In this blog post, we are going to emphasize on the second habit of highly effective management committees to always communicate. Communication can break all barriers and this is what effective management committees realize vs. the ineffective ones. We talked about Habit 1: How effective management committees’ work as team in our blog post last week. Read more……

Pointers to keep in mind for the committees for following an effective communication plan:

Do not be secretive about your committee operations: Keeping the residents updated through periodic updates, via newsletters, mails and notices etc. is always a good idea. Larger the community is, more is the need for a solid communication system. Some committees create a committee role especially for drafting notices and keeping the residents of their community updated. Sharing information and communication with residents about your operations for the welfare of the apartment creates a positive image of the committee in the mind of the residents.

Create a formal grievance redressal system: In most apartments, complaints are resolved only when residents start making a huge hue and cry about a particular problem. Don’t let the residents come to you with a grim face about how their complaints have not been resolved. Instead, set a formal process to log and resolve complaints. Use help of technology to address complaints. Essentially, what apartment management committees require is a system with an automatic escalation mechanism. This system sends out an alert to the responsible committee member whenever there is a breach of stipulated time to address the complaint by the service staff or the estate manager.  The automatic escalation mechanism makes the committee members aware whether the complaint has been taken care of or not and reduces one’s dependence solely on the estate manager for the checking the complaint status and increases the satisfaction level of the residents.

Maintain constant communication with residents at the time of crisis: At the time of crisis, in instances such as BESCOM switching off the power, breakdown of the lift, and shortage of water supply keep the residents informed about the problem and constantly communicate with them via SMS/emails etc. There are three advantages that you may derive from this –

a) The residents will stop calling you and you will be able to focus on how to resolve the crisis.

b)The residents will be assured that someone is working on their problem. Residents are not looking for immediate solutions. However, they do need to be ensured time to time that someone is looking at their problem.

c) You may get unexpected help from residents to solve your crisis, for an instance, a resident may have some influential contacts or may know a vendor who can help you solve the crisis.

Share fact-based updates with residents: Larger the complex, the more comments/questions you will be receiving from the residents. Do not try to answer each and every comment/query. This is a very time consuming task and often leads to futile discussions. Collate all comments, queries data and send only fact-based updates to residents collectively. This will ease you from the pain of answering each and every question of the residents and keep the residents satisfied that their answers have been answered with stated facts.

Always remember communication is the key to any and every problem.

Do let us know your views on this. Log onto www.apnacomplex.com regularly for the post on the next habit of effective management committees.