COVID and enforced lockdowns, higher vacancy rates, financial hardship impacting tenants/landlords – now more than ever property managers are being exposed to stressful and often challenging situations.

How do you stop your property management team from burning out? How do you provide the right guidance and support before it really takes its toll on your team or colleagues mental and physical health? Here are a few tips that can help you create an inclusive and safe work environment for your property management team.

Provide staff training on how to deal with conflict

A holistic approach to developing a property manager’s skills should always include a strong focus on their overall well-being and promoting a positive work culture. According to a report by the World Economic Forum, six in 10 people say poor mental health impacts their concentration at work – and this was before the pandemic has hit. Providing employees with educational materials and training that addresses mental health issues and encouraging strong work relationships are essential in developing happier employees. Get in touch with training providers and consultants that specialise in mental health and collaborate with employees in developing training programmes that are well-suited for your team’s needs.

Encourage staff to use annual leave days – and completely unplug

With travel restrictions still in place, holiday opportunities are limited, and employees might want to cancel their annual leave as a result. However, it is in these times of anxiety and uncertainty when it is even more important to rest and reset – even if it just means unplugging your laptop and turning those email notifications off while you do other things besides work for a few days. According to Heads Up, breaking that cycle of work benefits both the employee and the organisation. For employees, taking a few days off helps reduce stress and improve mood. Agencies in turn can benefit from the improved morale and increase in productivity from employees who are well-rested and motivated.

Provide flexibility and support in the workplace

As more property managers work from home due to lockdowns, many agencies have come to a realization that flexible work is not only possible in property management but even beneficial in some cases. In our Property Industry Work From Home Survey Report, about 66% of respondents believe a flexible working arrangement will be the new norm in property management, citing increase in productivity and less-stressed employees as advantages. With the help of cloud-based property management solutions, you can easily provide remote work options for employees.

Aside from flexibility, it is also necessary to ensure everyone at your team feels supported. Establish a mental health policy to encourage a safe space and open communication around mental health. This helps in removing the stigma around mental health problems, making it easier for anyone in your team to ask for help, as well as offering help themselves to a colleague in need of support.

Acknowledge and appreciate your peers and teams

It is natural for anyone to want to be appreciated and respected by their peers and leaders. In fact, it’s not just a want but a basic human need.  And if there is anything any property managers need right now it is recognition for their hard work in such stressful times brought about by the crisis. Recognising staff and colleagues foster healthier relationships and increase employee satisfaction. There have been many studies correlating employee happiness and recognition and it almost always comes down to a similar conclusion: that people who are recognised more are happier at work. Be generous and timely in showing appreciation, share moments of recognition of an employee to the whole team, and encourage employees to celebrate wins no matter how small.

If you do need help, it’s ok to ask, with so many resources available

Practical approaches to improving mental health at work is a step towards creating a healthy and thriving workplace. Oftentimes, all it takes is a simple “How are you?” to open the conversation and make someone feel a little bit better. But if you or your team need professional help, here are some resources to get you started:

• Realcare mobile app and Rise collective are both focussed on supporting the wellness and mental health for the real estate industry.
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• Head to Health

In our previous blog, we discussed the role of technology in the “Great Disassociation” and how the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated existing trends in remote activity and created new challenges for industries where a consumer’s presence is traditionally required. We covered the many ways in which activities like work, banking, retail, dining, entertainment, fitness and education have become more and more disassociated from the locations in which they normally take place.

Commercial real estate owners, operators and investors have some analysis to do as they seek to determine a path forward amid these shifts. This analysis should take place across two dimensions: change drivers and population trends.

Drivers of change

The disassociations listed above should be put into context by assessing if they are a result of the acceleration of pre-existing trends or if they are created by an acute impact of the pandemic – expected vs. unexpected, natural vs. unnatural. The acceleration of an existing trend, like a continued rise in ecommerce, is wholly different than the sudden and drastic impact on restaurant businesses.

The dissociations largely fall into the categories of impact as follows:

The fundamental difference between the two columns is one of transaction vs. experience. While the rationalization of retail stores and bank branches is being driven by retailers and financial institutions, the underlying motivations should be used as a guide for future planning.

If shopping or banking experiences only offer a commoditized transaction, today’s consumers will prefer automation. A more personal experience can, and will, win shoppers, much like Nordstrom, where the guest experience is part of the culture.

