Attracting top talent and retaining valuable employees is a top priority for many organizations, including those in the affordable housing industry. As economic systems evolve during the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, affordable housing providers have an opportunity to rethink what to expect from their onsite workers. Many are finding that this is a great time to change their strategy and improve the services they offer to prospects and residents. Ready for a look at what the makeup of your onsite staff and compliance team could be? Here are 5 ideas to consider: 1. Prioritize Customer Service Safe and healthy communities start with your onsite team placing the highest priority on resident services. Hire onsite workers for their property management skills and leave the complexity of compliance to a dedicated team of experts. And don’t neglect your investment in technology, today’s workforce expects the right set of tools to do the job. “Property management is a hard job, and affordable housing compliance makes things even more complicated. The next generation of property managers can only be comfortable with a certain level of technology in place to help them be successful. The old ways of paperwork, phone calls and in-person meetings just aren’t an option moving forward,” says Anna DiSabato, vice president of Dunlap and Magee in Phoenix, Arizona. 2. Outsource Compliance Work Speaking of compliance experts, Yardi RightSource offers scalable services that fit your specific needs. Affordable housing providers that use Yardi Voyager can securely send data to RightSource and get: Fast file reviews and audits with guaranteed response timesFull-service certifications and recertificationsAutomated forms management for programs across the country Dunlap and Magee is in its final stages of implementing Yardi RightSource and is already seeing measurable results. With RightSource, they see file audits complete within 24 hours and can have fully approved, move-in ready tenants usually within five days of initial contact. 3. Solve Compliance Challenges Is there a particular affordable housing compliance challenge that your organization can’t seem to fully resolve? Or, is there a new initiative or affordable housing program your team is taking on? Yardi RightSource can help with consulting and training services built on decades of combined affordable housing experience. 4. Boost Institutional Knowledge People want to work for an employer that can make them more valuable, and offering top-notch training is a great way to make it happen. By elevating employee knowledge, affordable housing professionals not only become more knowledgeable, and promotable but also are able to demand higher wages. While that may sound like a cost to employers, you can also look at it as a great way to attract top talent and inspire less experienced team members to grow. Create an employee university with Yardi Aspire, Yardi’s comprehensive learning management platform. Aspire includes customizable online coursework that covers every major real estate management industry, including affordable housing. With Aspire you can assign tracks of courses, view learning metrics, make company announcements and more. 5. Get More from Remote Workers Enduring the challenges of COVID-19 taught us that it’s possible, and not too much of a challenge, to keep business processes moving even as workers transitioned to remote workspaces. Developing technologies for affordable housing are helping to make remote workers and contactless service delivery more effective. Yardi mobile solutions streamline payment processing, procurement, compliance workflows, resident communication and more. RentCafe Affordable Housing has changed traditionally paper-based affordable housing applications into online forms that can be completed and worked on 24/7 from most handheld devices and personal computers. Affordable housing applicants use RentCafe to search for a unit, submit documentation of eligibility, work with case workers to qualify and complete the leasing process without coming in for multiple in-person meetings in an office space. Yardi Procure to Pay and Payment Processing are perfect solutions for accounting departments that need remote access. Procure to Pay enables online shopping for property supplies with fast and...

Due to the staffing shortage in senior living, providers must find new ways to recruit and retain staff. The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the way caregivers look at, pursue and stay committed to employment opportunities.   And the staffing shortage is causing Yardi client Life Care Services (LCS) to get creative. They’re developing effective strategies to attract and incentivize staff members across their communities. LCS’ new staffing strategies LCS manages and supports senior living communities across the nation. Currently serving 140-plus communities, having staff members to meet the needs of their seniors — over 35,000 to be exact — is critical. The 2021 staffing shortage has made this especially difficult. But LCS is rising up to the challenge. Relayed by LeadingAge, Senior Vice President Jill Sorenson explains how LCS is attracting new employees by applying the same principles used to bring in new residents. “When we’re marketing to a prospective resident who’s looking at several different retirement communities, we want to find out what’s important to them,” says Jill Sorenson. “Once we find out, we focus on how our community will address that concern.” Sorenson explains how this sparked inspiration for a new recruitment strategy, one to help LCS through the ongoing staffing shortage. Building a recruitment task force within the 13 communities she oversees, Sorenson’s team got to work. Their new tactics include:   Showcasing how specific communities will meet an employee’s needs and desiresEnsuring a rapid response time with incoming inquiries and applicantsMaintaining a maximum five-minute waiting time for interviewees upon arrivalPreparing a group of back up interviewers, in the event the main interviewer is unavailableMaintaining excellent communication with new hires  Creating a welcoming and robust orientation process Due to their success, these practices have been compiled into a recruitment toolkit, which is now in use across all LCS sites.   And they’re not stopping there. LCS is designating September as their “national recruiting month” complete with a calendar of events to discuss staffing strategies. This includes a “Tuesday tips call” that brings together executive directors, health care administrations, HR directors and recruiters to share fresh ideas. It’s inspiring to see how LCS is staying committed to their residents — working hard to navigate the staffing shortage by implementing new recruitment standards. We hope they inspire others across the industry to push forward, get creative and band together through this unprecedented time.   Read more about Life Care Services’ recruitment efforts during the staffing shortage. To discover how Yardi supports clients like LCS with integrated senior living management software, don’t hesitate to get in...

Working from home, remote work, telecommuting: whatever you call it, it’s a challenge for property managers across the nation. If you’re lucky enough to be hiring in during the pandemic, you’re also facing the challenge of onboarding in a remote work environment. It’s not easy. With the right tools, however, you can onboard new team members with ease and efficacy. Check out these recommendations from industry experts for remote onboarding, simplified. Just when you thought property management couldn’t get any harder… Property management is a notoriously tough business. The National Apartment Association reports an average turnover rate of 33% in 2019. The highest rates are for leasing and maintenance, at 31.9% and 39.2% respectively. With each vacant position comes the time and money spent on marketing, hiring and training. The time it takes to train a new employee varies. It’s safe to say, though, that hours spent training a revolving door of new hires isn’t an ideal use of your team’s time. When translated to dollars, it costs between $5,505.80 and $9,444.47 per turnover to replace an entry-level employee. High turnover is costly, time consuming and counterproductive. Then a pandemic arrives that complicates everything for everyone everywhere. Property managers who are lucky enough to hire must now do so without interviewing or training applicants in person.  Teams attempt to build office culture and support with the same screens used for work and productivity. A career path that deters 33% of employees each year now faces additional challenges. Fortunately, robust e-learning software is here to help. What methods can help property managers overcome these challenges? Begin with the cloud. Cloud computing empowers property owners to implement e-learning and remotely train new hires. The system facilitates real-time collaboration between participants on documents and projects. Additionally, software that operates on integrated and centralized cloud storage is advantageous to a piecemeal assemblage of programs. Patricia Pomies is chief delivery officer at Globant, an innovator in workplace efficiencies. The cloud is a powerful tool because it provides 24/7 access to learning content. Remote, easy access is key for distance learning. “Their approach should be focused on promoting a culture of continuous learning, and training programs should live in one central, digital location for employees to access easily,” says Pomies. “It’s also best to give employees access to different learning experiences and training based on their time, interests, level and expertise—whether they are a remote employee or not.” Create online trainings that are branded and customizable. Consider a remote learning platform that enables branding and customization. Since your new hires won’t go into a physical office each day, it is essential to use branding to instill a sense of place and company culture. Customization ensures that your messaging within the e-learning platform is consistent with corporate messaging. Of equal importance, you will be able to customize learning modules based on the new hire’s role within the organization. This ensures that new hires can prioritize and specialize as needed. Customized content also encourages the most engagement from participants. Jim E. Guilkey, author and doctorate in instructional design and learning strategy, suggests that engagement improves problem-solving skills. In an interview with Society for Human Resource Management, Guilkey encourages clients to explore engaging options such as virtual collaboration rooms and role playing. “Instead of simply lecturing, put the impetus for learning on the learners,” he says. He recommends putting students in a virtual collaboration room to evaluate real and hypothetical situations pertinent to their roles. Together, they can analyze, troubleshoot and propose solutions and improvements. Rather than relying on industry standard, pre-set modules, customized courses provide hyper-local learning opportunities. Presenting scenarios specific to the brand, property or region create a stronger sense of place and culture for remote learners. Check for comprehension before assessments and analyze assessment data for additional learning opportunities. When teaching in person, an instructor can use body language to gauge whether content is “sinking in”...

Today, 10,000 Baby Boomers will reach age 65. As the largest generation in history continues to age, the demands on the senior living industry will increase exponentially. Staffing for this kind of growth is no easy task. In fact, a recent poll showed nearly 80% of senior living CFOs say recruiting and retention is their number one concern as they look toward the future. The challenge, however, is not insurmountable. Armed with the following strategies, finding standout staff is easier than you think. Be proactive The recruiting process often doesn’t begin until a staff member vacates a position. But if you’re looking to add to your workforce overall, simply playing catch-up won’t get you very far. Instead, take inventory of all the roles your company hopes to fill or add over the course of the next year, then work with decision makers and hiring teams to plot out short term goals for your company’s growth. Shifting from a reactive strategy to a proactive one allows for more steady, scalable staffing. Inform unlikely prospects While sixty percent of senior living staff work in resident care, the other forty percent of jobs are comprised of maintenance, administrative, operations, management and food service roles. Communicating the breadth of opportunities is critical to ensure your organization isn’t overlooked by potential job seekers. Consider partnering with vocational schools and colleges to spread the word, get students excited and tap into a new pool of talent while highlighting the range of roles available within your community. Offer unique benefits A little creativity can go a long way when it comes to setting your company apart. Whether it comes in the form of onsite amenities (think company gym and break room snacks), raffles and giveaways, free education, or extra vacation days, fringe benefits make a great recruitment tool and serve as a differentiator between you and the competition. Find the right fit, right from the start In an industry where quality of care is paramount, filling an open position is not plug and play. Take time to suss out how potential employees will fit into your company’s organization—both from a cultural and interpersonal perspective. Going so far as to determine which clients will fall under a new employee’s care will allow hiring managers to more precisely match a prospect’s personality and skill set to that of the patients they’ll be caring for. A better the fit from the get-go lends itself to happier staff members and patients. Utilize existing resources With staffing a known concern in the senior living sector, there’s no shortage of tools available to help ease the pain of recruiting. Industry leader Argentum recently launched Senior Living Works, a website aimed at solving recruiting and retention challenges. Similarly, NCAL, the National Center for Assisted Living, offers hiring materials which outline the most important attributes to look for when seeking new senior living...