Property Management is a profession which constantly works to better accompany its clients. By building on experience and reacting thoughtfully and quickly to whatever might be thrown at us, we are able to evolve and develop new ways of supporting the operations of a building, for all of the stakeholders involved.
The strength of Property Management lies in its ability to understand the varying rules, legislations and trends within the real estate industry and translate these into high-quality service. This means mastering a portfolio of buildings, whilst also understanding each individual building in a way that takes into account its specificities.
By ensuring a solid set of fundamentals that we can refer to, we are able to further build specific, tailor-made services that can be offered to our clients. In this way, we are able to support our clients in the ordinary day-to day operations of a building with solid and reliable fundamentals, and also in the extraordinary strategic moments, like repositioning, refurbishment of the properties when we can provide adapted services that respond intuitively to the challenges of our clients.
A crucial part of our job is understanding the impact that various actions have on the client. So whilst we are able to manage processes and ensure compliance with various regulations, we have been ultimately challenged to managing properties in a broader, more holistic way.
Why come back to the office?
There’s no denying that the health crisis changed our relationship with the office. With employees suddenly being given the opportunity to work from their garden and juggle home and work life more seamlessly, it seemed that getting people back to the workplace had to come with significant advantages.
Property Management has as such been able to work with landlords to understand the services and needs of the tenants, those which gives them more reason to come back to the office. Creating a human-focused way of working means putting in place the services unique to a building that result in the tenants finding pleasure in being in the office once again. Combining digital tools, ESG actions, thought-out office layout and offerings such as a gym or a work canteen, give employees something which they can’t find in the home office. Ultimately, the people inside the buildings expect to be supported and to have a genuine experience within the buildings that we manage.
Our approach should be collaborative
By providing such a wide-range of service offers for clients, we as Property Managers are required to work with the many stakeholders who manage the operations of a building from different points of view. What can therefore happen is that communication is not as fluid as it could be and each party takes care of their individual area, with a lack of information sharing or collaboration. This is where various tools come into play, which allow for the sharing of information to be achieved more easily. Tools and organisational models such as IKAM (International Key Account Management) work to bring together both an overall vision of a portfolio combined with knowledge of a building’s individualities, whilst our data visualisation and data intelligence tool, PDI (Property Data Insight) breaks down silos and communication barriers and allows for a building to be managed in a collaborative manner.
This has a substantial benefit for the clients, as the Property Manager provides an entry point to how the building is managed, allowing problems and issues to be solved more quickly, thanks in part to a 360° vision of what is happening inside a building. This as such solidifies the relationship between us and the client. The collective implication of each party is an essential tool within the Property Manager’s kit and ensures that a human approach is applied to each building, an approach which at its very core is about impact.
Achieving positive impact
Having this increased awareness for each asset gives us the opportunity to pre-empt problems that tenants might have within a building, before they go to alert the Property Manager. This idea of understanding the importance of employee and tenant experience with the impact of our actions allow us to support our clients in facing their economic and environmental challenges, like a truly strategic partner.
This kind of positive impact can be achieved in various ways, but one key factor is obtaining user feedback. This is why tools such as NPS (Net Promoter Score) measurement are so crucial to what we do. How can we create positive impact? By constantly striving to improve, to adjust and to satisfy. How can we achieve this if we don’t have actual feedback from the actions put in place? This is a vital way of understanding if the Human Estate method which we apply to the buildings that we manage generates results.
Progress through understanding feedback
Human Estate is a method which seeks to make progress by positive impact, it is as such a long-term vision of what we do throughout everything we do; interactions between various actors, the understanding of the challenges of our clients and the objectives set for a building, whether that be environmental or social. It is in this way that landlords and tenants find the value within their assets.
Responding to the different requirements of a building is one of our strengths, something which is supported by our My Services, Make your building unique offer, which is a set of complementary expertise and services such as Building Consultancy, Hospitality Management, Project Management, Fire & safety prevention and Environmental Performance that can be applied to different assets.
Understanding the services that we put in place is crucial to how we continue to work, which is why we prioritise the gathering of feedback. It is thus what makes Human Estate so important that we focus on understanding client feedback in order to mirror what we are doing with what is needed, both from an owner and occupier perspective.
This leads us to be considered as a company, rather than a collection of different departments who each play their part in the service delivery. Pooling our collective knowledge, expertise and experience gives us the advantage of truly being able to cater to each client and building’s needs. As such, we must embrace the feedback that we receive, good and bad, and put in place the necessary actions to refocus our thinking of buildings to be more impactful and ultimately, human.
