Topic: Our lead maintenance gave notice today. I asked if he was unhappy.

Our lead maintenance gave notice today. I asked if he was unhappy. He said that he is happy with his job. I asked if he was unhappy with his coworkers. He said that he likes his coworkers. I asked if he had another job. He said no. I asked why he wanted to leave. He said that he is just very stressed out.
Our property is highly highly ranked by JD Turner and our ranking is due in large part to our maintenance team's dedication and hard work. Unless a part needs to be ordered, all work orders are completed the same day that they are reported. We expect a lot from our team and our resident's are accustomed to exceptional service. Maintaining such a high level of service is very stressful.
We have a good team in place. Everyone works together to complete tasks and everyone gets along. It is very nice to have a team without friction. It only takes one bad apple to spoil the pie and I do not relish the thought of breaking in a new lead.
I understand that I am extremely demanding on myself and on my team; however, I make it a point to thank each coworker for their hard work every day before they leave.
After talking to our lead today, I think that what he is really needing is some well-deserved vacation time to unwind and spend time with his family. Hopefully, he will decide to stay.

Update: He decided to stay! YAY!

This industry is more demanding than ever. We're humans, not robots!!

I can usually tell when my MS is burning himself out - I’ve worked with him for so long I can just tell in the way he speaks when he’s doing too much. I then tell him he is to take an extra day or two off and turn off his phone. We’ll handle it. He comes back refreshed and ready to go. We have to take care of our people at the end of the day. I’d rather my team take a day off and come back refreshed and ready to work than burn out and something slip through the cracks.
Hope your Lead comes back refreshed and feeling good about things again!

Hopefully a break will help, but it's not a long term solution to constant stress.

There's something he's not telling you--the real reason he's unhappy.

If you have high load type positions like this with a never ending pipeline then you need to be able to tag team so that one person can completely check out for a while. Take a month off go to Bali and know they have the support to no need to take a call or answer an email.

Typically in order to make this work both positions have to be able to complete actual work orders as well as the position doesn't inherently need two leads, only organizing the work so when they aren't then they are completing actual work as well. With the right culture and people everyone will have a high degree of satisfaction, lower levels will see their bosses down in the trenches working along side them more frequently. A great lead will actually like doing some of the work as long as the organizational pieces are there.

You put two leads in place, probably drop a grunt position, give them a shit ton of autonomy to manage their own schedules cooperatively without oversight. Oh boy will you see some magic happen. For the right people, you've just created a position that will be highly sought after and everyone in the entire company will be envious of. If they are smart and manage it will together it will provide them so much freedom and personal space that will balance out the stress.

It is going to piss off the other divisions of the company though until they figure out how to structure accordingly. Nothing like the leads of the department being able to check out for a solid 30 days at a time if they want, and still have their division run like a well oiled machine. Careful you might completely change the culture of the company and create one of the most desired places for people to work with an incredible retention!

what is he telling you? That he needs it to end. Think of your job for a moment... you lease out your last available apartment, you pause to celebrate and somebody puts in their notice to vacate, and you lease that out, you pause to celebrate and somebody puts in their notice to vacate, and you lease that out, you pause to celebrate and somebody puts in their notice to vacate.
At some point you just want it to stop for a moment. You don't want to take time off, you want the motion to stop for a moment.
Maintenance and the trades have an amazing benefit to their job that keeps them going... they can get something done. They can start, change, and stop. They can see, touch, and feel their accomplishments. When there is no end, when there are no moments to celebrate, it's start, change, start, change, start, change, start, change, start, change, start, change, until it all blurs together. There is no accomplishment to the job. So what do they eventually want to do? Stop, stop, stop. It has to be "Start, Change, Stop" or no matter what you do, you're going to burn them up and out.
How you handle this is different in each case. A few things I do may lead you to your own solutions...
1. Insist that they report to you when a task is completed. They start the task, they change something, they full STOP.
2. Parts on order is a start, change................................, stop. Too many delayed changes leaves too many incomplete tasks. Have parts on hand, and if not, have the your maintenance tech order the parts, be the contact when the parts come in, and take responsibility for it. That is now Start, Change, Change, Change, Stop. But "change" is singular or plural. No matter how many steps; change is change. So in actuality if they are actively involved, it's really only start, change, stop. My maintenance tech thinks I have him order parts because it's too confusing if I try to do it. That's not the whole truth. He needs to be involved in the process.
I can go on forever, but I'm sure you get the point with this and every burnout scenario. Some people start a project well but never really get going. Some people are really hesitant about starting a project but once they're rolling, they're rock stars, and some people can never seem to complete those last few steps. Hesitancy to start, change, or stop. There has to be a clearly define "start", Change", and "Stop" every time or people will just start spinning. No matter how well you think they are doing, they feel like they can't accomplish anything and they're not making a difference.

