Apartment Industry Rethinking Staffing Models, Job Descriptions

Hiring challenges and technology have caused many apartment owners and managers of all staff sizes to rethink their staffing.

It’s a delicate situation for companies as they place greater focus on showing appreciation for their workers by establishing a welcome workplace culture. Facing competition from other industries – particularly in maintenance – retention is more important than ever. 

At the same time, they must consider the potential financial benefits for adjusting or even reducing headcount. Promised efficiencies and cost savings from supplier partners through centralized leasing and the reduction of mundane tasks overall through automation is creating a compelling case for some – but not all. 

Some companies are rewriting job descriptions in an effort to relieve important workers of administrative tasks so they can focus more on resident-related matters.

The consulting group 20for20, led by industry management veteran Dom Beveridge, focused on this strategy and shared insights from 20 leading apartment company executives with the release in February of the fourth annual report.

The report, which included dozens of candidly anonymous comments, tackles many issues, including the role technology is playing now and in the future for apartment companies.

“When we asked interviewees if their organizations were actively working on changing their property staffing model, the largest share (40 percent) said no,” said Beveridge, citing the feedback he received in 2021. Thirty-percent said they were and 30 percent said they are “somewhat” doing so.

“The reasons that they gave were either pragmatic or ideological,” Beveridge said. “Three of the eight ‘no’ votes were suspicious of headcount reduction as a goal, feeling that properties seldom succeed in delivering service in the long run with fewer people. 

“Others saw roadblocks, such as not having enough properties in the same markets, or not having made enough progress on analytics to have adequate control over a centralized operating environment.”

Beveridge said one expressed the refreshingly frank view that removing headcount from a budget is risky, “as it’s much harder to add the resource back in if the new arrangement doesn’t work out.”

Rethinking the Assistant Property Manager Role

The six companies in the process of changing their models represented a variety of approaches, according to the report. Half were centralizing sales operations through a combination of self-guided tours, AI leasing agents and access control technology. Most were at some stage of centralizing back-office functions, intending ultimately to rethink the assistant property manager role. 

When asked what was driving the change, “Some felt that it would give them a competitive edge in winning more business in markets where they could offer a centralized staffing model,” he said.

“Most viewed the combination of greater efficiency and improved customer experience as the levers that would ultimately improve NOI. One large operator added that COVID-19 had taught them that they no longer need the same staffing models they always had.”

Offloading Administrative Functions

Beveridge said that some companies were exploring centralized back-office functions, while others were exploring technology that could help regionalize maintenance. One operator was keen to parlay some of its single-family processes into its multifamily properties.

Several cited staff shortages as a driver for further exploration in 2022. While confidentiality precludes sharing information about individual companies’ plans, there is a striking pattern to the three groups of respondents above, he said.

“Nearly all companies that answered ‘yes’ both own and operate large portfolios,” Beveridge said. “The majority of those responding ‘no’ were smaller portfolios and nearly all owner-operators. Those responding neither yes nor no were predominantly fee managers.”

TriCap Residential, which has 19 properties (soon to be 22) totaling approximately 3,500 units over seven states. It went through a reorganization in November to address workload and potential burnout and created several new positions that were designed, for example, to take some of the administrative load off of our maintenance technicians.

These new “support” roles handle work-order and turn scheduling, capital expenditures and preventive maintenance. 

“By taking them from the technicians, it allows the techs to focus more on their work orders and taking care of the customer,” Jessica Eberbach, CAM, ARM, Vice President of People and Culture, Tri Cap Residential, said.

Staffing Models Are Changing, but Not Everywhere

The confluence of AI, IoT, self-show and the virtualization of administrative processes, coupled with the general consumer preference for self-serve experiences, has long suggested a change to the conventional operating model, Beveridge said.

“The pandemic changed attitudes to self-show, and some of the public REITs have been vocal in describing how their technology has enabled them to reduce property teams.”

Beveridge said that he originally believed that these types of changes at public companies (REITs) follow suit in much of the industry.

“If some public companies are enjoying the financial benefits of a more efficient operating model, then the rest of the industry will follow, or so the logic went,” he said. 

But 40% of companies interviewed are not currently working on trying to change their operating model. To summarize the reasons stopping them:

• [For fee managers] “The bill-back model makes it hard to share resources between properties.”
• “People too central to our value prop.”
• “We are not yet sure enough about the time savings that the technologies promise.”
• “We don’t have enough properties in the same sub-markets.”
• “Lease-ups are central to our business model; any change is risky unless we are 100% convinced it won’t slow us down.”
• Don’t yet have the right analytics to support centralized control.”