As AI continues to become more and more ingrained in the world of multifamily management, operators are going to have to throw out their existing onsite staff evaluation tools and redesign their measures of “efficiency” to reflect this new reality. With top-of-funnel leasing tasks automated, as well as delinquency tasks, maintenance communications, and renewals, onsite team members have more time than ever on their hands to get involved strategically and deliver those hard to replicate, in-person experiences that differentiate good operators from great ones.
Andrew Doar, Client Strategy Partner at EliseAI, learned quite a bit about measuring productivity during his years of experience working onsite. Let’s dive into takeaways from the webinar he ran on “Measuring Productivity in Property Management,” focused on measuring onsite productivity in a post-AI environment.
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Takeaway One: Change Your Priorities to Strategic Goals
One of the primary use cases of AI is the automation of repetitive, low-value work, a role not exclusive to property management. The issue this paradigm shift creates is that onsite reporting and evaluation has generally been built around activity volume, which is rendered less valuable by AI. Most traditional onsite scorecards still reward “busyness,” in the form of activities like calls dialed and tours booked, that can be much better served with high-touch, personalized tasks.
The modern onsite agent evaluation template should incorporate a three-pillar view as a result of increased automation:
- Output-Based Metrics: Measuring raw volume of work, including calls made, tours conducted, work orders created, and more.
- Efficiency Metrics: Measuring how quickly and cleanly the onsite team member’s work converts to outcomes, measured through data like lead-to-lease velocity, first-time-fix rate, and average hand-off resolution time.
- Engagement Metrics: Measuring how the human touch turns transactions into loyalty through measurement of post-tour Net Promoter Score, resident CSAT after maintenance, and other qualitative metrics.
Why take on this shift now? With a 2024 NMHC survey showing that 59% of property management executives call inconsistent onsite performance their No. 1 headache, getting ahead of the curve in regards to agent performance evaluation can give you a competitive leg up when it comes to training and development. Layering efficiency and engagement data on top of raw output metrics allows operators to see which agents are “volume heroes” versus true value creators, allowing them to adjust their coaching accordingly.
Takeaway Two: Visibility Fuels a 27% Jump in Output Without Adding Headcount
Gamification can be a powerful tool to drive higher buy-in levels and create an improved sense of ownership for an onsite team. One recent Harvard Business Review study found that teams given real-time access to their own metrics improved output 27% in just three months. If you’re looking to replicate the success of this study, stand up a public dashboard or performance tracker that displays some of the metrics we discussed above. Allowing agents to see how they’re performing relative to the pack can create healthy competition that encourages them to improve their own performance, without requiring an uncomfortable conversation about them missing expectations.
Built-in leaderboards in the EliseCRM platform tap into this psychology, letting agents compete in a transparent arena where they know exactly how they rank. This gives them a chance to self-correct before management has to step in, a win-win that displays increased ownership and initiative. To implement this exact playbook at your management company, just turn on EliseCRM’s agent reporting module and display it on a shared lobby screen or communication channel (Teams, Slack, etc) so agents can see how they stack up. Try to rotate the primary metric every quarter, like speed-to-lead in February, and tour-to-lease conversion in March, so high performers stay challenged and skill gaps surface early. If you want to put a little extra incentive into the game you could offer a monthly prize, like a gift card or a coupon to a nice restaurant, to both the highest performing agent AND the agent with the best month over month improvement.
Takeaway Three: Automation Eliminates Friction, Not Responsibility
One of the most common myths we hear about AI came up several times in the live chat during the webinar—“AI makes staff lazy.” At face value, it’s understandable why property management executives might think that, seeing as AI is able to automate a large percentage of the work that onsite teams traditionally handle. But, as we’ve discussed before, automation can be the jumpstart that allows team members to move off the transactional communication hamster wheel and into the strategy seat.
Let’s look at a before-and-after maintenance example to see what this strategic shift looks like in the real world.
What can we take away from this? Automation removes the drudgery that drains people and raises the bar on accountability because every hand-off and response time is now timestamped. Managers gain the receipts they need to spot coaching needs in hours, not quarters. Onsite staff performance can be measured more accurately, helping them take ownership of the quality of their work and creating opportunities for growth.
Takeaway Four: The AI Learning Curve Is Steep—and So Is the Competitive Gap
In under a year, ChatGPT jumped from the 40th to the 89th percentile on the LSAT. Newer, cheaper, more powerful models are emerging every month. The implication for property teams? AI tech will keep moving forward in leaps and bounds, so your KPIs and training playbooks better keep moving forward too.
EliseAI recommends proactive maintenance of your AI guidelines and performance measurement tools to stay up to date with advancements in AI. First, schedule quarterly “metric refresh” workshops where you reassess which KPIs still matter, sunset vanity metrics (like call volume), and plug new AI data feeds into your dashboards. Make sure you’re baking AI into your job descriptions and setting the right expectation during onboarding, pairing basic EliseAI how-to videos with a live “AI co-pilot” session so new hires see AI as a safety net, not a rival. Build an internal FAQ myth-buster (e.g., “AI is going to steal my job” ➜ “AI handles midnight HVAC calls so you don’t have to”) to soften resistance before it starts, allowing your team members to understand the comprehensive impact of AI on their day to day.
Solidifying the Relationship Between Onsite Teams and AI Through Education
Measuring productivity and distinguishing between metrics that matter and those that don’t has become a different ballgame in a post-AI world. As this new, time-saving technology continues to develop, making sure your team has a tolerance to discomfort and is willing to adapt to change is key to getting the most out of your people. Whether it’s building your own guides to new roles and responsibilities in an AI-powered model, leveraging helpful EliseAI webinars and content, or having open, consistent dialogue with your team, communication and education are what will separate the good operators from the great as the multifamily world continues to change.