I think you said it perfectly, there has to be a point that it just stops. Many of our teams have been through us through COVID where we asked them to do even more to reduce expenses, then we come out of that to one of the biggest booms in leasing I have seen in nearly 25 years. The cycle has just not stopped. I have been with my company for right at 11 years, going nonstop from one community to the next, start, clean up, and move to the next project, constantly; And I am done. There has been no time to slow the pace, just settle in and enjoy the wins.

At the end of the day, if you give maintenance that trip to Lowe's or home Depot to get the part it gives them 30 min to clear their head. Trust me I know, this is coming from an owner operator that does both the management and the maintenance some times!

I also think he isn’t telling you the whole story. Have you worked with him a long time?

Feeling burnt out after working all through Covid and a company take over.. yup. I’m giving myself a mini staycation

Sometimes you can be in the best job but it does not fulfil your soul. This industry can suck the life out of you. You cannot continue to give it your all when you have nothing left to give

As a super, I know how he feels. Alotta people don’t realize we are the 24/7 position, whether we’re on call that week or not. I’ve had property managers unplug and disconnect and turn their phones off. We unfortunately can’t do that. We have to be available all hours of the day and night for emergencies if ours guys have a problem they can’t handle. I haven’t relaxed or been fishing in 4 years. It’s not the job, it’s not the people(mostly not), it’s the stress of never being able to truly relax away from work. It’s that being at the grocery store with a buggy full of groceries and your phone going off. It’s that being out to dinner with your family and your phone going off. It’s that being in the backyard playing with your kids and your phone going off. Any other time and constantly anticipating your phone going off… I get him, I do.

Money and vacation time is always the answer lol

Well… If you have worked side-x-side with this person for years, a truly integrated partnership - you would have seen this coming. There’s more to this story.
I wouldn’t call him back to work though. He quit once, he will quit again.

There’s a chance he needs more tools to help run his side of the business. Maybe it’s a good idea to empower him to find a good way to automate part of his job to relieve whatever repetitive mundane tasks that are happening. A lot of time the burnout comes from those places but it’s not recognized until explored. If you want to keep him, then a change in the operation may be the answer. You can explore that together for empathy but let him vet the solution to empower him further.

Sometimes it’s just a refreshed view of the operation that creates the energy.

This makes me sad but I get it 100%. The demands of the job have changed a lot over the years and the bar continues to be set higher for work-load and projects yet the one thing that hasn’t changed is the number of team members the property is budgeted to have based on community size (# of units). One way to relieve stress at work without lowering standards is to have more team members. This takes a little off everyone’s plate and makes time to celebrate the wins and give ourselves the mental break we need and allows more time for vacation etc…
*just my opinion but something has to change before we lose all of our outstanding team members to other less stressful industries

Perhaps you should alleviate some of the stress. Assign more responsibility to an Assistant Maintenance Technician. If it's in the budget, take him off on-call and hire a service or rotate with a sister property so he is on call less. It's great to gave an award winning standard and team, but stress can adversely affect health and he seems to be at a place where even employment is not important enough.

