An apartment facility manager runs the daily life of residential towers for a resident association or a builder. Guards, housekeepers, plumbers and gardeners serve hundreds of families, and every complaint lands on the front desk.
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Share your requirementsAn apartment facility manager looks after the common life of a residential complex: gates and security, lobbies and corridors, lifts, water, power back-up, gardens, the clubhouse and the swimming pool. The client is usually a resident welfare association or a builder, and its committee changes every year or two. The staff are on the manager's payroll or a service contractor's, but residents treat them as their own and speak to them directly. Posts run round the clock, every day, and a missing guard is noticed at the gate within minutes. The facility management hub covers what the wider sector shares.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
Each committee has its own views on staffing, cost and discipline, and instructions to the manager change with the election.
A guard is asked to carry parcels, a housekeeper to clean a flat, and the manager loses control of who does what.
Three shifts, weekly offs and sudden absences leave gaps that residents see at once, and cover often comes from a guard on his second shift.
Residents write to a group of hundreds, and a comment about one housekeeper reaches everyone before the manager sees it.
The person who knows the lift, the pump and the generator is hard to replace, and his notes are in his pocket.
Staff earn little and depend on festival gifts, so fairness between them and between towers is a constant worry.
The agreement is reviewed each year, so a few visible failures can end the contract despite months of good service.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Employee Relations; Employee Administration; HR Operations and Governance. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for facility management, not in general.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
The pieces a apartment facility managers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
What a guard, housekeeper or technician does and does not do, in plain words, signed by the committee, so personal errands are not demanded.
What this coversHideWhat a guard, housekeeper or technician does and does not do, in plain words, signed by the committee, so personal errands are not demanded.
A rota that shows weekly offs and a pool of inducted relievers per post, so a gate is never left to chance.
What this coversHideA rota that shows weekly offs and a pool of inducted relievers per post, so a gate is never left to chance. The attendance process keeps it going.
A helpdesk number and a form that logs every complaint, assigns an owner and replies within a stated time, so the group chat is not the first stop.
What this coversHideA helpdesk number and a form that logs every complaint, assigns an owner and replies within a stated time, so the group chat is not the first stop.
Simple maintenance notes for each lift, pump and generator, kept by the manager, and a second person trained on each.
What this coversHideSimple maintenance notes for each lift, pump and generator, kept by the manager, and a second person trained on each.
A clear rule on festival gifts and collective tips that all staff and the committee know, to prevent resentment.
What this coversHideA clear rule on festival gifts and collective tips that all staff and the committee know, to prevent resentment.
A monthly one page report on attendance, complaints, training and exits, so renewal talks rest on facts.
What this coversHideA monthly one page report on attendance, complaints, training and exits, so renewal talks rest on facts. See HR reporting.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Practical sessions on handling residents politely and firmly, on the phone, at the gate and in the lobby.
A first week that teaches the complex, the committee's expectations and how to deal with residents.
Rosters with relievers so that gates, lifts and housekeeping posts are not left empty.
A fair way to handle complaints against staff and complaints by staff, so that residents and employees both trust it.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in facility management, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Housekeeping, technician and security staff at client sites leave for reasons head office rarely hears. How to ask, what to look for and how to act on it.
7 min readRead article
An employee brings you a complaint about their supervisor. What happens next should not depend on who is in the room. A grievance procedure a small company can actually run.
8 min readRead article
Payroll says one joining date, the personal file says another and the manager remembers a third. How to establish a single trustworthy employee record and keep it that way.
7 min readRead article
Every growing company reaches a point where the founder approving everything stops being speed and starts being the bottleneck. Twelve signs it has happened, and what to fix first.
9 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Write the duties of each post, have the committee approve them and display them at the gate. Staff then have something to point to. Ask the manager, not the guard, to handle exceptions.
Build a rota with weekly offs, name a pool of relievers who know the complex and keep their contact details. Cover from the guard on a second shift is a short-term fix and creates tiredness.
Log each complaint, ask the staff member for his side, check facts and reply in writing within a stated time. Praise and correction are both recorded. A fair process protects staff and calms residents.
Yes. Ask him to write notes on each system, train a second person on each, and keep manuals and vendor contacts in a shared file. This also helps when he takes leave or moves on.
Keep a record of agreed rules and past decisions, give the new committee a short handover note and propose a monthly report. A manager with facts holds a steadier position than one relying on goodwill.
We would ask for your post list with rotas, last month's complaint log and the duties staff say residents ask beyond their job. A role sheet for each post with a reliever pool is a natural first job, and scope is written for your sign-off.
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