6 minute read
Making a Difference During a Pandemic
Making Pan demic a Di fference During a
At this point of the year, while many of us in the multi-family rental industry would be preoccupied with upcoming property budget cycles, deployment of necessary capital spending and midyear performance reviews, we are instead actively managing the serious impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The challenge to our industry during a time like this is real, however we can draw on the significant experiences and great ideas of our people to sustain our businesses and continue to positively impact the communities we serve. Our heroes have been the front line community management teams who focus on the satisfaction and wellbeing of our resident base; our maintenance teams who work tirelessly to keep our buildings operating safely and efficiently; and our corporate office employees who manage the numerous programs and engagements with residents and other stakeholders. Our business has continued to look at ways to improve and grow, even with the unknowns of a pandemicimpacted future facing us. While none of us could have accurately predicted the way this pandemic would ultimately affect our business, we were quick to marshal all available resources to manage what we rightly assumed
would be a future of unknowns. We were early witnesses to pandemic preparations through our offices in Hong Kong and London, where the first waves of isolation and quarantine occurred. Our QuadReal team here in Canada started to meet on a regular basis to consider what our response would be, what protocols we would have to put in place and what logistic challenges would need to be overcome. Our team worked hard in these early days to overcome the fear and unknowns the virus presented, pulling together across disciplines and functional areas to assess the risk to our residents and assets while trying to educate ourselves on what we were truly up against. We distilled our pandemic preparation efforts into three main buckets: (a) resident safety, (b) resident engagement and (c) employee safety and continuity. The safety of our residents is always a primary driver in our business, so we were quick out of the gate with a mandate to modify access to common areas, increase the frequency of cleaning in our properties, arranged for emergency cleaning of any property where we were advised of a positive COVID-19 case, ensured appropriate physical distancing measures were in place and suspended discretionary
Making a Difference During a Pandemic (Cont’d) capital work inside our buildings. Simultaneously, our teams developed broad operating guidelines that detailed modifications of leasing protocols, work hours and maintenance request procedures which were envisioned to allow our properties to continue to function and provide effective coverage for our essential service workers on the front lines. Our technical services and capital management teams undertook reviews of critical building systems and ensured that arrangements with key service providers were enhanced due to uncertainty around labour availability. Together, these measures were designed to enhance the comfort of our residents and ensure that they would be able to continue to see their homes as a secure place to be. Simultaneous with the development of these initial operating/safety protocols, our teams created a plan to reach out to all residents in the portfolio in order to offer assistance, connect residents to resources and ensure that those who needed help during this unprecedented time would receive it. We created a robust process to streamline requests, engage directly with affected residents and held daily meetings to fine tune our process to ensure it remained effective and impactful. We also put into practice a plan to liaise regularly with other property owners, managers and industry associations in Canada (such as LandlordBC) to ensure that our collective efforts to build a compassionate response to the real hardship faced by our residents were effectively communicated to government. The third main facet of our early pandemic preparations, employee safety and continuity, was viewed as a critical link in our ability
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to continue to manage relationships with our residents, vendors and teammates. QuadReal has spent a great deal of time building a business that is truly agile thanks to a substantial investment in technology — this investment allowed QuadReal to institute a work-from-home policy for corporate employees in mid-March, and facilitated continued communication and work among our crossfunctional teams. Daily team meetings across the company to assess the impact of the virus on our business were held; more to share information than to decide on strategic directions. In the early days, as we were all glued to our televisions to watch the latest updates, we took comfort in the critical work connections we were able to maintain, albeit at a distance. With these connections enhanced, our teams focused on making tactical improvements to our business that would enhance our ability to manage effectively. Together, we focused on establishing regular connections across our organization, engaging in team calls, social events, group chats and other initiatives that also sought to continue to build our corporate culture during an uncertain time. Impressively, our team managed to make several improvements to its resident service offering during the pandemic, including the deployment of a mobile resident services app across the portfolio. This app, QuadReal Living, has enabled residents to receive service notices, updates to operational activities, building updates and ultimately facilitate better communication with our teams. Our group also enhanced our property management platform through deployment of virtual leasing tools, continued training and development and even managed to push through a major update to our property management software system in April. Our portfolio also saw a substantial addition during the pandemic. In mid-April, our group closed a major acquisition where we acquired 746 suites in three markets, together with welcoming 11 new QuadReal colleagues. An acquisition, which includes the transition from a previous manager for resident files, service contracts and banking arrangements, as well as the onboarding of new employees, was only made possible by the care and dedication of our operating, training, investments and finance teams. These sorts of activities would be major undertakings in the normal course of business, but to have pulled together and executed these initiatives in the middle of a pandemic, while operating remotely, has been truly gratifying. We have taken stock of what we have accomplished over the last four months, and what endures most is the fact that our team and industry has risen to the challenge the virus has presented. We’ve proven that our businesses can continue to be effective in the face of major disruption; that our residents value the compassionate engagement of our front-line teams; and that our colleagues will find ways to be creative and execute no matter the obstacles placed in front of them. Together, we are privileged to be able to provide housing for Canadians and know that while the road ahead remains uncertain, we can celebrate the fact that our work so far in 2020 has made a very real difference in the lives of our residents, colleagues and stakeholders.
Anthony Lanni is executive vice president, residential at QuadReal Property Group, LP in Vancouver. He can be reached at anthony.lanni@ quadreal.com.
