Article

Why do property managers struggle with work-life balance?

November 23, 2022

Community Association Managers are one of the pillars of the residential market. Many property managers struggle with having a good work life balance. 

Emergency situations

Emergency calls can come at any time in the property management sector, may be a power outage, a fire alarm, elevator problems, intruders, water leaks and flooding, HVAC problems, etc. 

These kinds of emergencies require immediate attention and proper communication. Most community association managers jump right in to solve the issues.

Managers have difficulty communicating emergency issues. They may receive a call in the middle of the night stating that the main water line has a leak and no water will be available for the properties. To communicate this matter with all the residents is not easy. 

In spite of the fact that managers may manage to send email notices, most residents will not be able to check their emails until it’s too late. This creates a communication gap and leads to various complaints and queries the next day. 

By providing a good work-life balance and being a pioneer in communication with neighbors, STAN wants to empower community association managers.

Our textbot helps property managers send texts to all residents, within seconds, from anywhere, anytime from their phone. 

Residents use STAN to get information about their HOA, financials, amenities, rules, and more!

Accessing important information and clearing their doubts does not require them to contact their community association managers. Every manager can now focus on their budget, repairs, and renovations in a timely manner.

Through STAN, property managers are able to provide real-time communications to their residents 24/7.

Feel the power of AI 
in your community.

Lack of support

While community association managers receive support from their companies, they are very independent on their work. Most community managers do all the work themselves, when it comes to communicating with residents, doing site inspections, scheduling renovations, and balancing budgets. 

It’s within the management company’s best interest to keep expenses low- to ensure that fees remain low and the budget doesn’t go into a deficit. This could mean getting the most out of your manager, which can burn them out relatively quickly. 

To keep their expenses low, management companies maintain a minimal workforce.

The cost of hiring an additional staff member in a support role such as a property administrator will affect the budget, especially if it's a temporary position. In this case, STAN assists HOAs by avoiding hiring additional support for their manager.

Managers need to find relief wherever they can. Finding ways to defer tasks to somebody else is a great way to save time.

While it’s usually not in the budget to hire someone new to fill a role- technology takes the place in streamlining communications. In fact, 32% of managers say that adapting technology made their job easier and ultimately improved job satisfaction.[1]

STAN is an example of a tool that helps streamline communication for managers by acting as an auto responder to homeowner questions. STAN can reduce almost HALF of your workload. Instead of wasting time responding to tedious emails- STAN can do it for you.

Balancing budgets is the biggest challenge for associations. Analyzing every expense and finding a way to get the most bang for your buck matters to community management companies. 

However, this overwork usually leads to burnout. Managers rarely have any support because companies are focused on the bottom line.

Companies don’t realize that a lot of processes from managers can be streamlined using technology. In fact, almost half of their time is spent doing busywork.

Labor Shortage

As a result of the industry's manual processes and outdated technologies, young people are not interested in working in it.

Instead of hiring an assistant/administrator to handle smaller tasks, managers usually bear the burden themselves. Working extra hours to make sure messages are responded to, payments are processed, and work orders are created to ensure the community stays afloat.

Many questions and concerns a property manager faces are repetitive and take up a great deal of their time. As well as meeting residents, answering phone calls, and a lot of time wasted on repetitive tasks.

Almost half of their time is spent doing busywork

There is always a lot of busywork involved in association management. The association management employees, however, spend too much time on manual tasks that can be automated. 

According to the survey, employees spend nearly half (47%) of their time doing busywork. Using technology, businesses could optimize or streamline 19 hours per week of tasks[2].

To find out which tasks association management employees thought could benefit the most from automation, we asked them to rank key workflows. 

Here are the top 3[3]:

  1. Creating work orders
  2. Analyzing reports
  3. Tracking dues and assessment payments

Besides handling account related questions questions, STAN provides real-time account information to residents 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Information about account balances, payments, and property management is synced with the portal for community management. STAN can respond to these inquiries instead of manually responding.

By
Kapilan Navaratnam

Kapilan Nava is a digital marketing specialist who is apart of the STAN team. STAN improves the lives of property managers by using artificial intelligence to improve the resident experience through communication.

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