4 Reasons You’re Not Succeeding as a Community Manager

A community association manager juggles many responsibilities that work toward the common goal of operating a community that is compliant and enhances resident’s property values.  However, many managers fall short of fulfilling this goal.  This may be due to lack of communication with residents, ineffective processes, resistance to change, or job stress. In this blog post, we emphasize on tips community managers can implement to better optimize processes to overcome these obstacles.  

1) You’re not communicating with residents

If you’ve not informed residents of the construction work blocking access to their street or of a rule in the governing documents that a resident violated, then your communications plan needs to be amended.  Not communicating about important ongoings in the community can result in an abundance of incoming calls and emails from residents.  Furthermore, this can lead to internal chaos and wasted time.

Positioning for better success:

Communication at the right time with the most effective methods builds a resident’s trust in your team.  Start out by creating a communications plan.  This plan should emphasize what you will convey to residents, when, how frequent, and who is responsible for communicating.  With all the hard work you’re putting into your plan, don’t forget to determine how you will measure success. Check out these ten tips to succeed at your community communications.          

2) You’re implementing antiquated processes

Are you using outdated processes to manage your communities that create more work than it reduces?  If yes, then it’s important to replace those internal processes and systems with more efficient counterparts.  If your residents are constantly calling in to ask repetitive questions or your staff is rummaging through paperwork to find a completed work order from last quarter, that takes out time in your day that could otherwise be utilized to work on projects that are more critical in nature.

Positioning for better success:

The best way to implement modern processes and technology is to keep yourself updated on industry trends and software.  Trade association websites such as Community Association Institute, ECHO-CA.org, and many others deliver a great variety of industry insight.  You will find topics pertaining to insurance, legal, ethics, maintenance, resident engagement, vendor management, amenities, and more. Then, identify any bottlenecks in your current processes and gradually work to streamline them better.  To accommodate your new modern processes, look for technology systems that work FOR your process – not create extra work. Specifically, a software system that can scale to your needs, releases new features regularly, offers flexibility, customization, security, and provides proactive customer support, will help you to achieve your goals.

3) Low resident satisfaction

Residents may not be involved in their community (or have feelings of apathy), and one of the reasons may be that their expectations are not met.  That being said, it’s not feasible to meet each resident’s expectations within the community’s budget and operational constraints.  However, building awareness and consideration for them will make a big difference.  Then, you can implement the most desired and cost-effective ideas.  Adapting to change effectively – whether it is new internal processes that benefit residents or new amenities or cost-cutting where possible – is an opportunity to build a better sense of community, increase property values, and maintain a competitive advantage.   

Positioning for better success:

The key to staying ahead in the midst of changing expectations is knowing your community.  Keep yourself abreast of new trends in residential living, send a survey to your residents to better understand their needs, and identify ways to increase resident retention and satisfaction without breaking the bank.  When residents search for a new home or condominium unit, they are also looking for an enriching experience that gives them a sense of community.  Residents should have access to a central location for all important community information. Be sure to stay in touch with them on a regular basis.  Investing in amenities that your community wants is another great way to adapt to resident needs. As per a recent study by Robert Charles Lesser & Co, communities immersed with greenery and that provided walking/jogging/running tracks, were the most preferred.  Additionally, experts suggest that personalizing amenities to the heartbeat of the community appeal most to prospective buyers.

4) Job burnout

As a community association manager, you are constantly on your toes and wearing a lot of hats.  Understandably, not every hat you wear will bring excitement as you work through your day. Handling resident complaints about the excessive noise next door or reconciling bank statements may just fall into the category of redundant and unexciting, but a necessity of your job.  The high demands of the job or engaging in repetitive actions may result in burnout and feeling stressed.

Positioning for better success

Before you begin your day sending emails, take a good five or ten minutes to organize your day.  What pending tasks do you need to complete? What else do you hope to accomplish today? Creating a list will help you to understand what you’ll expect to do today.  Are many of the tasks you perform redundant? If your answer is a yes, then take some time during the day to identify the areas that are consuming most of your time. It’s completely okay to take a bit of time during your day to identify the sluggish aspects of a process because it will reap much more benefits in the future when you come up with a more efficient process.

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About Pilera

Pilera Software is the premier community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations.  May we help your community achieve these success stories?  Book a demo to see how Pilera’s community management suite can help your company.