Ask the Expert: Building and sustaining effective teams to retain multifamily employees

Yolanda Muchnik:
Welcome home, multifamily pros, to the Resident Experience Podcast, episode 28, where we're asking an onsite property expert to share their insights on the latest industry happenings. Today's Ask the Expert is with Baylee Brown, onsite manager at Idaho Rembrandt Park Apartments for CBW Properties. Baylee's colleagues describe her as smart, creative, reliable, and efficient, and I'm excited to chat with her about how she builds an effective team, how she inspires them, and how she retains talent and ensures her community thrives.

I'm Yolanda Muchnik, your podcast host, and I'm chatting with Baylee Brown, onsite manager at Idaho Rembrandt Park Apartments for CBW Properties. Located in West Boise, Idaho, Rembrandt Park is an upscale community of 136 units. Today we're digging into how you can build effective teams to retain talent on site.

So Baylee, welcome to the show.

Baylee Brown:
Thank you.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Let's start off this conversation by having you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself. How did you get into property management, how long have you been in the industry and how long have you been at Rembrandt Park?

Baylee Brown:
For sure. So Rembrandt Park is kind of my first foray into property management and the industry as a whole. I've been here for about two years. I'll hit my two-year anniversary on the 29th of June, and that will actually make me the longest sitting manager at Rembrandt Park since CBW Properties took over the property. That was about seven years ago. So it's a pretty big feat, I'm pretty proud of it.

Funnily enough, I got into property management, I was working as a CNA couple years ago and trying to figure out where to live. My husband and I were getting ready to get married, and so we were looking for an apartment. And my dad actually went to high school with my current boss, and so we knew she did property management, so we asked her to see if she had any vacancies and she didn't, but she's like, "Hey, if you're interested in a job, I think you'd be really great for it. I'd love to have you interview." And so I did, and that's how I got here. And they took a chance on somebody who had never done anything with the industry, I hadn't even lived in an apartment until I got this job. So it's been a huge learning curve, but it's been a blast.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Awesome. How very serendipitous.

Baylee Brown:
I know, right?

Yolanda Muchnik:
Definitely worked in your favor.

Baylee Brown:
Yeah.

Yolanda Muchnik:
So I'd like to hear a little bit more about your day-to-day, what's your favorite part about being an onsite manager, what's your least favorite aspect of the role? Tell me all about it.

Baylee Brown:
Yeah. So my day-to-day can vary pretty drastically depending on the day. I do have a dead hour between 9:00 AM and 10:00 AM, that's where I get the opportunity to walk the property, pick up trash, clean the clubhouse, and that's also where I listen to all of my voicemails, check text messages, emails, kind of get everything ready for the day. I also take the time to make a written list of everything that I have going on that day. It just really helps me organize my priorities and I get just a big sense of satisfaction crossing everything off that list. And depending on what time of the month it is, that is what's going to drive my daily activity. I could be drafting a bunch of leases, doing lease renewals, tours, scheduling turns, so when someone moves out, we call it a turn, to get that ready for the next tenant.

But it's just myself and my service tech, so we're always kind of just running around, putting out little fires here, doing little projects here. So it's a lot of variety. I think my favorite thing being the onsite manager is I like being able to help people find their home and not just their place to live. We have had a lot of people that come from homelessness or people who have never rented, maybe people who got caught up in the wrong crowd several years ago and are just looking to start out. So being able to help them through the process, give them that chance and see them succeed is super edifying for me. And I think maybe my least favorite is probably equal to two of them, rent increases, I hate giving rent increases because you immediately become the bad guy, and then difficult tenants can be a negative factor of the job.

Landlords aren't a really well liked occupation, there's not very many people that I know of that can say, "Oh, I love the landlord." And it's really sad because most of my colleagues I think are really good people and you do have to be the bad guy sometimes, but as a whole, you're really just trying to help the tenants and make sure that the property is as good as you can make it. And there are some people that just will never be happy no matter what you do, but trying to help resolve any difficulties that those tenants may be experiencing is a challenge and can be really cool when they come into your office yelling and screaming and then they leave saying thank you. So yeah, that's definitely the difficulties there.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine. Definitely sounds like you do a lot.

Baylee Brown:
Yeah.

