Part 2: Reimagining How Standardization is Implemented in Property Management Companies

The last time we were together on The Property Management Show, you learned why having standardized systems and processes is so important to your property management company. This week, we’re digging a little deeper into that: we’re talking about how to implement standardized systems and what to do first.

This can really be transformative for your property management business, and we’re joined by Dave Gorham, who makes this a living and breathing part of the way he does business at Realty Solutions.

How to Implement Standardized Systems in Property Management:

Job Descriptions and Organizational Flow

In Part 1, we discussed the importance of standardizing your processes and what kind of obstacles and benefits you can expect when you use them in your property management company.

Now, let’s take a look at the process behind standardized processes: how do you implement standardized systems?

Realty Solutions is a New Jersey-based property management company that is successful now because they embraced a sense of organization. Dave was an early adopter of job descriptions and putting together an organizational flow.

You have your own assumption or expectation about what each person on your team does. It’s important that those team members have the same expectations and assumptions. Unless you have something written down, you cannot talk about why you may be out of sync.

Don’t keep your job description in your head. Write it down.

If you’re the president of the management company, you have some expectations about what your bookkeeper should do. But, your bookkeeper might have different ideas about what her job is and what your job is. That’s why you have to write down every job description. It allows everyone to know your true responsibilities and the responsibilities of others.

Titles and jobs have different meanings from industry to industry and even from company to company. At Fourandhalf, our job description for an account manager is very different from what an account manager does at a bank or a cable company.

Each business defines it for themselves.

If you don’t have each role defined, everyone will have different expectations. So your first step in getting an organizational flow in place and systems standardized is to define every role in your property management company.

Contracts and Agreements Lead to Accountability

If you don’t spell out what you’re doing, it’s easy to get out of scope.

Identify your roles and relationships. You can customize things as needed, but make sure it’s written down for everyone to see and understand. You wouldn’t take on a property management client without a contract. Make sure your employees have a job description – or a contract – as well. That’s a precursor to a compensation package, and from there you can move to KPIs and improvement plans.

Agreements need to be in place as well. They can be put into place by two people. Those agreements have to be described in writing. They also have to have consequences which are good or bad, and there has to be a way to clean up the agreement if it stops working.

Things do not happen magically. You need a collective mindset that agrees to this, and it has to come from a leader within the company who sets up guard rails or boundaries and then allows every employee to use their creative and critical thinking to follow the processes and commit to the agreements.

Developing an Organizational Flow (Chart)

How should you implement standardized systems like organizational charts or flows? At Realty Solutions,