communicate in a way that resonates with their workforce, half of which are Millennials and Gen Z today. By the end of 2025, Millennials and Gen Z will account for more than 70 percent of the workforce. Millennials and Gen Z communicate more often and compre-


hensively than any generation in history and have grown accus- tomed to receiving and sending communication almost non-stop on their mobile devices.


“These people are armed with a smartphone coming out of


their mother’s womb in their hand,” said Christensen. “They love to communicate, and they love to bombard people with commu- nications. When they go into your organization and people don’t communicate with them that’s absolutely not going to cut it. How can your managers fill the need for communication?” Christensen suggests seven possible techniques to do this:


Video and phone calls, team huddles, weekly one on ones, Q&A sessions with leaders, poll questions, an email box for ideas and focus groups. “Gone are the days when it’s OK to communicate to employ-


ees,” Christensen said. “In order to keep employees engaged, you need to communicate with employees. We call that creating a two- way communication culture.” There are a number of reasons to cultivate a two-way com-


munication culture, according to Christensen, but the main reason is that people have a lot to contribute to every decision that will improve results. “Your employees are in the trenches, they are the people closest to your residents,” Christensen said. “They know exactly what’s going on in your communities. They have creative ideas on how you can improve solutions to fix processes that are bro- ken. They have ideas on how you can produce additional revenues. They have ideas on how you can reduce expenses without reduc- ing head count. They probably also have amazing ideas on how to market creatively in your local cities and towns.”


COLLABORATION Two-way communication is a precursor to collaboration, which is when a group of people come together and contribute their expertise for the benefit of a shared objective, project or mis- sion. This enables employees to better problem solve, learn from one another and communicate even more often, which boosts morale, knowledge, productivity and engagement, according to Christensen.


Collaboration isn’t as easy in a virtual environment, but it is possible and necessary. Christensen offered seven suggestions for rental housing operators to create more collaboration: Lead major projects, assign problems to fix, utilize state of the art collabora- tion tools, create a team charter, host a team innovations meeting, mind the time zone and reward collaborative behavior. But to be effective, great collaboration requires letting every associate lead collaborative projects. “There’s this phenomenon that happens in business where


typically employees who sit right beneath the manager’s nose, or the highest performing employees, are the people who get asked to fix the high-profile problems,” Christensen said. “It’s a very nega- tive situation and it’s called the halo effect. When you choose the same people over and over again to lead high profile projects or fix high profile problems, you are completely disengaging all of your other employees. As managers and as leaders, you have got to trust all of your remote workers to fix projects.” Trust coupled with connection, communication and collabora-


tion will result in a more engaged remote workforce. But the deci- sion to create an engaging culture has to be deliberate. “If you are not deliberate about creating an extraordinary workplace culture that meets or exceeds people’s needs, you’re going to end up with a culture by chance and it’s not going to be pretty,” Christensen said. “It’s going to be mediocre at best and we all know that mediocrity is not going to breed success in your communities or resident satisfaction and renewals.”


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