Yolanda Muchnik:
And based on what you just said, it sounds like one of the primary things you do is interacting with residents. And so that's what I want to touch on a little bit more here in my next question for you. I'm curious, what's your personal definition of two terms, the first being resident experience and the second being resident experience management, as an onsite property manager, what do these terms mean to you?

Baylee Brown:
Yeah, so I would say the definition of resident experience can really be encapsulated in the quality of the events that occur and the interactions that a tenant has with staff and community members during their period of tenancy. And so as the resident experience manager or the onsite manager, my job is to facilitate a good experience. I'm there to make sure that they have a smooth transition into the apartment, that they get settled. I'm there to make sure that they feel cared about, heard, taken care of if difficulties or issues arise. And then when they do eventually decide to move on, I'm there to help make sure that it's a smooth transition out.

So how you handle every experience with a tenant is very key. I mean, people are psychologically more likely to remember negative experiences than positive ones, and so it's really important to take advantage of every experience with a tenant or every interaction with a tenant to make it the best that it can be. And sometimes that means going the extra mile. Sometimes that's just lending a listening ear. I feel like sometimes I'm a part-time therapist with this job, and so people just really want to be heard and feel like they're taken care of, and I think that that's going to be the key to a positive resident experience.

Yolanda Muchnik:
That's so funny, I feel like we've had another guest describe themselves as an onsite therapist too. I think there's probably something to that.

Baylee Brown:
Oh, yeah.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Well, a colleague of yours actually once told us that you have superb work ethic. Okay, that's a blooper, we got to redo that. Okay. A colleague of yours once told us that you have superb work ethic, that you're reliable, efficient, and have amazing communication skills, and that you have impacted their life personally in so many ways. And I have to say that that is quite an endorsement.

Baylee Brown:
Yeah, I'll say, I'm like, that's really nice.

Yolanda Muchnik:
And so she mentions communication skills in particular, and so I want to start there with you. What role does effective communication play in team building onsite, and how do you ensure clear and open communication amongst your team members and colleagues?

Baylee Brown:
Definitely. Well, our team, it's me and my service tech, Doug, for the most part, so we're the ones that are interacting more often than not. We do have our general team that we interact with a lot, just not as much as Doug and I do. And I don't think you can really have an effective team without the effective communication. This can be a little difficult to achieve sometimes because everybody communicates a little bit differently. But generally, we see when things go awry, it's typically from a breakdown in communication. My service tech and I, when we first started working together, we kind of had a little bit of that rough patch because we were both brand new to the apartment industry, we were both trying to figure out a new job while also trying to deal with tenants and situations that were coming up that even my bosses had never dealt with before. The crazy stuff that happens in the industry.

And we sat down and we both kind of hashed it out and we recognized that we both have a different role to play in our team. It's my job to kind of field those calls, field the work orders for him, and I get all of the necessary information narrowed down into a list for him. It makes it easier for him to gather the tools that he needs, to come up with a plan of attack for whatever maintenance order he's working on. My goal is to make his life a little bit easier. And in turn, when he's working on an issue, it's his job to communicate back to me if the status of a work order changes, if we need to get somebody else involved, or just to let me know, "Hey, I went in, I did this and this and this, and I fixed it," and then I can communicate that back to the tenant.

So being able to work together and understand our individual roles has been something that has benefited us a lot. And I know for him, working off of lists and written communication works best for him because it organizes his thoughts a little bit better. I myself, I like to really explain my point, explain my thought, and be listened to before he asks questions, and that's something we've been able to communicate with one another. So it's really important as you are looking at team communication, that everybody understands their different role in a team and how they can best utilize their different strengths because everybody comes from a different background. We all have different experiences, think through things differently, so being a willing to actively listen to one another, but also being willing to contribute to that collective group intelligence is really important because that's where you're going to find the best solutions is when you can get everybody in involved together to come up with that best plan of attack.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Got it. And so in addition to communication, when you're looking for onsite talent, what is it that you're looking for? How do you identify and attract top players to your team?

Baylee Brown:
Totally. So I'm actually not a part of the hiring process. That's more Angie, who's our senior resident manager, or Lynette, who is our regional/part owner, they handle the hiring. But just going through the hiring process with myself and seeing what they went through while trying to fill some spots, I know that they really look for people who are adaptable, self-motivated, really willing to take the initiative to learn and figure things out, but also just people who are really dependable. We have a really small company, we have three properties here in Idaho, there's a couple in California. So here in Idaho, it's just nine employees and we're all really close, we work hard, we play hard. We're really supportive of one another. And this is the only company that I've ever really worked for where I feel like I'm more than just a number or an outgoing paycheck. It makes me feel really proud to work for CBW Properties.

