Create training programs
One of the key drivers to AEC’s success has been the creation and development of its AEC Academy for Career Development. The academy is a tool that Friedman uses to continuously train and educate his employees.
“Our AEC Academy is made up of experienced instructors who go out into the field in each of our markets and teach these skills and teach these tricks of the trade to employees,” Friedman says.
The first step in creating a successful training program is to have the right people overseeing it. All of the instructors in the AEC Academy have several years — sometimes 15 or 20 — of experience in the industry and have worked their way up the ranks in their given specialty area, such as accounting, property management, leasing consultant or maintenance. Program leaders need to have the experience of doing everything themselves in their given expertise area, and they also need to have a solid knowledge about other facets of your business so that employees will respect them and what they say.
“It really gains a tremendous amount of respect when the people in the career development academy are able to walk into a property and they can do any job on that property,” Friedman says. “The best leasing consultant and the best manager may not be able to necessarily change a washer on a sink faucet, but they certainly know how much it should cost to make that repair and how much time it should take.
“When you have that respect from the people you’re trying to educate, that goes a long way in terms of building a rapport and respect.”
Your program leaders also need to be the people who most buy in to your company and its mission, and they need to be passionate and energetic about the business.
“You can’t imagine the energy of the leaders of the AEC Academy,” Friedman says. “They love what they do, they’re fun to be around, they’ll dress up in costume, and they’ll have spirit contests.”
Once you have these kinds of people, then you have to figure out what they’re going to train the rest of your employees on. AEC’s training program is made up of two different types of courses — set training and electives. Set training consists of the core elements of the business, and these courses are critical for new employees. Then there are elective courses that change depending on what’s happening in a specific market.
“I believe it was Warren Buffett who said that when the tide’s in, you can’t tell who’s swimming without a bathing suit, but when the tide goes out, you can see who’s swimming without a bathing suit,” Friedman says. “So in our business, when the market is very strong, it’s harder to tell what property and maybe who at the property isn’t performing like they should be because the market is strong … but the instructors who go out to the property, by interacting with people, may be able to tell if there’s special needs, so those are the electives.”
In order to determine the elective training courses, academy leaders have to know what’s going on in the market and at the competition. Before visiting a property, they will “shop” the competition to see what features they offer, what their service is like and check out the curb appeal. By shopping the top two or three competitors in that given market, it gives the instructors a solid basis to compare their own properties against. They can then go to their own properties and compare, say, their leasing consultant’s approach toward a prospective resident compared to the competition’s approach. When the instructor sees gaps between the property and the competition or the property and the market, then he or she creates a training program for the employees at that property.
“The instructors have to change that curriculum based on the markets and the demographics and what’s going on in each of them,” Friedman says.
When instructors travel, they typically will spend a couple of days in each market, and they spend nearly all of their time on the road. But as they travel and train, they also have to keep their customers in mind, so when you create your training program, be sure to conduct classes or workshops during times of the month or year that don’t interrupt your customers’ schedules. For example, in the apartment business, most customers move in or move out at the beginning and the end of the month, so instructors try not to schedule major training sessions during this time so employees can fully devote their time to the customers.
