Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Swakuho podcast.
Speaker: The purpose of today's episode is to give all our listeners a peek behind the curtain for a critical component of every housing operation, the room make ready process.
Speaker: Take it from today's guests.
Speaker: Those rooms don't magically become perfect all on their own.
Speaker: It takes a lot of time, energy, and resources to make a single bed space ready for the next resident.
Speaker: And some of our operations have to get thousands of rooms ready within a summer.
Speaker: We're going to be going through the importance of the make ready process, critical components and observations, challenges and hang ups, and the practical skills necessary to coordinate large processes with many, many moving parts.
Speaker: So without further ado, I'll introduce our guests who are going to share how the sausage is made.
Speaker: Our first guest is Kyle Estes, who is a farm boy from Missouri who went to college, found the housing and student affairs field, and never left.
Speaker: He's worked in higher education for 34 years, including all areas of housing.
Speaker: Kyle has been in his current position as the director of housing facility services at Texas State since 2008, where he provides leadership to 110 full-time employees serving 7,000 students in 23 different facilities, with more construction in the pipeline.
Speaker: He and his wife actually author a blog called With This Ring, A Couple's Quest for the Perfect Onion Ring.
Speaker: So feel free to offer suggestions in the comments area and they'll try to sample your favorite sometime.
Speaker: Kyle, welcome to the show.
Speaker: Thanks and appreciate the promo.
Speaker: We just went and checked out some onion rings on Saturday in Bernie's.
Speaker: Our second guest is Drew Jarr, who in 2015 had the opportunity to branch out of residence life and fell back into where he began his housing career and facilities.
Speaker: Currently, he's the Senior Associate Managing Director of Facilities at Texas Tech University.
Speaker: His current responsibilities include maintenance, housekeeping, trades, and warehouse operations of roughly 8,000 beds within 19 halls.
Speaker: He has a wonderful staff team of nearly 150 full-time employees.
Speaker: When not dealing with facility related issues, such as scheduling turn during winter and summer, he enjoys building Legos, most recently building the motorized lighthouse and the Titanic.
Speaker: Drew, welcome back to the show.
Speaker: Great to be here, JC.
Speaker: And our third guest is Joel Gatti, who is originally from Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Speaker: He completed both his undergrad and master's studies at Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, before moving to the Swakuho region for his first big kid job after grad school, where he landed at Oklahoma State University as a housing coordinator.
Speaker: He spent just shy of nine full years at OSU, where he also held positions of conference coordinator and operations manager assistant director.
Speaker: Joel says he is currently within his probationary 90-day period as the new director of housing operations at Southern Methodist University.
Speaker: Joel played baseball at Geneva College and in August of 2014 was announced as a member of the President's Athletic Conference 60th Anniversary Baseball Team.
Speaker: Joel, welcome to the show.
Speaker: Thanks for having me, Jason.
Speaker: I appreciate the invite and being with this great group.
Speaker: First things first, everyone.
Speaker: Is talking about the room make-ready process an exciting topic?
Speaker: It can be.
Speaker: I don't think I'd describe it as exciting.
Speaker: Sometimes it's stressful.
Speaker: It's a necessary evil.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So we don't have a bunch of type A people that just like processes, systems, sequencing.
Speaker: Or is it just the fear of move-in day when things aren't going to inevitably be correct 100% of the time?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: So what's the correct terminology?
Speaker: Is it flip?
Speaker: Is it make ready?
Speaker: Is it turn?
Speaker: Are there other definitions out there that we should be aware of?
Speaker: I mean, we call it summer make ready here.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: My focus is about making it ready for the fall.
Speaker: I tell my team and other people here that our primary customer is our fall first year student.
Speaker: And so we are making things ready for them.
Speaker: We have summer camps and conferences and summer school.
Speaker: That's part of it.
Speaker: But our main focus should be on things being ready for that student experience when they move in with their parents, helping them unload the car, you know, in the traditional experience come August.
Speaker: Yeah, here we call it summer tour.
Speaker: My team, we don't get a lot of vacation over the summer.
Speaker: And so we call it our tour and that's kind of our vacations.
Speaker: Isn't that like totally putting lipstick on a pig there, Drew?
Speaker: Well, sometimes.
Speaker: It's all in the mindset.
Speaker: It's the mindset.
Speaker: Are you saying it's like being with the Rolling Stones when you work at Texas Tech?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or the Beatles or whatever your band a favorite is.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: I've heard summer maintenance.
Speaker: At OSU, we refer to it as summer maintenance.
Speaker: Seems that here at SMU, though, it is flips and turns since there's a lot of that that happens before our fall guests arrive.
Speaker: So briefly walk us through the life cycle of a vacant room, starting with like the moment it is vacated.
Speaker: I think first before even that happens, because it's happening to me right now, is the prep meetings that go behind the scenes and
Speaker: with our here at SMU, and it was the same at Oklahoma State where we had a service level agreement between our department and facilities department, the main campus facilities group.
Speaker: We weren't as blessed as Drew or some other folks out there that have their own in-house staff.
Speaker: So we have to rely on a different department to help us accomplish the laundry list of tasks.
Speaker: And so there's a lot of pre-meetings about what are the priorities,
Speaker: What are mapping out schedules and timing?
Speaker: Are we able to take things offline to accomplish contractors who need to come in and all of that.
Speaker: So even before that student turns in their key and leaves, I think there is some of this discussion and dialogue and kind of honing in on what's our target and what's our goal.
Speaker: How do we get there?
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Yeah, I would agree with that.
Speaker: Years ago, we did time studies.
Speaker: How long on average does it take you to turn this type of a room?
Speaker: And we have traditional double rooms with bathrooms down the hall.
Speaker: We have suite style shared between a couple of rooms.
Speaker: And then we have the apartments as well as private bathroom residences.
Speaker: And so we did studies.
Speaker: How long is it going to take us on average to do those?
Speaker: And then
Speaker: extrapolating it out to how long does it take you to do, say, clean a room in this building or make ready maintenance a room in that building to help you build those schedules that Joel was talking about.
Speaker: So then you can say to your camps and conferences folks, look, you got to leave me these windows to be able to get in and do my part in amongst your stuff.
Speaker: And all that has to happen before the room's ever vacant.
Speaker: And was your time study pretty accurate as you've mapped out in subsequent years?
Speaker: Yeah, it has been.
Speaker: My team did a good job.
Speaker: The supervisors, they didn't pick like their superstars to go do the cleaning and they didn't pick their rookies who didn't know what they were doing.
Speaker: They tried to pick middle of the road average folks.
Speaker: And then, you know, we got good and we did three or four different rooms in a type of building to get a real good average.
Speaker: Those were those things that people always like, well, there's always that one room that's going to take us five times longer.
Speaker: But then there's also the room that will take us five times less.
Speaker: So it always tends to average out okay.
Speaker: For us, it really starts well before we're at closing.
Speaker: We actually start this process in January thinking about how it's going to play out.
Speaker: We've got different clientele.
Speaker: We've got our summer school buildings that need to be flipped or turned much faster.
Speaker: We're talking hours versus days.
Speaker: We've got our summer conferences that we generally have about two weeks from May 15th to June 1st is our window of getting those buildings ready.
Speaker: And then we got our rooms that have been under construction all summer that we have to turn at the last minute in August.
Speaker: So it's a lot of hurry up and wait.
Speaker: Obviously, we work with our Res Life staff very closely with, you know, we try to get an idea of what are those really rough rooms beforehand so that we know, OK, we're going to have to spend more time here.
Speaker: We're going to have to spend less time here.
Speaker: There's a lot of damages that are going to need to be.
Speaker: dealt with, which slows down the turn process.
Speaker: There's just a lot, like you said, there's a lot of moving parts, a lot of different key players involved.
Speaker: For me, and I think Kyle's probably the same way, you know, we have our own in-house teams.
Speaker: So we do control a lot more of the show, which is sometimes a good thing.
Speaker: And sometimes it's a double-edged sword.
