As COVID-19 spreads, more businesses are making the switch to precautionary remote work. This can be a challenge, especially in the property management industry, where remote work isn't exactly the norm.
Finding a work zone at home, boosting your team's morale, and adopting tech tools can all help make the transition to remote work a little easier during these times of uncertainty.
While working from home, create a separate work zone from your living space. Ideally, this is an area you can take a mini commute to, even if it's just a walk down the hall from your bedroom to your kitchen table. You want this work zone to be an area you can leave when you're off the clock, allowing you to maintain a feeling of routine. Pick somewhere you'll be comfortable, but not distracted.
Boosting your team's morale during our current global situation is really important for everyone's mental wellbeing. Not only has the COVID-19 pandemic brought a lot of worries, but remote work can also be very isolating.
Try to schedule team catch-ups by video conferencing a few times a day to check-in. Team Tapi has taken to the idea of theming team meetings and taking advantage of some Vitamin-D.
You can also support your team by suggesting taking some time out to meditate. Headspace is offering free meditations about working from home and feeling overwhelmed with the world's current situation.
Finally, based on essential daily tasks of property management agencies, we've compiled a list of tools to help make the transition to working from home as productive as possible. These are tools our team uses everyday for remote work.
One of the great benefits of using Tapi is the ability to streamline processes, something we hope provides extra support for your team during this time.
In the property management world, communication is essential. Whether it's a morning check-in with your team or a meeting with a new property owner, creating pathways for communication through technology is your first step towards easy remote work for your organisation.
Slack is a fantastic tool for transparent internal team communication. It allows you to chat from anywhere, prioritise work, and upload files, all while keeping a record of updates on a particular project. This is a great way for agents to update everyone at their agency about the status of their portfolio and share information about different rental markets.
For external communications, look into a reliable video conferencing software. Our favourite is Zoom because of its consistent experience and ability to join as a video or phone conference. Video conferencing allows you to continue having personal interaction with landlords even if you are not able to meet in person.
Your agents, your customers, and your tenants will not always have access to a printer and scanner. An electronic signature service like Docusign ensures you can file paperwork and sign contracts from anywhere. A tool like Docusign means you can obtain signed leases without needing to meet in person or wait for a mailed or scanned document.
Coordinating a leaky pipe fix can mean a lot of steps between landlord, contractor, tenant, and agent. To score happy owners and tenants, your agency needs to focus on providing the best maintenance experience possible, even if you can't make it into the office.
With Tapi's Maintenance Tracker, you can streamline the maintenance process by reducing the number of touch points your agent needs to act on. The Maintenance Tracker also offers visibility over the process so anyone at your agency can jump in as needed, without being forwarded long email chains or back and fourth phone calls with your tenants, owners and contractors.
With Tapi, automating invoicing means no more data entry for your accounts team and eliminates the need to scan and print out invoices. You can approve invoices with just-one click and choose personalised payment options such as charing the tenant, forwarding to the owner for payment, or just sending it off to your trust account as normal.
As you and your company make the transition to working remotely, please remember that we are here to provide any support we can.
Learn more about how Tapi is responding to COVID-19.