Acute disassociations are more challenging to forecast as there is not a point of reference from which to plot a trend in order to determine what the future may look like. The most prevalent driver for these disassociations was the need to be socially distant. The path forward will mostly be defined by changing guidelines and societal norms for what is deemed safe. Eventually, however, the experiences provided at these locations will most likely be desired over what can be done from a distance.

Much like retail and banking, less personal and more commoditized experiences will continue remotely. Collaborative needs for professionals will move back to physical spaces where interactions happen differently and where teams work toward common outcomes. Culture is also created more fully when teams are physically together. More personal experiences in dining, entertainment and fitness will also return as specific capabilities and facilities simply cannot be fully replicated at home.

Impacts of population changes

The other dimension of analysis that needs to be explored is how the population’s post-pandemic habits could alter the locations in which they spend their time, and how changes in the locations themselves could conversely alter the population’s habits.

The number of people commuting into a city for work is sure to decrease. New-found comfort with work from home combined with an aversion to public transportation and the need for social distancing will reduce the daily population in offices without requiring a commensurate reduction of office space as employers reduce office density and create more collaborative space.

The population of city dwellers, especially in dense, major metropolitan areas, is showing some signs of erosion as well. Empowered by the ability to work from home as well as low interest rates, some are seeking more private space in suburban areas and smaller cities. Populations of fans and patrons of sports and the arts remain unable to enjoy these experiences live. Populations of business travelers and tourists remain grounded.

Location, location, location is the mantra of real estate, and typically a great location is a combination of population proximity, access to transportation, convenience of amenities and access to a vibrant cultural scene of dining and entertainment. Unfortunately, each of these elements is under pressure as the pandemic continues to impact the economy.

Most importantly, owners, operators and investors will need to assess if the foot traffic in a building, block, or city will decrease as fewer people transit the area daily, especially when considering the future of service and dining-related establishments.

Moving forward

With a bead on the future, plans for redevelopment, renewal and reinvention will come. Recent strategies will continue, like the combination of retail and entertainment, and new strategies will emerge. Creative thinkers and entrepreneurs will define new uses for current spaces much like they have been doing for years. Factories and warehouses become lofts. Industrial sites get reclaimed for waterfront green space or redeveloped into apartments. Big box retail sites get transformed into a wide array of uses for boutique retail or community programming. The options are virtually endless. With interest rates continuing at historical lows, access to capital should not be a barrier for renewal. The largest challenge will be finding the appropriate use and optimal timing given ongoing uncertainty in the economy due to the pandemic.

The first quarter of the 21st century may be remembered as the time when technology finally allowed people to stop doing specific activities in specific places and enabled us to do most anything from basically anywhere. The COVID-19 pandemic will be seen as the accelerator of a “Great Disassociation”: a time when the relationship between an activity and where it took place was changed forever.

Separating activity from place

The earliest forms of technology started us on the path of separating activity from place. The telegraph and its successor, the telephone, allowed communication between two people regardless of their vicinity. The radio and then the television brought news, sports and entertainment directly into our homes.

The launch of the Internet and the persistent progress into the digital superhighway of today has allowed the disassociation of activity from place to grow and accelerate.

The disassociations impacting Commercial Real Estate

As we leverage technology to separate activity from place, we continually reshape commercial real estate with rapidly changing conditions and short-term uncertainty.

Work vs. the office

In a study from June 2020, Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom found that 42% of the US workforce was working from home full time, accounting for more than two thirds of all US economic activity.

The last time the US workforce worked from home in such high volumes was in 1900, when work was literally at home because home was a farm. Around 40% of the US population lived on a farm, and 11.7 million people of the 29 million in the workforce worked in agriculture.

It took more than a century for the work and home paradigm to blur again. Corporate leaders are learning from their current experiences, and they are starting to question what the post-pandemic office needs to look like. Should density be relaxed? Should collaborative spaces be added, and should individual work-from-home practices increase?

Banking vs. the bank

The automated teller machine became mainstream in the late ’80s, creating a convenient way to withdraw and deposit funds at any hour of the day. This would later be seen as the first step in a digitally powered movement toward self-service banking. With direct deposit, online bill payment, mobile check deposits, and the use of electronic signatures, we are making fewer visits to our local bank branch to do the same banking we used to do in person. A recent report by Keefe Bruyette & Woods, a New York investment bank, found that teller transactions are down 30-40% this year, and they conservatively estimate up to 30% further branch consolidation.

Shopping vs. the store

For the past 25 years, ecommerce has grown by creating frictionless buying experiences, next day deliveries and hassle-free returns. This continued growth forced retail center and mall landlords to rethink their strategies and offer more comprehensive experiences. More dining and entertainment venues have been added to the shopping experience, as well as more special events and attractions.

