Work-life balance, technology, and accountability are just a few of the topics that are part of the mandatory 30 hours of training that each member of the team is required to participate in on an annual basis. Often taking the form of an early morning breakfast meeting with a well-thought-out and timed agenda, the training usually takes under an hour. The meat of the topic at hand is peppered with mentions of staff birthdays, work anniversaries, tips on implementing new strategies, wow stories, and upcoming events throughout.

These biweekly meetings serve as stepping stones to creating a workplace culture that strives to always be the best both inside and outside of the office. While specifically geared to providing our members with the best experience possible when using our property management services, these training sessions are also crucial to fostering a cohesive and collaborative team unit.

In our much needed work-life balance session, we learned about effective ways to manage interruptions and the importance of self-care in a world that is always on. Our accountability module began with an honest self-assessment and real-world examples so we could see what it looks like when employees do and don’t take ownership of their behavior and contribution to the company’s success. The technology training functions as a tool to both unite a multi-generational workforce and educate all employees, no matter their role, in the intricacies of our custom built application. 

Consequently, the beauty of an internal training program lies within the management’s flexibility to customize the schedule and subjects as issues arise. This ensures that no problem goes unobserved without a full discourse on why it happened in the first place and how to prevent it from occurring again in the future. Furthermore, we place a great deal of importance on our presentation. Keeping our employees engaged in the matter at hand is essential to the success of the program. 

It is our mission to continue to be the premier property management company providing top-quality, unsurpassed service. Of course, etiquette and emotional intelligence are fundamentals to achieving this goal. We’ve found that the three most important things to our members are trust, professionalism, and clear communication. It is our firmly held belief that the basics should never be overlooked: be polite, clean up after yourself, and always tell the truth. 

Brenna Barr is the director of operations for Home Maintenance Organization, Newton, Mass.