Speaker: So it's all about competing priorities and where are you going to put it?
Speaker: Today, where are they going to go and how are you going to make it all come together?
Speaker: No one to blame, right, Drew?
Speaker: No one to blame.
Speaker: Well, a lot of self-reflection.
Speaker: That didn't work well.
Speaker: Okay, let's not do that again next year, you know, those kind of things.
Speaker: So, Drew and Kyle, you both do mostly the work internally.
Speaker: Is that what I'm picking up?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And then Joel, you mentioned like outside, does that mean facilities on your campus or like outside contractors completely?
Speaker: So SMU facilities is supposed, they manage all of it.
Speaker: So technically it falls to them whether they keep it to themselves or if they outsource it to a contractor.
Speaker: I'll tell you that I think they run typically about 60% of their total work orders are getting outsourced to contractors.
Speaker: They are
Speaker: very understaffed in in that area so osu it was it was maybe a little closer to 50 50 or maybe even 60 40 in-house versus contractor work so that's a little bit of a shift here for me i've seen a lot more contractors coming in but technically facilities is that is the oversight of it but they get to make that decision on who they rip and pull things to gotcha because here at ut dallas we've got like
Speaker: 5,500 beds or something like that.
Speaker: And there are certain aspects that we contract out, like carpet replacements, carpet cleanings, final cleanings of the room just based on volume.
Speaker: So we've got a nice little representation here of various ways to do it.
Speaker: Yeah, we're probably 90-10.
Speaker: We do 90% in-house, but we have an apartment complex that we involve a lot more contractors in.
Speaker: And so that's just 10% of our stock.
Speaker: So what kind of average volume do you all estimate you'd push per summer?
Speaker: Like how many rooms do you make ready or flip in an average summer?
Speaker: 4,000.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: About 5,500.
Speaker: 3,200 is the occupancy number here at SMU.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So hold on.
Speaker: Let me do some quick math here.
Speaker: Let's say there are, you know, working overtime every day of the summer.
Speaker: There's three months, 90 days.
Speaker: So I did the math for mine ahead of time.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Go for it then.
Speaker: How many per day is that?
Speaker: Well, so you said 90 days.
Speaker: I looked at it, though, and saw we use 11 weeks and there are 55 work days Monday through Friday.
Speaker: OK, because on our tour, unlike Drew's, I try not to work on the weekends.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I don't like those weekend gigs.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: When I took over, one of my goals was to try and keep my team from having to work so many weekends because they were always working weekends and they never got any time off.
Speaker: And so I said, we're going to be more organized.
Speaker: We're going to schedule these and I'm going to advocate for this.
Speaker: I can't promise you that it'll work.
Speaker: But when you do that, 11 weeks, 55 work days, my 4,050 beds, they have to do 75 rooms a day.
Speaker: That's a lot.
Speaker: And Kyle, do you find that all the really bad rooms are the ones that happen on day 55 and 54?
Speaker: Is that how it usually works out or just feel that way?
Speaker: No, I mean, because we do what we call camp ready.
Speaker: We get an assessment from the Res Ed team and say, OK, you need to walk everything and tell us where are the problems.
Speaker: And so then we're focused on the summer school people and then the camp ready people everywhere.
Speaker: So we know where those bad ones are.
Speaker: And so you get ahead of the curve on those.
Speaker: So we don't get them at the end.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Well, that's good.
Speaker: Speaking of volume, I've always told staff that summer is all about pushing volume.
Speaker: With the volume needed and limited time that we've been talking about and so many moving pieces, what sort of systems do you all have in place to make this summer miracle happen?
Speaker: Well, years ago, I went to an Akuho IAPA workshop and saw a wonderful presentation from University of Arizona.
Speaker: And they talked about just how they do it or did it back then and getting their crews in, scheduling them.
Speaker: And so I built our process off of theirs.
Speaker: It has to do with that time study, it has to do with the scheduling, pulling everybody together into teams and sending them in sequentially as much as you can and being intentional about that.
Speaker: But that global schedule, the checklist to make sure you're being consistent, having somebody going back afterwards and doing the quality control check.
