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Streamline employee responsibilities
Consolidate the tasks that require logging into several systems, re-keying the same data, or reconciling reports by hand. Fewer places to look means fewer things to fall behind on.
Does it ever feel like you’re losing employees left and right? It’s because you are. Multifamily employee turnover runs at a whopping 33%, which is 50% higher than the national average of 22%. The time and energy that went into training a new employee, just to lose them months later, is often the invisible cost keeping your revenue from climbing. This piece covers what that cost really is, why people leave, and what the best firms are doing about it.
Turnover in multifamily property operations is a whopping 33%. That is 50% higher than the national average of 22%. Put differently, roughly one in three people on a property team will not be there a year from now. Every departure restarts recruiting, onboarding, and the slow climb back to full productivity.
It can be tempting to focus all of your attention on the easily measurable areas of your business, such as basic ROI. This is a mistake. ROI shows up on a statement. Turnover shows up as a slightly higher payroll line, a slower leasing month, and a maintenance backlog nobody can quite explain.
ROE, or Return on Effort, is just as important as ROI, because it does impact your bottom line. Effort is the hours a manager spends interviewing, the weeks a regional spends covering an empty desk, and the training a new hire absorbs before they can work unsupervised. When that person leaves, the effort leaves with them and the return never arrives.
You might not have the time to analyze the tangible cost of this problem, but the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) does. SHRM has reported that it costs a company an average of 6 to 9 months of an employee’s salary to replace him or her. For an employee making $60,000 per year, that comes out to $30,000 to $45,000.
That range is not a single invoice. It accumulates across several stages, each of which consumes money, management attention, or both.
A single departure is manageable. A 33% rate across a portfolio is a rolling cost that recurs every year at every property. Multiply the SHRM estimate by the number of positions that turn over annually and the total rivals line items owners scrutinize closely. The difference is that this one is rarely tracked as a single figure. Teams that want to see it should treat it the way they treat any other operating expense, with consistent measurement across properties. That is easier when property management reporting already rolls up the same staffing and performance data for every site.
The multifamily investment industry is tough. It’s challenging, though rewarding. And while some people can stick it through, others fall behind, become disengaged, and eventually leave. That sequence is the mechanism behind most multifamily employee turnover, and each step in it is visible before the resignation arrives.
Onsite roles carry a wide span of responsibilities: leasing, resident service, collections, maintenance coordination, reporting, and compliance. When the volume of manual work exceeds the hours available, people fall behind. Falling behind is rarely about ability. It is about the amount of monotonous, repetitive work stacked on top of the job they were hired to do.
Someone who is perpetually behind stops feeling effective, and effectiveness is what makes a hard job rewarding. Disengagement follows. In a tight labor market, a disengaged employee has options, which is why the industry labor shortage and multifamily employee turnover feed each other. The same newsletter that ran this piece pointed to reports of some management companies seeing 70% of their best employees leaving at the end of the year during the Great Resignation.
Raises may help, but they will not last. It may come as a surprise, but employees’ primary motivation isn’t money. A raise does not remove the work that made the job unmanageable in the first place. It just pays someone slightly more to stay in the same situation until the next offer arrives.
A better employee experience is needed, but it’s not going to come in the form of more PTO. The best multifamily investment firms are turning to technology solutions that can streamline employee responsibilities, automate monotonous tasks, and lift the burden from their shoulders. The goal is a team that can be as productive and happy as possible.
The logic follows directly from why people leave. If falling behind drives disengagement, then removing the work that causes people to fall behind is the intervention. Technology does that in three ways.
Consolidate the tasks that require logging into several systems, re-keying the same data, or reconciling reports by hand. Fewer places to look means fewer things to fall behind on.
Recurring reports, data pulls, and status updates are the definition of monotonous. Automating them returns hours to the week and removes the work people most resent doing.
With repetitive work off their plate, onsite staff spend their time on residents, leasing, and problem-solving. That is the rewarding part of the job, and it is what keeps people engaged.
Automation of reporting and data work is a practical starting point because it touches every role on the property. Our overview of AI and automation for multifamily operations covers the kinds of repetitive tasks that can be taken off a team’s plate first. Rolling out new tools is its own change-management project, and this roadmap for enterprise software implementation lays out how to do it without adding to the burden you are trying to remove.
Technology removes the structural cause. A handful of practices, each of which the industry has written about extensively, reinforce it. None of them costs much, and all of them address the fact that money is not the primary motivator.
The two are connected. Residents build relationships with the people in the office and the maintenance shop. When those people keep changing, service quality dips and renewals follow. Reducing multifamily employee turnover is therefore one of the quieter levers behind resident retention, and the same operating data that reveals one usually reveals the other.
Multifamily employee turnover sits at 33%, well above the 22% national average, because the work is tough and demanding. When the volume of manual, monotonous tasks exceeds the hours available, people fall behind, become disengaged, and eventually leave. A tight labor market makes it easy for a disengaged employee to move on.
Start by removing the burden rather than adding perks. The best multifamily investment firms use technology to streamline responsibilities and automate monotonous tasks, so onsite staff can be productive and happy. Reinforce that with recognition, career development support, and consistent tracking of turnover by property, since raises alone do not last and money is not the primary motivator.
According to the Society for Human Resource Management, replacing an employee costs an average of 6 to 9 months of that person’s salary. For someone earning $60,000 per year, that is $30,000 to $45,000. The cost includes recruiting, vacancy, onboarding, lost productivity, and the institutional knowledge that leaves with the person.
Return on Effort is the payoff from the time and energy invested in people, as opposed to the capital tracked by ROI. Training a new hire and then losing them months later wipes out that return. Multifamily employee turnover is therefore a direct drag on ROE and, through it, on the bottom line.
Automated, standardized reporting across every property removes the repetitive data work that wears onsite teams down, and gives you the numbers to see turnover before it costs you.
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