I worked at an RK Property for almost a year. I personally feel like they did not prepare me for my role. RK DOES NOT train their employees on the basic fundamentals of leasing or fair housing. I received maybe 2 hours of training on my first day and then I had to watch some videos later on. I received my training from my coworkers and I had to learn what they had learned from working at other properties. My coworker had to create her own reports and templates because RK does not provide them with anything. She ended up creating her own from a template from her old property. They have a marketing specialist who does not do marketing and it is basically up to the property to do their marketing and social media marketing. The marketing specialist basically orders supplies and will occasionally post on Facebook and Instagram with little to no caption, spelling errors and no tagging/hashtags. Our leasing team created some of our own social media platforms and did our own outreach. When we offered some ideas, they were turned down. During COVID, there were no clear guidelines that were set or followed. We had our pool open with a maximum limit and it was up to the leasing staff to monitor it. This included weekends when there was only 1 staff member present during a busy leasing season. This lead to a major issue where residents were not following the Governor’s guidelines and the properties pool could have been shut down and fined. Instead of coming up with a solution or temporarily hiring a pool monitor, we had to shut down our pool. We also only started doing temperature checks in September. They also had us send out a letter to our residents stating that due to COVID-19, they would be waiving any fees associated with rent but that NEVER happened. My biggest complaint was pay. I found out recently that I was severely underpaid for my job by $3 an hour and other companies will pay you more for commission. With RK Properties they pay you $75 for commission and my regional would occasionally pay us more if you got more than 3 leases on a weekend. This was an incentive to encourage us to get more leases however I did not always receive my incentive. They have sign an offer letter that states you will be paid hourly and overtime. Once you start working you will find out that you are basically salary as they always pay you the same amount each pay period and do not accept overtime. I have worked so many hours overtime and it was never paid out “because thats not how RK works”. In the offer letter it also states that you will start receiving vacation and sick days after a year of working there and they start giving you sick and vacation days right away. In the handbook, it also stated that on certain holidays we would have off and then our regional would have us work and came up with the excuse that it was “an old handbook” even though it was from 2019. Last year my community director had to work Christmas Eve last minute due to this. They always promised gift cards if you got so many leases or did well on mystery shoppers but it literally took me 5 months to receive a gift card and I never received my other one. I kept asking my assistant regional and regional and was ignored. I was always finding and reporting errors in the lease and there was no resolution. If your occupancy is not doing well, be prepared to have micro-managed and have everything you do be scrutinized. You will be placed under a microscope. You can get over 15 leases in a month with this company and be told that you are not working hard enough. During the pandemic I had 17 leases in a month and I was never praised by corporate. Instead I was told that I needed to be doing more to get the occupancy up. My work was not valued with this company. When my mother passed away I was expected to come to work the next day. I broke my lease to move onsite. When I left RK Properties I was given a 3 day notice to either move out or start a lease. I had other coworkers who lived on site with me and my regional threatened to take away our discount if we did not get our occupancy up. My regional also wanted the employees who lived on site to work for free at times because they were giving us a 20% discount. The leasing team that was there when I first started is no longer there. There is a high turn over rate due to poor corporate management.
