Topic: What should you have new maintenance techs focus on first after being hired?

I love this smart group of people! So question...maintenance tech gets hired and you are setting up his/her first week of training with the maintenance supervisor. What will you have them focus on first? Maintenance staff of 3, 300 units, 150 work orders in the hopper. No market readies and the occupancy is at 89%. Go!

Customer service. Techs are the face of our industry now, with all the tech we did to remove the office staff from interacting with the tenants. Get those skills on point and get the right mind set early. If they don’t have it cut bait early and find someone else.

Make readies in the am, afternoon carve out some work orders. Repeat daily and get approval for OT

Work orders- you are going to continue to take notices if you don’t provide the service to current residents. Any chance to vend some turns and focus on work orders?

Get at least 4 vacant units ready first!!!

Take care of your work orders first, if you don’t keep them happy you’re going to have more make readies

Emergencies first (Fire flood, blood). Then prioritize Service requests by age. Office communicates with most recent ones so residents dont think we've forgotten about them while taking care of aged ones. Schedule vendors in vacant apartments for afternoons and maintenance in the mornings. Prioritize 1 of each type as a make ready. Overall, communication rules and everyone stays flexible.

Fair Housing. Never let a new employee come into contact with a resident until they have completed fair housing training. Plausible deniability is not longer a valid excuse for a violation. Then sned them to work orders in order of emergency, then FIFO on the remnants. Keep your paying customers happy, then focus on the make readies.

First thing first, fair housing training before literally anything else

After Fair Housing— Priority work orders first, market readies 2nd (make sure punch list is done and materials are there so maintenance is not going back and forth and are in and out) , then other maintenance orders worked in .
We have done this a few times my friend.

Inspecting market readies....to set expectations and orient to quality control for getting units leased up

There should be a checklist, prioritized by importance designating who they will be taught by. I would start with company culture and customer service, followed by the technical aspects. Do a “day in the life of” with all positions so they can see how what they do integrates into the whole picture and ultimate goal of providing an awesome living experience for your clients. I made such a checklist years ago and it worked beautifully. I no longer have the checklist or I would share it with you. Btw. I had a similar checklist for every position at the property. Maybe that’s why I was chosen to be the Trainer for my Region.

If you have experienced workers I would get them to complete a unit (because vacancies cost money) Let the trainer focus on work orders and getting to know the ins and outs of the property...if a lot of the work orders get completed and there is a vacant unit you could train him at that time....but I feel that if he knows the work order system the make ready should follow suit

1) Fair Housing

Safety of course.
Lock out tag out/ electrical isolation.
Seen too many maintenance guys get zapped. They can't complete work orders if they are in the hospital.

First week before throwing him out there set him up right to know the company. The work load isn't going anywhere. He needs to know where everything is, policies, procedures make sure he knows fair housing, sexual harrassment, etc. Then I would get him out there and do punches in the am and work orders in the afternoon.

Not to be a dick but with numbers like that the supervisor might be more of my concern

Fair housing, and all new hire paperwork. Then, I would put the new hire in make readies(provided they have experience)and have your current employees on occupied work orders. Once you walk and approve a few make readies, unleash new hire to help with work orders. Do you have a sister property close by that can send some help? Sounds like you need immediate attention with that many work orders and no ready units.

All of our employees have to take fair housing and sexual harassment on day one. After thatz with occupancy at 89 and nothing MI ready, you have to get vacant product ready, at least one of each floor plan type that has vacancy and then focus on those work orders. If you have it in your budget then I would contract out the make readies and have your team focus on those work orders. We have a best practice called the 8, noon and 4, in which our service managers divvy out tickets at 8:00 a.m. They return with those work orders at noon, report what's done, are given more for the afternoon and back with those at 4 o'clock and must again report what's done and what's not.. This keeps people on point and accountable throughout the day rather than giving out a stack of work orders in the morning and not following up until the end of the day. You'll find alot more tickets get knocked out.

I prioritized and assigned work orders to staff to allow the maintenance supervisor a chance to focus on the 208 units we managed. We used the first 3 to 4 hours of the day to get work orders done and focused the rest of the day on make-ready’s. We had service requests under control in under a week and immediate move in’s available after 2 weeks of implementing this plan.

How do you train a group of your Maintenance Techs for Fair Housing? Is there a way to
train a large group affordably with a video?