By Julie Adamen

Recently I received an email from a management company executive, which said,

“Would you please stop sending your recruiting materials to “ABC” Property Management team members. All materials you send to “ABC” Property Management team members only reach the trash.”

-- Chief Operating Officer

I wasn’t surprised that this particular firm made the decision to withhold our newsletter (the ‘recruiting materials’) from its managers. But I started thinking about what motivates upper management to actually keep employment information (as well as some very thought provoking articles!) from their employees. Especially a firm like this, that pays (for the most part) on a par with their direct competitors.   Of course, they are afraid of losing employees to a higher paying firm because they want to believe managers leave solely for money.  

WRONG.

In our experience, managers seldom leave for more money. When managers switch jobs, they usually go from one firm to a competing firm – or one association to another. The pay difference is usually less than 10%, unless the job includes a promotion. Sometimes, it’s less than 10%. Sometimes it’s actually a cut in pay.  So, it’s not the money. But what is it? Frankly, it’s pretty damned simple, and we all know it goes on, but no one, no one, wants to talk about it.

The REAL REASON managers leave their firms.

It starts like this: A manager is hired, and is assigned five accounts. Then six. Then two more, but they’re financial-only. Then someone quits and their accounts get spread out among two or three people, and pretty soon, they’re managing 13 or 14 accounts – and doing it surprisingly well, on the surface. The manager, being sharp and competent, thinks they are helping out the company by taking on this burden “temporarily.” They carefully meter their time and energy to each account, going on walk throughs, attending meetings, and doing all the things that a manager does.  Walking a tightrope, carefully balancing the demands of the job with the time for each demand.  But there is no net, as we shall see.

And somehow…. Because they can, because they will, because they aren’t getting any complaints, because they often don’t talk to their supervisor or if they do it goes on deaf ears because the supervisor is managing 13 accounts AND 10 employees…somehow, the manager never gets rid of those extra accounts.

Then, the journey takes a left turn. One of the associations becomes involved in litigation, and the manager must re-structure that carefully metered out time and a couple of phone calls don’t get returned.  Eight annual meetings are scheduled for the same two-week period. More calls don’t get returned. Board packets start being delivered one or two days prior to the meetings. Although each one of these in itself is relatively insignificant, each one causes the manager’s feet to slip on the tightrope.  Each slip causes the stress to build up, and the confidence of the manager to wear down. Each slip piles one upon the other, and does not go away, like an ever-growing stack of unpaid bills.

The manager knows what’s going on. They know the inevitable conclusion – yet they continue to work the accounts as best they can, in the hopes that someone, somehow, someway, will notice what they are doing and give them some help. When the manager doesn’t ask for help, they make a grave error, because as long as they are silent while this process takes place, they are accomplices in their own demise. Regardless, without relief, the manager hurtles headlong in to some very dark days. They begin to manage by “flying under the radar.” A sharp employee can fly under radar from months, doing just enough to get by, talking the right talk – with no one is noticing they aren’t walking the walk.

This pattern can go on for months, sometimes years, as the manager dances as fast as he/she can, trying to keep up with the demands of accounts while flying under the radar. By now, this process has snowballed and they are providing the clients mediocre service at best by reacting only to the worst of the problems facing them (the Petrie dish where many of our stereotypical industry challenges and perceptions are hatched and validated). The manager becomes depressed and discouraged. They stop dancing fast, they start calling in sick. They want out, they need to escape, and they become virtually desperate. And the only way out for the manager is to quit and move on to another firm.

Where, in many cases, the pattern repeats itself.

We hear the story time after time, day after day. Managers leave their firms because their employers fail to recognize their crucial role in this destructive, yet wholly avoidable, cycle of employee burnout.

It is our experience at Adamen Inc, for the most part, management professionals do not change jobs quickly, easily, or solely for money.  They change jobs because they are in imminent danger of falling off the tightrope, or have already fallen. And even then they tend to agonize about the effect their leaving will have on their boards, colleagues and companies.

As an industry, it is far easier to cling to the belief that our staff will leave us for relatively superficial reasons than to look at the real reason why the leave. It isn’t because they see a job that may pay them a few thousand dollars more per year. It’s because no one is noticing they are drowning until it’s too late.

Management firms that continually and pro-actively assess their employee’s workload, performance and attitude, making adjustments when needed, will procure and maintain a happier, healthier and more long-term workforce. They will break the cycle.