How to Speak Maintenance - Tips For And From The Multifamily Industry
How to Speak Maintenance is a weekly series that focuses on why it's so important for everyone in the multifamily industry should learn to speak maintenance, how it can build relationships between office and maintenance teams and create a better experience for our residents. Join our host Jason Fein, National Maintenance Service Director with Camden. Jason and Becca Ramati, with the Texas Apartment Association Education Foundation (TAAEF) will have new topics and guests each episode. This podcast was originally a live video series also available on Facebook. It is a project of TAAEF who works to raises awareness of careers in the multifamily. There's room to grow in the Texas apartment industry. www.roomtogrowtx.org
How to Speak Maintenance - Tips For And From The Multifamily Industry
How to Speak Maintenance: Maintenance Burnout
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A can't miss episode of How to Speak Maintenance episode with our guest Jen Piccotti with Swift Bunny as we tackle a critical topic for every maintenance team: burnout.
The employees who always say “yes” may be the ones who need your support the most. Maintenance professionals are often the first to respond, the last to leave, and the ones everyone counts on to get the job done. But when reliability becomes overload, how do leaders recognize the signs?
Join us as we talk about the warning signs of burnout, why high performers can be the hardest to recognize as struggling, and what leaders can do to support their teams before burnout impacts morale, safety, and retention.
💭 Ask yourself: Who on my team is carrying more than everyone realizes?
Join hosts Jason Fein and Becca Ramati for this important episode of How to peak Maintenance!
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to How to Speak Maintenance, the podcast where we discuss the real challenges facing maintenance professionals and the leaders who support them. My name is Jason Vine, and I'm the SVP of maintenance at Windsor. And with me is Becca Romani. She's the vice president of the Texas Department Association Education Foundation. Hello, Becca.
SPEAKER_02Hey Jason.
SPEAKER_01I'm really excited about today's call. Today we have Jen Picati with Swift Bunny with us. She's the president of Swift Bunny. Hello, Jen.
SPEAKER_00Hello, thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thanks for joining us. Would you uh mind telling our listeners about Swift Bunny and what you're working on and how long you've been in the industry?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Well, I started in the industry in 2000 on the uh property management side of things. Um I have been in the trenches uh for several years. I made the leap over to the supplier side uh around 2007-2008, um, dove into resident satisfaction surveys with Satisfax Research and Apartment Ratings.com, was there for quite a while diving into the data, really understanding what's going on with residents, and then went over to more of the employee engagement side with Swift Bunny. I joined forces with Doug Miller, who's the original founder of Satisfax, and Joe Bailey, who is the original founder of Grace Hill. Um, and together we formed Swift Bunny to focus on finding out what employees need to do their best work, what they need to feel supported in this industry. Um we do a lot of employee feedback. We also are working on helping companies automate their onboarding and offboarding processes because that consistency and accountability makes all the difference in retaining those new employees in those first days and weeks and months. So I have a lot of research about all the different roles, but I particularly have an affinity to our maintenance team members because they're just so critical in every aspect of what we do. And they are they are who really makes our properties successful. And uh so I love really diving into what are the best practices, what are those companies that are really doing an amazing job with their maintenance team members and seeing the success of that. And then also what are the biggest challenges in our industry? So I'm very excited because we are just publishing today our latest research on maintenance. It's called the Workforce Risk Maintenance Edition. So I've got a lot of really interesting insights to share with you guys today.