And I think if you can get your team to have that personal stake, that's where you're going to find people that are going to be in it for the long haul, people who deliver the best experience or the best product for your company. Every meeting we start out with our mission statement to kind of drive that point home. And I'll just read it to you, it's really short and simple. It says, "In life, friends and family come first. It is our mission to create an opportunity and atmosphere for our team members to achieve their personal and professional goals, thereby helping us to achieve our goals. We envision a balance and harmony in our daily, family and professional lives. We work hard so that we can play hard, enjoy life and smile." And I think that those key values are really what attract those high quality employees because they want to be a part of that, want to be a part of something bigger than themselves.

Yolanda Muchnik:
That's so lovely. You talked about how much core values mean to attracting, retaining the right employees, and you told me a little bit about your job. It sounds like there's just so much that you do, and so I can't imagine that employee engagement isn't a huge focus for your team. Talk to me a little bit about employee engagement. Are there steps that you or your team members take or that you've seen others in property management take to motivate and engage their onsite teams? I can imagine there are good days and bad, as you told me earlier on, and so motivation engagement must be critical, right?

Baylee Brown:
Oh, totally. It's huge here. We meet frequently as a team. One month it'll be all the managers getting together. One month it'll be all the maintenance guys getting together. And then the next month, it's an all staff meeting. We also do every, I think it's quarterly now, we do just a meeting or an activity with the onsite manager and their corresponding service tech. So we've done a smash room or escape rooms to really build our bonds with each other, but we just come together and we talk about the issues that are happening at each property, how we can better be aware of what's going on, and that gives us the opportunity to set expectations. We also are able to attend lots of different conferences. We just got done with our 2023 Fair Housing Trade Show, and there was a motivational aspect to that because we had a motivational speaker and we all kind of came away from it with some ideas on how we can improve our property and be more effective.

But we also do fun things as well, just to keep morale up. Last summer, our boss took us on a jet boat tour of Hell's Canyon, for Christmas they rented out a suite for the Idaho Steelheads hockey game. We really take the time to engage with one another. And my bosses, Angie and Lynette, they always make it a point to say thank you and tell us when we've done a really good job, not just one-on-one, but they make it public for the company. Like, "Hey, so-and-so did this thing really well. We're super proud of them. That's super great. Give them kudos when you can."

And at other jobs, I felt like I only really got talked to when something needed fixing or I did something wrong. But they really go out of their way to make you feel like you're doing a good job, that your effort is recognized. And I think that that's something super important, is that you are recognizing all of the good that your employees do, so they feel appreciated. When they feel appreciated and taken care of, they're going to stick around longer, you're going to see them staying later to get stuff done or going that extra mile for tenants, and that's going to contribute to just the overall culture of your company.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Excellent. Makes a lot of sense. And my next question's a little bit of an offshoot to that, because you talked about how employee engagement is so critical to employee satisfaction and them sticking around, but the fact is that employee retention has been a challenge across industries for the past several years. And so I'm curious, have you encountered this challenge or has your company encountered this challenge at all, and if so, what strategies have you employed to overcome them?

Baylee Brown:
Yeah, so we don't have a lot of turnover at this company for the most part. I mean, Shavani at our Westridge location has been there for three or four years now. Stacy at Benchmark has been there for five. We had, in the beginning, a little bit of an issue filling a service tech position. It took them a little bit. And the outgoing service tech, one of the big things that he stated in his exit interview was the fact that every service tech was required to be on call at their property 24 hours, 365. And that was something that really struck a chord with Angie and Lynette, and so when they were looking at hiring a new tech and then eventually hiring a floater that would go around to all the different properties, they decided they wanted to split up that on-call. So now each of our service techs, we have four, they share the on-call.

So one will have a week where they are responsible for all three properties, while the other ones have that week off. And it gives them that opportunity to have that personal time to recharge so you're not burning through your employees, you're giving them that time that they need to rest. And that's super important too, mental health and self-care, being able to recognize that we are all human, we all need a break sometimes has gone a long way. I mean, in this industry, a leasing agent has what, a three to six month turnover, just because it is such a demanding job and people move through the ranks really quick, it's a hard job. And so when you're able to really take care of your employees and invest in them, you're going to have them stick around longer, and so we don't have the retention difficulties like a lot of other properties do.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Yeah. Sounds like you guys are doing something right.

