It is a natural tendency of human beings to protect the safety of everyone around them. However, at times, our safety should be the first priority. For occupations like property management, there are some inherent risks to the health and safety of those involved.
The good news here is that these risks can easily be mitigated if you have a good enough safety strategy.
Conduct Safety Assessments
Your first goal is to conduct an honest assessment of the safety concerns in your rental property. Sure, most of us are instinctively prepared to protect ourselves from dangers; however, there are often some blind spots in our routines and surroundings.
Conducting safety assessments will not only alert us of the potential risks but will also help determine the necessary steps if the need ever arises. Part of establishing this assessment involves considering all the necessary aspects of your occupation when you will need to encounter people or situations that may cause harm.
Times When You Are Most Vulnerable
For accurate safety assessments, you must figure out when and where you are most vulnerable in your occupation. Some common areas that you might have already addressed would include those that are required by OSHA or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. These most commonly include injury and COVID-19 protocols.
OSHA standards also require that you maintain optimal working conditions. However, the rental and real estate industry brings forward some other safety concerns which could cause potential harm, such as:
- Showing vacant rentals
- Hosting open houses
- Lease signing meetings
- Rental inspections
- Property inspections
- Criminal and gang activity
- Annoyed or angry tenants
- Violence between guests and tenants
- Dangerous pets
- Evictions
- Winter darkness
- Rentals being used as meth labs or for drug deals
Plan Safety Strategies
Once you know everything that could potentially cause you harm, it would be time for you to put together a holistic safety strategy for your rental business.
Depending on your assessment, you should put together a safety manual (as well as an online digital copy) which has separate sections for each kind of vulnerability as well as the protocols you need to follow to keep safe. This safety manual may also include other crucial information such as attendance records, safety handouts in meetings and important checklists.
The basic idea here is to establish a basic program with simple goals that will eventually grow as your business grows. If you simply focus on achieving these goals, monitor everyone’s performance, and then evaluate the outcomes of these goals, then your business will be able to progress to a higher quality of safety and health standards.
Simply put, you will be able to:
- Prevent illness and injuries in the workplace
- Improve your business’s compliance with local and state laws
- Reduce overall costs, including a significant reduction in the compensation premiums for workers
- Engage your staff
- Enhance your business’s goals for social responsibility
- Increase your overall productivity as well as enhancing business operations
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, after following these tips, you will have avoided all potential verbal altercations, assault, and theft at your property.
If you’re looking forward to trying out any of these tips in your rental property, you can always delegate these tasks to your property manager or hire the right professionals for the task at hand. The only thing you will be responsible for is to offer your potential tenants more affordability, personalization, and authenticity as opposed to worrying about your safety.
If you haven’t hired a property manager already, click here to learn more about our services and discover how an experienced property manager can share some of your burdens.