SPEAKER_01That's great because that's that's what our topic is today. It's burnout and maintenance employee burnout, exactly. So I mean, they're like you said, they're the first to volunteer, the first to answer the phone after hours, and the last to leave when their work is to be done. So, you know, it's it's really important that we sit down and we really understand, you know, our employees and what makes them uh want to stay or want to try to find another job. So if you don't mind, um I'd love to hear more about the publication that you guys are are uh putting out there about employee surveys and and burnout specifically.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, for maintenance in particular, um, what we're seeing is we know that within our industry, they are the role that's most difficult to fill. Uh they're the most difficult to find, recruit, bring into the organization, and then keep. Um, we also know that uh there's a lot of attrition for a variety of reasons, whether it's retiring. So we've got those amazing skilled uh professionals who grew up, you know, fixing things, building things. They're starting to retire. And the next generation coming up, they didn't necessarily uh grow up that way, building things, fixing things. Um and so it's much harder to find that skill. You more often you're having to train the skill rather than being able to find someone that has grown up with that affinity, with that skill set. Um so those are some things that are working against us in general. We're also fighting for these skilled professional um maintenance people when it comes to construction, when it comes to commercial real estate. Um, they're tugged in a lot of different directions. And so, what is it about our industry where we can say, hey, come come hang out with us. We've got a great role for you, and you're gonna be very valued. Um, there's four key risks that we're seeing once the team members, once we have a maintenance team member in place. First of all, we've got to set them up for success. Most often they're receiving the least amount of training. And yet the things that they do require very specific knowledge, very specific skills. We're also seeing that there's a lot of time thieves that really contribute to that sense of burnout because there's a lot going on. They've got uh service requests they got to take care of. There are turns that they're taking care of, uh, a lot of those things that are going on that are consistent. There is no off switch for those things. They are constant. And yet, um, and they have very special skills that are required for that. But then you've got um different things that are stealing their time. Um, one of the biggest things that catches my attention is that right now we have about 29% of maintenance team members saying that their workforce is not fully staffed at any given time. So you've got nearly a third of our maintenance workforce out there saying, hey, we are short staffed. Couple that with one out of three maintenance team members say that they are interrupted six at least six times or more throughout the day by things that are not maintenance related. So whether it's the office staff asking for something, um, you know, all of those interruptions, having to stop and start, that really sucks away your time. And then having to support uh residents with questions about technology, um, community-based technology, whether it's how to do the thermostat, how to submit a service request in the maintenance portal. But then there's other things like the office staff not knowing how to coach a resident on how to do very simple troubleshooting for common things like just resetting the um the outlet or resetting your garbage disposal. Um, so there's a variety of things that are picking away at the maintenance team's time, which contribute to that sense of overwhelm because they're already have a full plate. And then you have short staff, so they're trying to do more with less. And, you know, typically our maintenance team members, they just, you know, put their head down and they just keep working. But there comes a point where they may have been asking for help, like, hey, can we fill this spot? Uh, hey, can we get another set of hands? Hey, can we get some tools, you know, so that we're not all sharing one set of gauges or whatever it might be. And when they've been told no enough times, or their request has been kicked down the road enough times, they stop asking. And then they start to feel overwhelmed to the point where they're like, I don't know if I can do this anymore. So there's a lot of things we can do to prevent them reaching that point. Um, and those are the things that I'm really interested in sharing with um with organizations because it's not something we just have to be like, oh, it's just the way it is. There are things that companies can do. They don't have to be expensive, they just have to be intentional. Um, and those are the things that I'm most excited about.
SPEAKER_02And then you get things that matter, things that help, things that aren't just surface level, but can really address the issues.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, some of the things that when I was working on site and I would go and and um I was in charge of quality assurance. And so I got to visit each of the teams on a regular basis and focus on how do we improve processes, how do we do these different things. And one of our favorite exercises that I've even carried out even now when I'm coaching different teams is twice a year we would meet, we would get the whole team together and we would run um, we would run the service request report and say, okay, what are the most common 10 most common service requests at this property this time of year? We'd do it once leading into the summer season, we'd do it once leading into the cold weather season, look at those lists of service requests, and we would have the maintenance team coach the office staff for each one of those items and say, okay, if someone calls about an oven broken, here are the three questions we would like you to ask that that's going to help us understand what exactly is wrong. Or, you know, blinds are broken. Here are the three questions we would like you to ask about those blinds. Like, first of all, what room is it in? Second of all, is it a whole set or is it just a slap? You know, things like that that we might assume the office staff knows what questions to ask when they're taking a service request, but most of them don't. They just learn from listening to other people taking a service request. So it may just be a chain of bad information or unhelpful information. Um, so just going through that exercise of what questions to ask about service requests, but also giving troubleshooting tips, making sure the whole office staff knows how to reset a button on the garbage disposal and how to describe that, how to hit the reset button on an outlet and how to describe that, how to set the thermostat and how to describe that. So helping the office staff just become better educated, not only does it help the maintenance staff avoid those time-wasting service requests, but it also helps the office staff feel more competent and confident when they're interacting with a resident who's frazzled or frustrated. They have an answer. They have something to give. So it's really a win-win for the entire team. And that's something very practical that any team can do twice a year.
