Staff turnover is a universal pain in the butt. Even though you take steps to retain your best people, it’s inevitable that at some point employees move on or retire. And then what? You’re left with their cold chair and to-do list. But also, if you plan ahead, all the information they were managing for you. Because you want to keep that, right?

There’s nothing worse than having a key staff member leave, and then discover belatedly that you can’t navigate their records. You might be left not knowing the next step in a new construction project, lacking contact information for tenants, or unsure when maintenance is scheduled (or needed).

Turnover can cause a whole host of disruptions in the office, but this article will show you how to avoid disaster with a little bit of planning. I’ll share the single most important thing you can do ahead of time to prepare for the day someone important leaves--so you lose as little as possible.

Information access is your Achilles heel

If you want to be resilient to turnover, take care of information access first.

And I can’t stress enough how important it is to do this ahead of time. Like all backups, if you wait until you need it, you’re too late. Get on top of information access NOW.

How to set up your internal information access for long-term success

What does good information access even look like for a property management firm? In reality, it’s not that different from other business structures where you have individual managers and want communal records.

You and your staff should be able to access all the important history, files, maintenance, tenant lists, and other information you need, without asking someone to email it to you. I repeat, without asking someone to email it to you. That means a central information database, even if you’re only a team of five.

Pitfalls for small teams who think they can “wing it”

Paradoxically, the smaller your team is, the more important it is to prevent siloes. If you have 100 building managers with all their data on their laptops and one of them leaves, you still have 99% of your critical company data intact. On the other hand, if there are only three of you and someone retires, you’re down to 67% overnight.

“But wait” you might say, “I own those laptops, surely I will get the data back at the end of employment?”.

Very likely, yes.

But the concern is not just information ownership, but information access. We all have hectic schedules, and if it takes you an hour to track down a file because you don’t know what it’s called or where it’s saved, that file is effectively gone. In short, without a system built for multiple users, you’re going to lose a lot of files when you lose the person who filed them.

Getting organized

The first thing to get clear about is what kind of information you need, and where it’s stored. Your spreadsheet might include columns for deficiencies, contact information, status, maintenance, next steps, notes, emails, links to photos…. Whatever you need on a day-to-day basis. Whatever you email your team to get.

Using free tools

You can make huge headway on data access using tools you probably already have, but it’s important to know their limitations as well. For small teams with only a few units to manage, an administrator might get by with an Excel sheet that they update manually every time new information comes in.

In this case, there’s no cost for the software, but someone has to enter the data every time a maintenance request comes in or gets completed. Every time a tenant changes their contact information. It’s easy to forget, and there’s no paper trail if you make a mistake or forget something. But hey, it’s free!

Using paid tools

Data management platforms like our software, Fieldshare, allow you to link information together so you don’t have to enter as much data by hand. For example, if a contractor can tell you which units have been serviced by ticking off boxes in your database, you don’t need to re-enter that information anywhere!

If you choose a paid data management service, you should look for a company that can help you get your information organized and guide you through the process of creating a central hub. Also, choose one that has some experience in your industry, and can offer a tailored property management workflow.

Perks for the well-prepared

Regardless of how you centralize your data, you’ll enjoy more than just protection from turnover. When you and your staff can access information from a central database, you don’t have to wait on each other for answers. Self-serve information is way less stressful.

So don’t wait until someone leaves. Get a data management system in place today! Whether it’s something you build yourself in Excel, or get help from a company like Fieldshare, you’ll be glad you did.

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