I have one part time maintenance tech between 2 properties. I never take any time off and when I do I am still on call. I get how he feels! I asked for today and tomorrow off but my reports and payroll are still due and need submitted. I am still on call for emergencies.

We also have great teams, but did a TOTALLY anonymous maintenance survey with specific questions and I must say I learned a lot. I made it a point to go around and make sure they knew it was anonymous and that I REALLY wanted the truth. We gave out gift cards for each completed survey to Chick-fil-A. When we got the results in we acted on as many items as possible in as possible in the 5 questions we ask. Today we have much happier teams

People don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses..

They won't ever tell you the truth you have to get it from someone they trust.

Does he schedule PTO time? If they are not taking their PTO time, burn out is inevitable.

You need to hire another Maintenance staff member. That's exactly what your star employee just told you. You wanna keep him, there's your answer. Quality customer service isn't provided by skeleton crews doing their best to keep things running. Staff fully and comfortably and you'll keep your best people. Don't... and you won't.

Good for him to know when enough is enough and to recognize he needs to do something for his personal well-being. Please let him know he is valued, but don’t pressure him or make him feel guilty for paying attention to his own needs.

He probably also needs a helper. I recently added a full time position to our property higher rents justified the higher demand.

Stress could be from too many hours, not enough pay for his bills, maybe even things at home. If you can help solve anything for him maybe he can stay?

Do you have a budget for staff meals? Buy them lunch once a week it can help with moral.

It takes a long time to repair burn out, more so than a extended vacation. I’d definitely look into hiring some more help or finding a way to solve the issue where it starts instead of trying to offset with just vacation time

Pay the man more, he isn't telling you everything

Sometimes as Managers our expectations of our team needs to be Evaluate!
I am a Workaholic. And in my younger days I expected the same from my employees! Now that I am older and well experienced I have learned that we burn our teams out and we are not all the same. I have lightened up with my team, we make jokes an do a lot of laughing!

Think about the mindset of an employee that would leave a good company/ good job without another job lined up. With gas prices and food prices where they are, it's more expensive to live today than it was yesterday. I have been on call for 15 years and counting, I get it. A vacation may help but will you be here again in three months? I think something more is happening. It sounds like you need to add another maintenance employee. If this employee is your superstar then other companies in your area know this too. If he leaves he may take your team. My advice is to spend some time in the maintenance shop to ensure that all is well.

I’ve read a lot of these answers and a recurring theme in so many of them is “there’s more to the story”.... I’m guessing the people saying that aren’t maintenance? Anyone who has been on the service side for any length of time can verify that yes, stress and burn out takes a huge toll on the ones who are basically giving every waking minute to the company and a lot of non-waking ones as well.
Maybe he meant exactly what he said. He is just done.
Something else I read a lot of is along the theme of having the supervisor report this snd that, ordering stuff for them, assigning someone else to do this or that.... no matter how well intentioned that is it’s disrespectful to the person actually doing the job and it really causes more harm than good. The best jobs I’ve had were the ones that had a “separate but equal” mentality. Too many people want to be involved with things that most of them know nothing about. Personally I’ve always hated explaining things to a micromanaging control freak and knowing the entire time every work was going straight over their head. I never stayed at those places long, I like to get shit done and didn’t want to waste my time justifying decisions I’ve made based on well over 30 years of experience.
I know that sounds arrogant and brutal, but it’s the honest truth.
Trust, respect and appreciation goes a long way towards keeping any employee happy. Money’s great, time off is great, but nothing can replace the freedom to do your job your way.

You are lucky he stayed!
It’s hard to find good people to do that job these days!

Gone are the days when you can take a vacation and not have work interruptions, it is hard to reset. Sounds like you handled it well. If only people could take a day off and freeze the world around them too!

Suggestion- work together walking through his day, task and what he expects of his team. Just as an iceberg only has 10% visible, employees often only focus on and share that 10%, which means that as leaders we are missing 90% (in everyday language we are really just missing the whole truth). Take him off site, have an honest conversation, find HIS reality