Speaker: Those are all key to making sure that, you know, what you need ready in the fall is there.
Speaker: Yeah, we're very similar.
Speaker: We have we basically split our maintenance team together.
Speaker: up a little bit depending on what time of the summer we're at and what's going on.
Speaker: In most cases, we will take a building and we'll basically hit it with everybody that we can and start top to and go back.
Speaker: down, but we always have a few of our folks that are with our housekeeping team that as they are cleaning rooms and they find something that can be done really quickly, like change the light bulb or tighten this screw or whatever, they can go ahead and take care of it there while the housekeeping is cleaning, which saves us a little bit on our paperwork side of things, which is a double edged sword too, because
Speaker: Unfortunately, in the summertime, we're not as thorough on our documentation element as I would like us to be because our focus is just getting it done.
Speaker: And so a lot of times we will change things and not actually record it.
Speaker: And that's a flaw in our system.
Speaker: But it is what it is, right?
Speaker: You know, we've got to get everything done.
Speaker: But we do try to split that.
Speaker: We will have a couple of folks that are dedicated specifically to summer school.
Speaker: So they will take care of those buildings so that we're not getting the idea is that we're not getting pulled off or we're trying not to be as pulled off as could be if you don't do that.
Speaker: And then we do, we have like a 35 point checklist that we have a suite checklist that's different from our traditional checklist.
Speaker: And so, you know, they, that's to, for our quality control, they sign off on that.
Speaker: It is paper and pen.
Speaker: We are in the process of looking at going digital with it.
Speaker: We just don't have the infrastructure in place yet to make that happen, but it's coming.
Speaker: Yeah, so I haven't seen a flip and turn here at SMU yet, but relating back to my OSU days, I have several of the same sort of things in my, you know, save files from years past of, you know, different sorts of checklists and working with OSU was similar in that it was a service level agreement.
Speaker: And so we worked in collaboration with our facilities folks to kind of
Speaker: determine what were the hot button things that we wanted to make sure got eyes laid on it.
Speaker: But then also feeding in information from our res ed, our building staff, our hall staff to really make sure if there was something found at checkout that we weren't anticipating.
Speaker: Hopefully they gave us a heads up from health and safety checks.
Speaker: But if it happened between that timeframe or just was blocked by a poster or something, now that person has moved out,
Speaker: You know, making sure that we were aware so that we could prioritize that and add that to the list right away to our facilities partners to say, hey, here's your checklist.
Speaker: But here's what we also know about this specific space based on what the what the resident folks saw.
Speaker: So build it in from there.
Speaker: But it's also that component like Kyle was talking about with the.
Speaker: the conferences right on your hot and heavy on your tail.
Speaker: So what can be done, what needs to be done right away to make that successful, that program successful, but then what pieces can you hold to give it during its dedicated summer maintenance window or however you're coming back in between camps to knock out some of that stuff too.
Speaker: Joel, you mentioned the hole behind the poster.
Speaker: Have you ever seen like a Shawshank redemption moment behind the Rita Hayworth poster?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I was thinking the exact same thing, JC.
Speaker: That was the image that I had in my head.
Speaker: I've never found anybody crawling down into the mechanical room yet, but... They're getting creative these days, so you never know.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, JC, something that we're noticing that's kind of... I don't know how best to phrase it, but with the added pets on campus and the service animals and all of that, it's added...
Speaker: While in theory we know where these rooms are ahead of time, it's added time to everything because the level of cleanliness, the sanitization, and depending on how well the student took care of that and conditioned that room or that space.
Speaker: I'm sure one of your questions farther down the list here will get at this, but sometimes we actually have to close a room offline for a while because of the nature of how it was left.
Speaker: And in those kind of circumstances, we will typically contract that cleaning out for us.
Speaker: But that's the only thing we contract out.
Speaker: So I've heard various systems that have been talked about include like compartmentalization or like specificity of jobs, like people focusing on a building.
Speaker: We've talked about checklists, quality control efforts and just communication.
