Can a quick change keep this company a leader in their field and save money?
An international corporation and world leader in the hospitality industry was seeing steady growth. With multiple destination locations, and 50,000 seasonal employees needing housing, the company had outsourced the management of the physical property and related IT. With management fees increasing, the corporation needed to find opportunities to reduce expenditures and improve its employees’ experience.
Our client, an international company and world leader in hospitality, had been with their property management vendor for more than a decade. But while their hospitality business was growing, property management issues were growing too. With multiple locations and tens of thousands of seasonal employees, property management was causing a bottleneck, expenditures kept rising and fees were continually increasing for the same service. And to make matters worse, response times to property issues were lagging and complaints regarding service were increasing. The vendor was doing a poor job of managing relations with local government housing authorities, causing strained community relations, a critical component for success in a destination-based business. And, critical also for their employees’ comfort and security in the community.
It was time for a change. But what kind of change and how to implement it without disrupting business and further straining the employee experience?
Knowing they needed change, corporate executives had named a new head of employee housing. I was brought in as a consultant to identify options for solving the problems plaguing employee housing management. What needed to be done to bring property management in-house and improve the employee experience, and also, improve relations with the larger local community?
I worked with the newly appointed head of employee housing to determine viable options for taking over property management and employee housing:
Main Considerations
After conducting an assessment two key discoveries were made. The first was that the contract didn’t include a non-compete clause, so engaging current staff as in-house employees was possible. And, doing that would retain historical knowledge and skills. The second key discovery was that third-party SaaS providers could not implement a solution in the short timeframe considering it also spanned the client’s busiest season.
Thus, three options were provided to the client:
The client decided to move forward with the hybrid option. New roles were created and a market analysis for competitive compensation was carried out. The property management support staff were converted to employees of the client and onboarded. A revised contract was approved that kept IT software management in place, and the management program was moved to the cloud for access by the newly positioned staff.
The results: