Staff Training

Lesson from The Viridian Way

By Mike Sederholm on Aug 15, 2019 in People, Technology

Could the most important component of technology be the instructions?

It’s arguable that a complex piece of software cannot live up to its potential without well-trained users, no matter how well it is designed.

Fortunately, Yardi has taken user training beyond a manual with Yardi eLearning, a dedicated learning management system just for Yardi users. Property management companies such as Viridian Management have found Yardi eLearning indispensable considering the benefits it offers vs. traditional training methods.

Getting Started with Yardi eLearning

Yardi eLearning arrived just in time for Viridian. Late in 2018, their leadership team was developing a training curriculum for staff to use Yardi Voyager, the property management, accounting and affordable housing compliance software used by Viridian. They soon found it was very difficult to craft training content for their users, even with all of the support documentation available for Yardi software.

“We were in a bottleneck because there is so much to cover. As we inventoried the skills we wanted our staff to master, we found it would take hours and hours of training to get users where we wanted them to be. When we saw the courses included with Yardi eLearning, we discovered that about 70% of everything we wanted to teach was already available and ready to use,” says Patrick Patterson, president of Viridian.

Training on Affordable Housing

Viridian manages 120 properties with more than 4,000 affordable units spread throughout Oregon, Washington and Idaho. They specialize in developing and managing tax credit properties, and have experience with USDA Rural Development, HOME, HUD Multifamily Housing, as well as state and local sources of funds.

Training for each of those housing programs is facilitated by specific learning tracks in Yardi eLearning. Viridian can simply assign staff to those learning tracks based on the properties they work with. A prime example is fair housing, which is a component of every affordable housing program. Staff training on fair housing is an important part of program compliance.

“Each year we are required to provide documentation showing that staff have completed fair housing training. In the past, we’d spend a lot of time reconciling data from various spreadsheets. With Yardi eLearning, we were able to run the report in a matter of minutes.

During a state safety review, we were able to provide our training syllabus and specific materials.  The reviewer  said it was the most detailed packet of information he’d ever seen during this type of review,” says Patterson.

Accommodating Growth with Training

Viridian is on pace to grow more than 27% in 2019 alone, in terms of units. With that growth comes onboarding new employees and new skills to learn. Training is central to those efforts.

“The problem with traditional training methods is that once the trainer leaves, a lot of the knowledge leaves with them. Simply put, a lot of training doesn’t stick the first time a user receives it,” says Patterson. That scenario caused Viridian staff to often require follow-up training sessions, which of course came with additional travel expenses and long trips on the road to reteach company procedures.

The Benefits of Learning Management

In addition to much fewer road trips for trainers, consistency is another big benefit that Viridian gets with Yardi eLearning. Patterson says the difference is night and day compared with former training processes.

“In-person training varies quite a bit. Not only is it dependent on individual teaching style, but there are also variables such as training materials, interpretations of policies, the potential for important steps to be skipped – the list goes on and on. Yardi eLearning takes all of those variables out of our training program.”

Viridian has also instilled greater self-sufficiency in its staff with Yardi eLearning. “Instead of immediately calling for help, users can search in eLearning for a particular function and quickly find courses on the topic they are looking to master. And if an employee can’t find the right course on their own, it’s easy for a trainer to get online with them and point them to the right resource. That’s much more efficient than sending a trainer to our properties over and over,” says Patterson.

Going Beyond Training

Staff training is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Viridian’s use of Yardi eLearning. Company announcements, conference registrations, employee surveys, digital signatures and many other functions are all centralized within their Yardi eLearning employee university.

“It feels like Yardi eLearning has always been here. It’s integrated into our company culture, even though it is a relatively new solution for us. Our stats show we have more than 40,000 pages viewed, more than a thousand courses completed, and a huge amount of hours spent learning in just a few months,” says Patterson.

Advice for Yardi Users

Patterson offers advice to property managers new to Yardi software, or considering purchasing the software. “Having Yardi eLearning makes it much easier. I’ve used Yardi software for nearly eight years, and like any other piece of technology, there have been challenges. I’ve found Yardi eLearning vital to solving those types of issues. If you are already invested in Yardi, it would be a mistake not to use eLearning.”

Learn More

Discover more about Yardi eLearning by visiting Yardi.com/elearning. Once there you can sign up for an online demonstration, download a brochure, read other client testimonials and more. Call 800.866.1144 for more information.