Speaker: Like how can non-facilities professionals like build these skills in their jobs and are they transferable to other areas?
Speaker: Well, I think it starts with, I mean, it's all about detail and paying attention.
Speaker: And so, I mean, that's a transferable skill for everything, life and whatever job they're in.
Speaker: So I would say the big one that comes to my mind is just paying attention to the detail.
Speaker: Talk about the quality and the show.
Speaker: You know, if you don't take care of the detail, your quality is going to suffer and your show is going to be not what you want.
Speaker: So paying attention to those details is huge.
Speaker: I think the other thing, kind of going back to the preventative maintenance show that we did a while back, paying attention to those things that tighten the screws and everything that's on that checklist, you could take that checklist home and look at your own house or your own apartment and you can extend the life of your house and your utilities and all of those kind of things.
Speaker: Drew, you talk about details.
Speaker: How many here have had a room where like on move-in day, there was something major.
Speaker: And then you look back and you see how many people on our staff have walked through this room and not notated this one thing.
Speaker: I cannot rationally explain this.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: Well, and you just have to admit that somebody missed that, you know, that multiple people missed that, right?
Speaker: The first person through missed it.
Speaker: Then the,
Speaker: Person who did your quality control check missed it.
Speaker: And then your hall staff who were like double, triple check in before the last day as they put the door deck on the door missed it as well.
Speaker: You know, so the blame goes a long ways around.
Speaker: We just have to accept responsibility and fix it.
Speaker: It's all about how you handle your service recovery at that point.
Speaker: But to go back to your question about, you know, non-facilities people, I think that this is a, it's not only a detailed thing, but it's a complex thing.
Speaker: So when you asked that question, I thought about, you know, what else do we do that involves lots of moving parts?
Speaker: So if you're a non-facilities person and we're trying to look for transferable skills, what's something that you can volunteer for or work with that involves lots of moving parts, right?
Speaker: And it requires you to schedule and be detail-oriented.
Speaker: We're a part of SWACUHO, right?
Speaker: Host the SWACUHO conference.
Speaker: Your training ground right there.
Speaker: Lots of moving parts and scheduling things and figuring out who's going to do things and internal and external stakeholders.
Speaker: That itself is preparation for summer make ready turn.
Speaker: But I also thought about like the resident staff doing our selection that's involves lots of pieces and processes are a training hall director training.
Speaker: You got to coordinate all those things and dovetail it all together the right amount of time to make it happen.
Speaker: You just apply that to a different set of activities, essentially.
Speaker: So I think that the transferables thing is there.
Speaker: And you also just have a mindset.
Speaker: Going back to Drew's PM thing, understanding you're a key stakeholder in how that facility looks and runs and
Speaker: Are you being proactive and taking care of things?
Speaker: If you do a really good job in fall and spring as the hall director of bringing things up or as the maintenance area supervisor or custodial area supervisor of taking care of things, the summer is going to be that much easier because you've dealt with it as it's happened as opposed to just waiting to go to the end.
Speaker: That's why it drives us nuts when nobody puts a work order in, right?
Speaker: It wasn't that big a deal.
Speaker: I just left it.
Speaker: Well, we would have fixed this.
Speaker: This is like a five minute fix when you first tell us about it.
Speaker: Now it's a, you know, 50 minute fix.
Speaker: Kyle, that's great.
Speaker: I don't know how I really followed that up because it was so on the nail head about that.
Speaker: But I think there's also a component of connecting the dots that the way you leave your building at the end and the effort and the give a darn, I almost cussed there.
Speaker: as far as, you know, like that you go through as a hall director.
Speaker: I remember my first move out.
Speaker: Okay, that was a whirlwind, no big deal.
Speaker: And then my first move in, I was like, oh my.
Speaker: Some of the problems and concerns when I was in that role, it was like, well, I don't want to repeat that move in again.
Speaker: I don't want to repeat some of all that.
Speaker: So the attention to detail on the front end to make sure that the key stakeholders for getting things fixed are in the know.
Speaker: about things that you found, it only helps you.
