.

Mobile Maintenance Platforms

The labor shortage has made it particularly challenging to retain maintenance associates, as numerous outside industries compete for workers with the same skill sets. Mobile maintenance platforms optimize workflow for maintenance technicians, creating strategic routing and scheduling, and assigning tasks based on expertise so associates can complete and move through tasks expediently. Mobile maintenance solutions enable technicians to spend more time in the field by reducing redundancies and repeated back-and-forth trips from the maintenance office. With workflow streamlined, operators can survive with fewer technicians or even centralized maintenance teams. Also, when technicians feel more productive, their job satisfaction increases, as does associate retention. 

Smart Home Solutions

Smart home solutions like locks, lighting and thermostats enable on-site teams to manage their communities remotely. Historically, on-site associates have spent far too much time traversing the property, assisting residents who have locked themselves out or providing building access to vendors or delivery personnel. With smart access controls, associates are empowered to assist residents in real time by granting access from wherever they are through a smart device. Likewise, maintenance teams can be remotely granted access to resident homes to make repairs rather than backtracking for physical keys or fobs.

Through the same dashboard, associates can also make adjustments to amenity and common area lighting, blinds, heat and air conditioning settings, rather than physically walking across the property to do so manually. Even better, they can program daily after-hours climate and lighting settings for amenities and common spaces so that such mundane tasks are automated. Teams can also establish automated energy-saving settings that initiate whenever a home is vacated, saving maintenance teams the trip. By saving valuable time, centralized smart home solutions create efficiencies that enhance both the resident and associate experience.

Operators who strategically deploy property technologies that remove routine tasks from the plates of their teams and streamline workflow effectively return time to the workdays of their associates. Productive associates are happy associates, and operators who enable their property teams to do more with less create environments where people want to work and maximize the performance of their assets.