How to Empower Community Association Managers to Be More Productive

April 27, 2021

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Community association managers are vital to the overall success of an association management company. After all, they’re responsible for communicating with boards, maintaining properties, and managing finances.

Unfortunately, community managers are often stuck dealing with tedious, manual tasks that take up significant amounts of time.

So, how can management companies relieve that stress and empower managers to be more productive?

Here are a few ways to help:

Improve communications

Community managers spend a lot of time fielding calls from board members, homeowners and vendors. With that in mind, it’s important for management companies to consistently send communications on updates, so managers can accurately respond to
requests and deliver quality service. Even something as simple as keeping the website updated with important information can help reduce calls and questions.

Management companies can also leverage communication software to easily communicate online with residents and board members. Often, these systems can connect with others, such as accounting, to streamline processes.

Create more efficient back-office processes

Optimizing back-office processes can free managers from mundane, manual work and enable them to spend more time on strategic efforts.

Think about the resale process, which requires managers to provide accurate and timely information, meeting strict and ever-changing guidelines. The process is both time consuming and tedious when accounting for the quantity over time.

Consider optimizing it by implementing a resale documentation software that provides a central location for all documents, simplifying the complex tasks of disclosing information. The software also gives managers control over processing, delivery and
record retention required to meet and exceed state regulations.

Additionally, the bill pay process could be creating inefficiencies, specifically paperbased accounts payable (AP), which takes up valuable time, money and resources.

Optimizing AP provides security, control, and visibility within the bill pay process and gives managers the ability to assure boards that their finances are in reliable hands.

It also eliminates paper and the stress associated with tracking, monitoring, reporting
and audits.

Focus on board relationships

The relationship between management company and association is central to the overall success of managers.

It’s important for management companies to be clear with managers about roles and responsibilities in terms of communicating with boards and to provide the tools to stay organized and well-informed about organizational goals and challenges. From more
efficient back-office processes to establishing transparency, the success of board relationships begins within the management company.

When managers are empowered to communicate relevant information through efficient
processes, boards will feel comfortable and confident, right from the start.

Build trust

Finally, managers need to feel valued within the organization. It’s important to listen to
and help solve their daily challenges.

Are they having trouble maintaining positive vendor relationships? Help establish processes to ensure payments are consistently made on time.

Or, maybe a manager’s time is being eaten up by outdated processes? Consider automating manual tasks, so that they can focus on the bigger picture. Implementing changes to streamline tedious tasks can build trust with managers, while maximizing
organizational productivity.

Open communication, thoughtful processes, and trustworthy relationships can give managers the confidence they need to succeed within the organization. And when managers feel empowered, daily operations run more efficiently. It’s a win-win.