SPEAKER_01I think that's a great point because I as a I used to be a maintenance tech on site. I was a maintenance supervisor. Some properties had the emergency switch for the HVAC unit. And it takes about 30 minutes to get the keys, to go to the department, to figure out and troubleshoot what's going on, and then be able to go back to the maintenance shop after the ticket is completed. So saving time on those won't, those little tickets, right? Like the switches in the off position, that that'll help save a lot of time. And if the maintenance teams are all if we're a staffed one per hundred, and then maybe you have vacations, and then you have maybe some unskilled labor on the team, that can all add to this burnout that we're talking about. And the maintenance team is just running around in circles. So it's it's interesting that you you're finding these what it what did you call them? They're uh not maintenance related themes. Time thieves, that's what it is. That's I might steal that one from you. Well, I wanted to start talking about uh training. You brought up training at the beginning, and so if there's all these time themes and there's things that are pulling our maintenance teams in different directions throughout the day, making time for training and being able to help them learn those skills so they're more confident in their job, it can be difficult. And so I I wonder what your thoughts are on making time for training, or if you've found anything in your survey related to how to make time for training.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, you know, there's nearly one in four maintenance team members who are saying they're not getting the training that they need. Um, and the companies that I've seen be most successful when it comes to ensuring that their maintenance team does have the skills needed to do the job that they're being asked to do, uh, they will protect time, you know, whether it's one day a month, one day every two months, whatever they can do, protect that time and ensure that each maintenance team member is working on and focused on a specific skill. Because we do a great job of ensuring that the training gets done for the things that are liabilities. We're really good at teaching all of our team members what not to do. So, you know, fair housing, uh sexual harassment. Um, we are on top of that and we ensure every single person goes through that. But that doesn't help you know what to do for your job. What are the things that we need to do? And so I think companies need to think about that in a similar way, where there are things where we are absolutely committed to providing X training. And maybe it's not the exact same training for every single maintenance team member. But if we have a person that needs to brush up on their, you know, patching skills or their carpent juice skills or their plumbing skills, like what are the most common plumbing issues? As everyone on our team can they take care of those most common issues? Um, if we can identify those things and find protected time and make sure that within a six-month period or even a 12-month period, every single one of our team members has gone through that focused, targeted training. So we can say with confidence, everyone on our team knows how to do X. Those are the things that I think end up working really well. But it has to be a commitment. Um, and the other part of it is when we're looking at short staffing, one of the reasons that we're not able to get a lot of that training is because, you know, if you only if you only have two maintenance persons on people on a property and you're missing one, and so you only have one maintenance person on a property and you want them to go do some training, everyone's like, heck no, that's like impossible. We have to have someone available for some things. And so we really need to up the attention and focus on getting those positions filled, getting creative about where we look for those people. Um and uh and I know everyone says that, but we really need to actually put in the time because our maintenance team members, they're drowning. They really need that extra support.
SPEAKER_01I agree. I always wondered if it if the right way to accomplish that task would be to make training as part of the compensation for the management team. You get compensated based on the number of hours that you know a maintenance supervisor or maintenance technician accomplishes their their classes throughout the year. I feel like whatever wouldn't that be amazing? Yeah, whatever gets graded or still working on that one.
