8 minute read
SHOW ME THE MONEY
By Lynette Bertrand, Director of Marketing & Communications
In today’s job market, it’s become increasingly hard to recruit. With record low unemployment rates, there are more jobs available than workers to fill them. In addition, the pandemic drastically changed workers’ job expectations. Add to that all-time high inflation and it’s clear that compensation and benefits are key puzzle pieces to not only hiring but retaining staff.
“There are so many openings right now, it’s competitive,” said Kevin Chudy, CAMEx, CCAM, Executive Director of Woodbridge Village Association in Irvine, a large-scale community that employs up to 250 staff in the busy summer months. “The bigger issue for us is hiring. We have a pleasant environment so we are able to retain pretty well.”
Chudy’s association provides all homeowner services and maintenance in-house, so his positions are wide ranging and include everything from lifeguard and swim instructors to recreational director, pool technicians, carpenters, accountants,human resources and maintenance staff.
To remain competitive Chudy researches pay rates. He recently purchased CACM’s 2022 Compensation & Benefits Study, which provides average salary and benefits for California community management professionals and staff.
He also reaches out to other large scale managers in Southern California to ask how they determine compensation.
Chudy says pay has become increasingly important in attracting new hires. “You have to be realistic about compensation,” he said. “Paying less and not having employees or poor employees doesn’t do much good.”
REMOTE WORK & RETENTION
According to CACM’s 2022 Compensation and Benefits Study the reported average annual salary of a community association manager in 2021 was $73,091. That’s up from $67,553 in 2020. The study also noted that almost all employees are provided health insurance, and more than 80% report that employee dental and vision are also available. Employee life insurance is offered to roughly 70% and long-term and short-term disability are made available to about half of community association professionals in California.
One of the findings that stood out from the last time CACM conducted this study in 2013 was the remote/virtual work benefit, which has a much higher proportion–almost 90%--reporting using this benefit when it is available.
Margo Crummack, CAMEx, CCAM-ND, CEO of Crummack Huseby Property Management, Inc. in Lake Forest, said providing remote work as an option has helped her retain staff.
“We are one of the most aggressive companies when it comes to remote,” she said. “Seventy-five percent of my staff is remote. We were getting ready to do that before Covid. But that provided the opportunity and we got rid of our secondary suite. We were able to condense and set everyone up with the same technology at home and clients have been perfectly fine with it.”
She acknowledges that implementing remote work at her company, which employs 50, was not as arduous as it would be for a larger firm with hundreds of employees. Still, that meant gearing up for the change and setting up a system that involved technology changes.
“We seek results. As long as client satisfaction is high, we don’t have any issues,” she said. “Butts in seats—I’m not a believer in that. If you trust people and treat them fairly and pay them a fair wage for a reasonable amount of work, it’s a win-win.
“This has been a global change,” Crummack said about remote work. “It just happens to work extremely well in our business model.”
Crummack points out the importance of work/life balance and giving employees the flexibility they need to manage their lives without feeling guilty–and driving less is part of that. It reduces stress and potentially health issues related to that.
For Paul Collins, CAMEx, CCAM, employee commutes is also something he considers. The CEO of Collins Management, ACMC said the reason he has multiple offices–in Hercules, Walnut Creek and Brentwood–is to keep commuting times down to a minimum.
“We’ve done a lot as far as decreasing the amount of commute times,” he said, “including having a hybrid model where a percent of time is working from home. The managers and assistant managers are able to work from home about half the time.”
Collins said he values the teamwork that happens in person, which is why he hasn’t gone 100 percent remote.
“We don’t want to lose the team aspect,” he said. “They need to interact and you need to have the ability to lean on colleagues for training and support and flow of information. But at same time, we recognize times have changed and if you are too strict on the work schedule, how the managers work, to me it’s hard to retain talent.”
Onsite general managers noted that remote work isn’t an option for their staff.
DATA MATTERS, SO DOES PAY
When it comes to determining compensation, executives point to the importance of data in driving those decisions. They look for industry reports like the one published by CACM. They consult with peers and colleagues. They look for national data. And some look for local data as well.
“I look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics website,” said Collins. “They have the rate of inflation for the Bay Area and I go by that. During budget season, I say, ‘Hey, this is the CPI (Consumer Price Index) for the Bay Area and this is the increase we will be asking for. We do our increases in line with CPI and the managers get paid on a commission structure. The other employees, like administrative or accounting, I give them a CPI increase every year.”
Collins said it’s important to keep compensation in pace with inflation because otherwise, employees essentially get a pay cut as cost of living goes up and are likely to “jump ship” for another better-paying job.
Marla Miller, CCAM, General Manager of Niguel Shores Community Association in Dana Point, says her HR committee looks at various data points including surveys by CACM, CAI, CMIA and even city governments. Her community has a lot of architectural work and issues so she has an architectural manager on staff to deal strictly with compliance.
“We do a lot of research,” Miller said. “You sometimes have to look outside of the box or industry.”
“In my community, I think pay is the most important,” she added. “Currently, we’re looking at 6 percent budget and possibly a mid-year increase of another 3 percent, and workload has been a major consideration.” Miller said her association has a staff of 10 who service a nearly 1,000-unit community.
She says she re-evaluates job descriptions periodically and adjusts pay accordingly. Since many of her employees have long tenures, by adjusting their job roles, she’s able to provide a raise regularly. Otherwise, it’s easy to hit a salary cap on most titles.
Chudy of Woodbridge Village Association agrees. He said compensation has always been important, but now even more. He says raises are provided from a merit pool–and that pool of money is distributed to staff as fairly as possible based on performance.
“But there’s a strong possibility we will propose both–a cost of living increase across the board and a merit pool as well, which is substantially more than what the community has experienced in the past,” Chudy said.
FLEXIBILITY, TRAINING & OTHER PERKS
All executives interviewed for this article noted that flexibility is crucial for retention and hiring of staff. Flexibility in terms of hourly schedule, remote work, number of communities managed and types, and paid time off.
Providing training and support also goes a long way toward keeping stress and burnout– especially for community managers–at bay. Often, leaders say they step in when their support is needed, like vetting accounts and limiting bad client behavior or addressing it before it becomes a bigger problem. Sometimes, that means getting rid of a client rather than losing a valuable employee.
“People think that [community] management is the game, but it’s not, it’s the talent,” Collins said. “Our focus will be recruitment and retention of the best and brightest and that will be the mission of my company. As a side benefit, we should have happy clients.”
To lighten the load for his community managers, Collins has added project managers to his payroll. Coupled with technology, these tactics have improved efficiency.
Company birthday parties, holiday lunches, happy hours, holiday bonuses–activities to increase the fun and engagement–help build community and loyalty while showing appreciation.Find ways to honor and recognize your employees for a job well done and reap the rewards of a loyal and tenured crew.
Lynette Bertrand, Director of Marketing and Communications, CACM
