Could The POD Model Be The Future?

Shifts in the workforce are bringing about change in staffing to meet demand.

By Rob Buffington

Staffing is changing in the HOA industry – no one is surprised to hear this. HOA management has always been a high turnover industry. As people continue to leave and positions get harder to fill, the landscape is shifting dramatically to meet the growing need.

Historically, there have been two schools of thought on how duties ought to be divided: the portfolio model and the departmental model.

Portfolio Model

In the portfolio model, the HOA manager is required to wear a lot of hats. As the community manager, they need to be the friendly face of the management company. They need to attend meetings, settle disputes, and be approachable.

When it comes time to present financials, they need to be detail-oriented and know how to read and interpret financial statements. With maintenance coordination, they switch gears and have to be aggressive and follow up with vendors, understand the various scopes of work, and, have a thick skin.

They need to be an expert administrator so they can track all the meetings, filing deadlines, maintenance work, recurring services, and amenities. They should always be in the office to answer calls and emails.

They should also be on-site to meet with vendors and talk to the board. And this is just for work, never mind the various personal duties they need to budget energy for to keep their home lives as humans running. Many portfolio managers find themselves finishing up work afterhours and losing their work/life balance.

The best-case scenario is that you hire someone with three of those skills. You will never find someone that is good at all of those, unless they’re managing a tiny portfolio or have been in place for ten years.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that one person can effectively do those things without burning out. Here’s the catch: what happens when they leave or get promoted? Even if they stay forever, what happens if they want to take a vacation? All of that information is in their head, so if they change jobs, get sick, or take a vacation, mistakes and unhappy clients result.

Departmental Model

In the departmental model, different departments handle different functions. Your accounting department answers homeowner questions about why the fee wasn’t waived when they talked to the property manager at the last meeting about it.

The maintenance department has to answer questions about why ABC roofing is doing the work when they decided to table it at the board meeting. This can result in increased frustration and higher customer turnover. Each department sees only their role and data, and it falls to the client to piece it all together and ensure each department is up to date on what’s happening.

Two Models in a POD

Fortunately, more and more companies are pivoting to a hybrid of these two styles that I call the POD model. This model calls for the splitting up of duties like a departmental model but retains the personal touch of the portfolio model.

In this model, the community manager is the main point of contact for the community but is supported by maintenance, accounting, and customer service staff. Sometimes, the support staff talks to the homeowners, but most of the time, they pass the information back to the community manager. This is so they can appear to be superhuman and help the community feel that they are getting that personal touch.

In addition, when staff turnover occurs or a staff member needs to take an extended absence (vacation, parental leave, etc.), the institutional knowledge is not readily lost, because there are multiple support personnel who have helped service this portfolio. This makes everyone’s job easier, because they have more people they can rely on and a narrower, more organized focus.

The POD model also reduces the number of employees that need to be in the office in person compared to the portfolio model. Since there are positions that never need to go into the field, it increases the number of positions that can be allowed to go remote.

Aside from being more compliant with the ever-changing COVID requirements, this allows companies to widen their hiring radius, hiring the best talent for the best price regardless of whether or not they’re able to commute. This in turn makes the job more attractive to applicants. It also frees up more cash in the budget to raise wages for key employees, such as the community managers.

In the end, the goal should be to reduce the number of tasks that each person is doing. Community managers can only last so long as a jack of all trades before the job frustration increases to the point where they feel the need to change companies and start over.

In the POD model, we see happier and more organized employees. Their productivity and efficiency increases, and turnover declines as your key employees feel more supported and less chaotic. It also gives employees a better chance to connect with their communities and reduces mistakes by training specialists rather than generalists.

The change from departmental or portfolio management to the POD model is not a hard one to make, and it yields lasting improvements to the level of service your company is able to provide and the quality of work and life that your employees experience.

In the POD model, we see happier and more organized employees. Their productivity and efficiency increases, and turnover declines as your key employees feel more supported and less chaotic.

Rob Buffington

Rob Buffington is the Owner of East West Building Works and President of Gordian Staffing, both of which are located in San Jose.