SPEAKER_02It has to come from leadership who are making this a priority. It can't be just the fact that the maintenance team member feels they need that extra, you know, skill or time or you know, instruction. It has to come from leadership in a meaningful way. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the greatest teams that I've seen that actually make training a priority, they they set a day. It's Fridays uh at two o'clock, and you're gonna sit down and we're gonna either do something that's hands-on together, or we're gonna watch a video, or we're gonna have a vendor come in. And those are the things that I think help with burnout because you're investing in your team members.
SPEAKER_00So absolutely. Because one of the things that we found is that 20%, so that's one out of five maintenance team members, are saying the company does not provide what they need to do their job well. 20%. That's huge. So whether that's just the training, whether it's the tools, whether it's the resources, they're being asked to maintain this asset and do it in a way where all of our residents are smiling, you know. But if we're not giving them what they need, that makes it really, really difficult.
SPEAKER_01And then if we have KPIs around how quickly they complete a service request or how quickly they turn an apartment, then uh are they really set up for success? Or and are we are we really making the time to give them the tools that they need to do their job? So I love this conversation. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You talked you talk about recognition as well. Do you mind if we kind of talk about that for a couple of minutes?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. This is something that I have actually been diving into quite a bit lately. Um, because on our surveys, whether it's maintenance or leasing or or whoever on the on the property team, they have this sense of not feeling valued. They feel like uh the company doesn't care about them. Um and I wanted to dive in and figure out what that really means because I I talk to a lot of executives and they're like, oh, geez, does everyone need a trophy? Seriously? Like, and and I'm like, I don't think that's it. And I've been really diving in to see, and what I believe it is, my conclusion based on everything I've seen is that it's not so much everyone wants a pat on the back necessarily. But what they want to know is am I doing the right thing at the right time in the right manner? Is someone coming along and saying, that was great. What you did just there, keep doing that. Um, you know, or providing a situation or providing an environment where someone can say, Yeah, this weird thing happened and this is what I did, but it felt and having that coaching opportunity where it can say, you know, yeah, that is a weird situation. Next time, maybe go about it in this manner. Um, but having those conversations that are more that grounding in, yes, you are doing the right thing at the right time in the right way. And that is not the same thing at being like, you're amazing, you know, every day, you're just awesome. Like that's great too. People like to hear that. But it's that feedback, that ongoing feedback of, yep, keep doing that. We need that as people to know that we're not just doing something, we're not just on this hamster wheel, you know, not going anywhere. We want to know that, okay, we're all moving in the right direction. Or the flip side, if I'm not doing something correctly, someone takes the time to give me that constructive feedback and say, hey, I noticed this. Next time let's try this. And here's why. And here will be the outcome that you'll most likely get if you do it in this other manner. Um, I think that's more of what people are asking for when they're talking about recognition. I think also, though, and I have seen a lot of comments recently in maintenance studies where they feel like there was a period of time where there was a an industry-wide concerted effort of we appreciate maintenance. There would be a maintenance appreciation day, or there would be whatever, but there would be celebrated like, hey, we see you, we appreciate you, you are the bread and butter, you know, of our industry. And I've seen a lot of comments of like, it doesn't, it feels like that was just a that was just a thing, a moment in time, and now that time has passed and no one cares anymore. Um, but they're still doing this the same thing and they're working just as hard, if not harder. Um, so I think while there's that joke about like no one needs another pizza party, um no one needs another pizza party as the only form of recognition. But a pizza party every once in a while, yeah, yeah, let us know that that we mean something. Let us know that you see what we're doing. Um, the companies where I see the highest scores when it comes to employee recognition, they don't necessarily have the big formal programs like employee of the month or things like that. What they do is when leaders are on site, whether they're doing site visits or uh there's a a big team gathering, there's a lot more of that one-on-one thank you note, slipping someone a Starbucks card saying, like, hey, thanks for everything that you're doing. I really appreciate it. I heard you covered for so-and-so last week. Thank you for taking care of that. We really appreciate that extra effort. Hey, I saw that you were on Firewatch, you know, last night, you know, until three in the morning. That's amazing. Thank you so much. Um, those little things, those little moments of recognition of I see you, I see what you did, I saw that you went above and beyond, I saw that you helped out your team member, that goes a long way with anyone. But I think especially our maintenance team members, because they're the ones that are most likely doing those types of things, that are staying late, that are coming in early, that are sticking around. So um recognition, it's not always the gold star. A lot of times it's just that reinforcement of hey, you're doing, you're doing exactly what you need to do. Keep on, keep on trucking. We appreciate it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it saying thank you goes a long way. And I this call really is about uh community managers and how to how to speak maintenance because I think that they're the ones that drive culture at the property. They're we can talk about culture at a national level and the company, and I can say, you know, Windsor or Equity or VivMark Now, I guess is what it's called. So they uh, you know, they're this is what our culture is. But at the end of the day, whenever when the maintenance employees are on site with the community manager, with the leasing agents, that's their moment to try to build a culture of the computer.