COVID-19 caused many malls, shopping centers and non-essential retailers to close, driving even more business online and accelerating an industry-wide correction. Further, the experience-driven components of shopping centers, including restaurants, have been greatly impacted by social distancing needs, thwarting the most common strategies used to combat ecommerce.

Announcements of permanent store closures continue to pile up and have well surpassed any historical peaks…and the year isn’t over yet.

Essential shopping still takes place in the store (grocery, pharmacy, home goods, home improvement, etc.), and technology is being introduced to allow for the use of a mobile device to scan products and check out in an independent manner. Additionally, the activity of grocery shopping can be outsourced through apps like Instacart and other grocery pick-up and delivery services.

Dining vs. the restaurant

A 2019 study commissioned by the National Restaurant Association found that off-premise dining (drive thru, takeout and delivery) had claimed a majority and was growing. Then the pandemic struck, increasing the importance of off-premise dining for restaurateurs seeking ways to recover revenues in the face of social distancing measures. Expanded services also allowed customers to continue to support their favorite establishments throughout the pandemic. The off-premise model, however, does not facilitate alcohol sales like the in-store model does, placing an upside damper on off-premise revenue streams.

Growing services like Grubhub and DoorDash have contributed to this trend, allowing delivery from more than the traditional delivery sources like the local pizza shop or Chinese restaurant.

While the maintenance of food quality from kitchen to table remains a challenge, more and more people are trying to enjoy restaurant-prepared meals at home. As the colder months approach and the demand for outdoor dining decreases, more reliance will be placed on off-premise dining.

Recent reports estimate that up to one third of America’s 660,000 restaurants face permanent closure this year as a result of the COVID-19 fallout. Embracing a mixed model (on and off-premise) is likely the best go-forward path for survival as revenue is not solely a factor of dining room size and table turns.

Entertainment vs. the venue

Once the pandemic hit, the lights went down on Broadway and on every other theater across the country. Movie premiers have been rescheduled and stage productions halted. Some content, however, found its way onto streaming services instead of waiting for a return to traditional theaters. A recording of the hit musical Hamilton, as well as movies like Frozen II, The Invisible Man and Bill and Ted Face the Music all landed on streaming services and Video-On-Demand (VOD) formats well before their original home release dates.

Traditionally, it would take 90 days for a hit movie to reach VOD platforms, a window that is surely shrinking on the heels of Universal’s optional 17-day release agreement with AMC, the largest theater chain in the country.

While you might expect sports to be in this category, most professional leagues have already been reaching audiences in their homes with live broadcasts for years via radio and television. Bundesliga, Premier League, NBA, WNBA, NHL, and MLB have all proven that they can separate the game from the fans, playing in “bubbles” and empty stadiums. Other professional sports such as cricket and rugby have already resumed play in Australia, while the UK is taking a measured approach and South Africa rugby is currently restarting in September. The NFL season in the US has begun with vastly limited attendance in most cases. The NCAA is currently fragmented on its approach. Unlike movie production companies who can postpone the release of a movie for better times, sports leagues have heavy fiscal incentives to play on, even without the fans in the stands.

Outlying disassociations

Among all of the disassociations we’ve seen over the past few months, there are a few scenarios that are in a unique position. For example, home fitness has been around since Jack LaLanne in the 50s, but companies such as Peloton, and competitors like Mirror, FightCamp, NordicTrack, and Tonal have become more popular as they create live and on-demand classes that participants join from home, avoiding the gym altogether.

In an entirely different situation, however, are teachers and students, who have been forced to resume education separately from a classroom. With the onset of the pandemic, all students were sent home to finish the 2019-2020 academic year. As the 2020-2021 school year launched, a variety of in-person and remote options were made available to students and parents. In many cases, the teachers are in their classrooms doing their job for a decentralized class. The higher education situation is more fluid with a variety of colleges and universities all trying their hand at continuing to deliver content across an array of in-person, on campus and fully remote options. Given the individual costs associated with higher education, the entire system could be destabilized by prolonged distance learning.

Renew, rethink, redevelop

Work, banking, retail, dining, entertainment, fitness and education cover a broad array of commercial real estate assets, many utilizing large or purpose-built locations. Unfortunately, the pandemic has greatly impacted the current use and state of many real estate assets. As the disassociation between “activity” and “the room where it happens” accelerates in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, owners, operators and investors need to undertake analysis to figure out what a technology-driven path forward will look like.