Human Resource management

HR is a lot of things but primarily is about people! I can imagine when managing a rental property where people are involved, HR training and a good foundation could be beneficial. You can bring negotiating skills to the table, or be empathetic where needed. HR is often about training and development so those are useful skills to have in any business setting. We often do a lot of performance management and coaching. All of these skills are transferable to whatever you are doing.

Human Resource Management is about engaging people towards a desired productivity goal. Leasing and / or property development is a highly goal-oriented industry. This is an area of business that would require right people on board to perform various operations, right culture to keep them together, strong rewards system to motivate them and adequate control to keep standards of service. All these are functions of Human Resource (HR) Management, to wit: recruitment, training & performance management, benefit administration & legal compliance.

In addition, HR is responsible for nurturing a kind of leadership that inspires people and clients together. This is a significant need in a real estate industry --- the ability to establish connection with clients. This is cemented with proper policies, systems and procedures which is the administrative aspect of HR.

Therefore, HR is important in this business. A good HR Team acts strategic partner to the management / business owners.

Tiffini, I agree wholeheartedly with Roxanne and Shana comments. Being both in HR and an owner of a real estate /property management organization, it’s about people, making them happy (or content), managing expectations, being timely and responsive, compassionate and empathetic, but also about being compliant and running a business that is profitable. The two are very similar almost in every way, but never forget the most important factor: it’s about the people. In real estate, you need them. In HR, an organization needs them too. Smile, and manage well. Treat them like you’d like to be treated; always.

Hi Tiffini,

Really interesting question! I agree with Shana human resources should be about humans and HR should be concerned about current employee's satisfaction, engagement and motivation. Obviously, real estate manager's concern (of any unit size) would be are your tenants happy in your facilities, what is motivating them to prolong their leases and so on? So, motivation (how to motive your talent?) is a huge topic that is currently discussed in HR and I think this would resonate with the real estate as well. So, I think there is a lot of parallel topics / issue that both human resources management and real estate have. Another aspect is organizational and time management skills that are crucial in any profession! HR has a lot of deadlines that have to be met otherwise employees will not be paid on time, performance reviews are done in certain time period, if missed they don't get a bonus and of course, in real estate management you can't miss your tenants rent deadline! So, I think there is a benefit of HR in real estate. It really is how you look at it. Hope this helps and good luck!