SPEAKER_02We had such good signal from Cancun.
SPEAKER_01Oh, is the internet in and out? Am I going in and out?
SPEAKER_02Now you're back. Oh, good.
SPEAKER_01Maybe. So we're just talking about the culture at the property level. I don't know if your surveys have seen anything about that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it culture really just comes down to this is how we do things around here. This is what it's like around here.
SPEAKER_01Do surveys and seen anything about culture at the community level? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. The the community managers, they really do drive so much of it. Um, and they are the ones that can either bring a group together or they can divide it and make it us versus them. And when we have the us versus them, that's when we see a lot more trouble. That's where we see a lot more turnover, that's where we see a lot more of the the petty gripes. Um I can tell the health of a uh of a community in their survey scores by some mostly by the comments. And, you know, when I see things from maintenance team members, like, you know, it would be helpful if we weren't treated as the errand boys and girls of the property, delivering letters to everyone, um, you know, doing all of these little administrative things. Um, because it's one thing if, like, hey, we're all gonna divide and conquer every single team member office, and maintenance are gonna take a building and we're gonna knock this out. That's one thing. But if it's always just like, oh yeah, just ask maintenance to do it, or just radio maintenance, they'll come and do it when they're in the middle of, you know, a very complex repair and they're expected to drop everything, it feels and it is disrespectful. Um and but the community manager, they when the most successful teams I've seen are the community managers who have a regular touch base for the whole team, a weekly staff meeting, even if it's just five minutes bringing everyone together. Hey, is there any, you know, any major issues we all need to know about? Here's some announcements I heard from corporate. Uh, someone's gonna visit on this day, um, you know, just any updates like that. People that do that on a regular basis and keep the whole team in the know, that seems to be a very um effective uh form of keeping people together, um, making sure that the maintenance team can educate the office staff on things like how do you take a service request or how do you do, you know, basic troubleshooting? Um having people do a little bit of um swapping places, like having leasing members or assistant managers go with maintenance team members on some calls and seeing what they're dealing with oftentimes puts the office staff in a, they're like, oh wow. I had no idea that's what you were it's great perspective, and vice versa, to have a maintenance team member be in there, taking some phone calls, going on a tour, and seeing the types of things that the leasing team may be having to grin and bear through, you know, every day. I think having that perspective of each other's jobs gives each other a little bit more respect, as a little more mindful of each other's time and skill sets. Uh, because sometimes we're just like, oh, they're just a leasing agent. Oh, they're just a maintenance technician. Are you kidding me? The skill set you need for every single one of these positions is very unique. It is very um, it's it's so elevated. And it takes a special kind of person and a special set of gifts to do any single one of these jobs. Um, so having that understanding and the community manager is the one that really sets the tone and creates those opportunities of understanding and appreciation for each other.
