A Landlord’s Insight

A Lan dlor d’s Insight By Jason R. Middleton, CPRPM President, Cornerstone Properties. Ltd.

Early this year, like many others around the world, we at Cornerstone Properties watched closely the news about COVID-19 and its progress through Asia and Europe. With the March 11, 2020 World Health Organization (WHO) pandemic declaration things began ramping up quickly. We acknowledge that there are many industries and individuals that have been devastated by this pandemic while our company has been extremely fortunate to be able operate for our clients and staff through all phases of this pandemic. Our experiences have been challenging, even frustrating at times, but our staff and management have remained safe and therefore have been able to rely on each other during this time. Contingency plans for cross training and coverage were developed but so far, they have stayed just that — contingency plans. As many other businesses learned, an early challenge we faced was identifying key areas of our business model that could be done at home vs. what had to be done on site. It really made us review our policies and procedures in a way that has never been mandated before. We had to re-train our brains and get creative to solve problems that we could never have anticipated.

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NORTH VANCOUVER / VICTORIA Truthfully, the beginning was extremely chaotic and stressful, coordinating staff at home and technology all the while ensuring we could support our customer service goals. However, with patience and endurance, we have built a system that we feel supports our business and our clients wherever our staff may be. It was a challenge for our staff at the beginning as they have had to adapt to a whole new working situation. Gaining that trust, that many of these procedures and policies have been put in place to protect staff, has not always been easy. With new working situations, it can be difficult to anticipate problems or distractions so they have had to come up with creative solutions all on their own. As many have learned, some things are easier from home while some are harder. Our team had to work together in new ways and rely on each other to facilitate efficient workflow. A key focus with our team being separated was creating a sense of community that can be missing when we do not see each other in person. We wanted our staff to know that they are part of something bigger than themselves and that we understand that everyone is likely going through the same thing. There was some initial reluctance from some of our team to work from home, but we found that they quickly embraced this new and necessary model and we were impressed with their productivity. Though to us as a business it is great seeing our team productive, we also knew that we needed to implement a routine to ensure a healthy home/work balance. We needed to ensure that staff were not spending to much time working at home just because, knowing when to stop your day and take time for yourself and family is important for your own well being and is vital in maintaining productivity. This pandemic presented difficulties that we had not prepared for and we couldn’t help but be reactionary. We dealt with pandemic related issues as they came up in the best way we could. However, as time went on, an acclimation process took over. Issues became easier to predict and we have been able to adopt a more proactive stance where planning for the next step or the next phase can be achieved. We learned from our experience, and welcomed feedback from our clients along the way. Keeping our lines of communication open has been essential for both our staff and clients. I think everyone’s patience and understanding levels are high right now and a team motto has been “Our clients with us and us with our clients”. We worked to ensure our interactions were coming from a place of cooperation. That is really the only way to foster positive relationships.

A Landlord’s Insight (Cont’d)

Part of cooperation is being flexible and understanding that every person can react to these unprecedented situations completely differently. Using the policies and procedures outlined by public health authorities as our foundation, we have been able to survive and in some areas flourish during these uncertain times. We learned that the core and heart of our company is not in a place, but in its people and their willingness and ability to provide excellent customer service to our clients.

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The use of technology is not new to our company and is a key part of our mandate. We are always looking for ways to make everyone’s lives easier. As it turned out this is especially true during a pandemic. We have further embraced and in many cases enhanced our use of a diverse host of technology solutions during this time, including: • Electronic signatures on documents, • Getting our client and tenant portals up and running, • Utilizing E-transfers for rent payment, • Electronic invoice approval, • Better understanding and use of our Surface Pro tablets, • Video conferencing meetings via Zoom or Teams, • Fully embracing a paperless business model. We are still learning how some of these initiatives will integrate into our systems for the long term, however they have proved to be beyond valuable in the short term. Our business landscape would have looked much different if we were not able to access these mediums. Through this entire situation, we have learned that things we thought were not possible are in fact possible with clients and staff. For example — working from home, signing documents, doing video conference meetings. Now that we are in Phase 3, we have sourced out Personal Protective Equipment or PPE for all staff that will be dealing with public interaction and implemented a thorough Safety Plan and Policy for all office staff, our maintenance technicians, and our caretakers. We continue to have no interruption of communication via phone and email with clients and tenants, and are therefore able to continue to provide excellent customer service, support, and information to our clients. We have received positive feedback that this has been very reassuring. We are all in this together and how we approach and deal with this situation will show our integrity, professionalism, and compassion for one another.

Jason R. Middleton is CPRPM president, Cornerstone Properties. Ltd.

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