Letter from the President

By STEPHANIE GRAVES, CAPS, CAM, IROP, 2023 HAA President

HOW OFTEN DO YOU CELEBRATE THE PEOPLE THAT MAKE VALUABLE CONTRIBUTIONS TO OUR INDUSTRY, OUR PROPERTY MANAGEMENT TEAM MEMBERS? IF YOUR ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION IS ‘NOT ENOUGH,’ THE PERFECT OPPORTUNITY IS COMING UP THIS MONTH TO SHOW YOUR DESERVING EMPLOYEES SOME RECOGNITION.

NAA’s RPM (Residential Property Management) week is April 17-21. There is Dream Team Monday, Maintenance Tuesday, Thank a Teammate Thursday and Why I love My RPM Career Friday. NAA is offering awesome prizes for the winners of these challenges, and I would love for a hard-working team member from the Houston Apartment Association to be recognized during one of these days! You can read more about the challenges going on throughout the week and how to submit your photos on Pages 50 and 51.

Although this will be an amazing week to celebrate RPM, we should be doing small things year-round for our people, so they know how much we appreciate them. A select group of HAA members recently had the opportunity to attend a lunch program covering “quiet quitting.” One main takeaway from the session was that employees feeling unrecognized eventually leads to burn out, feeling undervalued, or worse, makes them start looking for a different career. This wasn’t a new discovery, but a reminder for all of us. So, I wanted to pass that reminder along to those members that didn’t get to attend the luncheon.

I have started integrating one tip into my daily routine that involves helping my employees feel valued while also having a better work life balance. Some people need to unplug and not feel the pressure to respond when the boss reaches out. But, as we know, this industry never sleeps. Most of us work on weekends and nights to ensure we get everything done, but that’s not always what our team members have signed up for. I want to connect with employees when they are in the office, not when I am working late hours on the dreaded paperwork needed to make things happen, so I have started scheduling my emails to deliver during that ‘9 to 5’ time frame to avoid staff burnout. There is this cool feature that allows you to type up an email while you are working overtime at 9 p.m., but scheduling it to send when your employee is in the office at 9 a.m. This tool has allowed me to get my work done after hours without disrupting the balance for my management team.

Let’s rally together and flood not only NAA with photos of our team members during RPM week to show how much Houston loves their employees, but also flood our great staffers who put in blood, sweat and tears to keep this industry thriving. A simple ‘thank you for your hard work’ could make the difference to someone!

https://rpm.naahq.org/rpm-careers-week/