SPEAKER_02I love Jen, that you know, just about everything you've mentioned has been discussed on this show multiple times. Having the touch point meeting every day, you know, walk doing cross-training or or at least, you know, shadowing each other. You know, we've talked about these things over and over again, and you know, it's really everyone in property management works so hard, but it's not necessarily rocket science. And there is a formula. The things that you just laid out, it's a formula for a great team. And we just need to see more of that, um, you know, to avoid some of these issues and bad culture and bad teams.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You know what else has come up recently is um this loss of the sense of helpfulness. And so for managers who are really instilling that value of helpfulness for each other, not just for residents, but for each other on the team, um, you know, there's a lot of team members that are coming in. This may be their first real full-time job or their first real professional job. And so they might not know how to function within, you know, what are the norms? How do we, how do I go about things? How do I give my opinion? How do I voice a concern uh appropriately and respectfully? Um there's a lot of those things. And so, you know, having basic training or coaching on here's how you pose a question, here's how you voice a concern, here's how you set your team members up for success. Um, one of the things my I have two teenage daughters, and and my husband always lets reminds them a half-done job by you is still a full job for someone else. So yes, you brought your dishes to the sink, thank you, but someone still has to put those dishes into the dishwasher. You know, so it's it's a half, you did a half job, and now someone else still has to do another job on top of it. And when we think about that for our teammates, yeah, you may have gone and emptied all the garbage cans, but did you put a bag back in the wastebasket? If you didn't, thanks for taking the garbage out, but you still have left a full job for somebody else. Um, you know, putting a file on someone's seat, but not leaving a note of what someone needs to do with that file. You know, there are things that we can do to help set each other up for success and be helpful. And when we create an environment where we celebrate that helpfulness, hey, thanks for leaving me that note. Hey, thanks for taking the trash out and putting the bags in. Thanks for washing the dishes in the in the break room. Those kinds of things also make a difference of just creating that environment of we care about each other, we respect each other, and we take pride in our work across the board, not just what I do, but we take pride in what our entire team is doing.
SPEAKER_01That's great. I this has been a really helpful conversation. I love the the thought, the talk about making sure that our maintenance employees' time is spent well, making sure that we're a team and we're not just using the maintenance employees as a as a go-to errand boy. You know, it's these are all really important things to make sure our maintenance teams feel respected and that they feel uh acknowledged. And that I think that helps definitely with burnout as well. So absolutely. Did you talk about Swift Bunny though? I don't think we let our listeners know about Swift Bunny.
SPEAKER_00Well, Swift Bunny is a um software as a service company. We provide employee surveys for property management companies so that you're able to find out from your employees what's working, what's not working, and we help provide very specific coaching and executive reviews on what's going to make the greatest impact on your employees based on their survey results. We also provide an automated onboarding and offboarding system so that you can create customized plans for all employees that you're bringing on board. You know exactly what those tasks, uh, who they're assigned to, who's responsible for completing those tasks on behalf of that new employee, what the new employee has completed, so that by the time they have been there for 90 days, you know exactly where they are in the process, if there are any bottlenecks, if there are any parts of your onboarding process that don't seem to be working well, you have that visibility and that accountability. Because right now, one out of five new employees leaves before day 90. After you've worked so hard to get them in, they're not even staying long enough to make a true impact. So having that system where you have that visibility, that accountability makes a huge difference. And not only do we have the system for employees, we also have it for properties that you're onboarding and offboarding, because that's a huge process as well, of making sure that they're getting uh up and running it within your organization. So we are always happy to help. Our goal is to help you hold on to your amazing employees and give you the insights you need to support their best work. And I've provided a link to our study in the chat. So that is available for anyone. We're always happy to share research on what's working well for employees in our industry.
SPEAKER_01Perfect. Thanks for being on the call, Jen. I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02All right. Well, thank you everyone for listening. We will be back in September. And as you're budgeting for 2027, don't forget to budget for 2027 TAA1 conference, and we'll add that link as well.
SPEAKER_00All right, thanks everyone.