Baylee Brown:
Yeah.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Well, the pandemic certainly had an impact on the real estate industry as a whole. And so for my next question, I'm curious, what, if any, lasting impact has the pandemic had on onsite operations? What's changed since then, what's gotten better, more difficult?

Baylee Brown:
Yeah, definitely. So I started working for the company in 2021. I worked through the whole pandemic as a CNA, and so I saw a lot on that end. But even just coming into this industry later in the pandemic, we're seeing a lot of people who took advantage of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program during that, what was it, the eviction moratorium. And a lot of people were using that ERAP funding so that they could pay their rent, but they weren't necessarily saving it. And so ERAP has a limit of 18 months, I want to say, so we're seeing a lot of people who took advantage of that ERAP program, they're hitting their 18-month limit and they're moving out because they can't get any more assistance, they can't afford to pay their rent. So that's made it really difficult for turnover. We're having a little bit of a busier season and with how crazy the market was, we were losing people, but we were gaining people like crazy.

And now it's starting to slow down a little bit, people are getting a little bit more settled now that the pandemic has been officially declared over by the World Health Organization, but we're still experiencing some of those effects. And another effect that we've been seeing is it's harder to get tenants to engage in their community. With the events that we have here on the property, every year we do a tenant appreciation barbecue, for instance. My first year that I was here and putting on that barbecue, I had only been here for three months, so I still didn't know everybody, nobody really knew me. They were still kind of getting back into the swing of things, of being able to go outside and be around people. We had three or four people show up, and I have 136 units here, so it wasn't a really good turnout.

So the next year, so this would be last summer, I really wanted to make sure that this was a fun event, was a good event for people, and that we had a lot more turnout. And we had a lot more people show up, I think we had 20 or 30 people. So I'm like, that was a huge jump for us. And being able to see these people starting to come back out and get to know each other and really come together as neighbors has been something that we've been trying to get back to.

Yolanda Muchnik:
I love that. And so branching off of that a little bit, overcoming challenges, I'm curious, can you share a little bit, what, in your mind, are the top two or three items that you think have contributed to your success in your career, and also your success as a team builder?

Baylee Brown:
Definitely. I think something that has really served me well is I take great pride in my work. No matter what it is, whether I was slinging chicken at Chick-fil-A or I was taking care of elderly people, to now, I really just want to do a good job. And this is not my end goal career, I actually have a bachelor's degree in political science, I eventually want to pursue a master's. So this has been a huge kind of change from what I was initially going for, but it's been a great learning experience, and that's what I've tried to take with me through every job I've done, is it's not just about a paycheck, it's not just about the now, it's my opportunity to learn new skills, to meet new people, build connections. And so I take everything as a learning experience.

As a team builder, I have really had to evaluate how I operate in a team and communicate with other people. And I've been able to really check in with myself and self-evaluate how my communication style affects other people and how I can help them in turn. It's really important, I feel like, to check in with yourself and ask how you can help your team, how you can build them up and just be more effective, but just how to make the property a better place, and so that's something that I'm always seeking to do. I also am really people driven, so any job that I have had has a customer service aspect, and I don't think you'll find a lot of jobs that don't have a customer service or a people interaction aspect to them. And so just really caring for people and what they're going through and wanting to make things better experiences for them has really served me well and helps you just in a team too, because you're going to invest in your team members as well.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Well, Baylee, I have very much enjoyed this conversation with you-

Baylee Brown:
This was so cool.

Yolanda Muchnik:
... and I'm super grateful. Yeah, I'm super grateful you took some time out of your day to chat with me. I just have one final question for you since good people know other good people, is there anyone you might recommend we have on a future podcast?

Baylee Brown:
Yeah, no, that's a great question. I know some people that I think would be really good at it, but wouldn't necessarily be too thrilled unless I ask them first. So let me ask around and see who I can come up with and I can definitely email you on that.

Yolanda Muchnik:
Absolutely. I get it. All right. Well, it was great to have you on, Baylee. Thanks so much again.

Baylee Brown:
Thank you.

Yolanda Muchnik:
And I look forward to our listeners hearing this episode.

Baylee Brown:
Awesome. You have a good one.