Taking away all promotion opportunities
Pros
Friendliness and belonging with coworkers at the property, beautiful apartments can be a cool work environment, OK benefits. Company invests in technology and wants to be cutting edge.
Cons
When I started at equity a few years ago I was excited about the opportunities for growth I saw at the company. As an LC who eventually wants to become a manager I looked at the few dozen properties in my area and saw room to grow and hopefully get promoted with hard work and the right training. If you work in property management you know some properties (bigger more challenging ones) are meant for experienced managers and other properties (usually smaller ones) are for beginners where someone new to the leadership role can learn the ropes before taking on a huge building where they would get overwhelmed and burn out way too fast. These small properties are important for workforce development for this reason. Well since I started, every time managers of a “beginner property” leave their job, instead of hiring a new one they just combine that property with another property. This has happened with 3 or 4 buildings in my market that I can think of just off the top of my head. A raise and title change will then go to the manager presumably for the added workload. The LCs who now have to work at not 1 but 2 properties do not get a raise…commission does not count, I could lease more in a full day at my home property than I can split between two properties). LCs see no base pay raise for now having to manage 2 books of business instead of 1, and having to memorize the ins and outs of 2 buildings instead of 1. It is seriously additional work for the leasing staff to now be responsible for 2 buildings yet only the person at the top gets a raise... Equity saves massively on payroll and benefits by doing this. And at the same time they’re removing the chance for an assistant manager or an LC to take the next step in their career. I used to be able to name 8 or 9 beginner properties. Now I can name maybe 4? With 2 of them being merged right now as we speak. There is no place for us anymore. The small properties are being combined, and the big properties we will never get hired for because we are not ready and have no CM experience…you see the problem here. Again this has happened three or four times in just a few years….Every time is a punch to the gut for all of us who want to move up. Based on conversations I’ve had, this is their strategy now. The way of the future. I don’t know what their long term strategy is training their existing workforce…especially because they are now automating and centralizing so many parts of the leasing job, it’s obvious they want to get rid of us LCs. Which is fine because I don’t want to be an LC forever… but how exactly am I supposed to become a manager now? Equity avoids layoffs (they know the optics…) but they will lose people via attrition and not rehire, forcing the remaining staff to take on a higher workload. It is a sneaky way of reducing payroll and they think we don’t all notice or discuss it. We do. Everyone is afraid to speak up publicly including myself. Plus we know nothing will come of it….am I supposed to call the action hotline and report management for doing exactly what corporate wants them to do…? They know what they’re doing. HR knows the drill too. There’s no one to go to other than Glassdoor… The residents of these merged buildings also suffer. Now there is one manager and half the property presence the residents are used to. Fewer staff means things get missed and screwed up and the residents get a reduced level of service. And guess who has to deal with them when they're angry...not upper management, that's for sure. I get it from a money lens but as an employee in what is basically an “up or out” situation, there’s no ladder up anymore…so I guess you are forcing me out.