Speaker: It makes that movement process easier if you're able to be on top of all those things back in May and, you know, or May and June, you know, whenever your move out is.
Speaker: Because getting that information out there helps to get it accomplished
Speaker: so that you're not having as many angry parents on move-in day or frustrated students about a broken furniture piece or what have you.
Speaker: So I think connecting the dot at least that like, hey, what I do, even though it's taxing time of year, there's all the things that are happening, especially if your hall staff are grad students and they're eyeing moving on and graduation and tying up their academic studies.
Speaker: If they, when they started as a grad, got handed a bad, you can almost sometimes see
Speaker: those locations where someone was like checked out, they were like, Oh, yep.
Speaker: Here's my keys.
Speaker: I'm out.
Speaker: I'm out the door.
Speaker: Have fun.
Speaker: Uh, cause I won't have to pay the piper back in August.
Speaker: And that new grad comes in and is like, what did I get myself into kind of going back to that experience and being like, do you want to leave things better than you brought that you walked into?
Speaker: So, you know, and I think that all goes into how do you, how do you function in an organization and a department and a unit?
Speaker: all of that stuff can be very transferable of how you fit and flow with this organism that is a department to try to better things and move forward.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: Well, Joel, I love that because I'm thinking about, we tell our staff, like, let's take pride in our work, you know, and even if you're not on the facility side and you don't have to, as you said, pay the piper, like we can tell a building that's well run throughout the summer.
Speaker: Like if it's well run in the school year, as we work in them in the summer, like,
Speaker: But it's like there should be some level of pride that like my students left this building, my staff left this building in a better situation than if I just –
Speaker: didn't give a darn.
Speaker: We should all take pride in our work from the maintenance tech or the trade or the RA who walked the units or whatever the space.
Speaker: It's like, there's a reflection in there and whether that's right or not, or fair or not, there is a reflection on the staff people who work the building based on the conditions left in to some degree, at least.
Speaker: Well, there's a student development trickle down to that as well.
Speaker: I mean, if students come in, they're happy where they're at.
Speaker: They're,
Speaker: They're really going to be more engaged right from the get go.
Speaker: But if they walked into a space that wasn't taken care of and they talked to someone else, oh, yeah, this wasn't done either.
Speaker: All of a sudden now there's no buy in to wanting to connect as a community.
Speaker: And the next thing you know, it builds because now they're beating everything up down the hallways because they're like, oh, they don't care anyway.
Speaker: It's that broken window principle.
Speaker: People are more likely to break more windows if they see a broken window.
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So going back to systems, I tell my staff that our systems should get us 95% of the way there and our customer service handles the other 5%.
Speaker: In this case, the 5% are the things we talked about is like being missed or I think Kyle, you said like the in-service resolution or whatever.
Speaker: Is there any validity to what I've been telling my staff for years?
Speaker: Definitely.
Speaker: I think so.
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: Well, that's all I needed to hear.
Speaker: We can...
Speaker: Yeah, you do the hard work up front and then just admit it when you miss something and the good customer service and the service recovery.
Speaker: In the end, we've all had those conversations with parents, right?
Speaker: They're calling, they're upset, they're frustrated.
Speaker: But once they understand that you care and you're willing to say, we messed up and let me, here's what I'm going to do to try and fix it.
Speaker: Even if you can't give them everything they wanted, typically they're okay with that.
Speaker: They wanted them to hear that you take them seriously.
Speaker: So that's how you respond.
Speaker: And that's that other five, sometimes 10%.
Speaker: Sometimes 15 or 25%.
Speaker: So on move-in day, we typically hear the complaints only.
Speaker: We don't often get people who come into the office, stand in a line, and then scream at us about how impressed they were with the perfect condition of the room and how it met every expectation.
Speaker: So move-in day often feels like the whole summer was a waste, but in reality, we'll say 95% or more of everything was fined.
Speaker: How do we navigate the perception and the feelings of our staff who are on the receiving end or the maintenance people or the trades that just feel like the whole summer was a waste?
Speaker: Well, JC, I'm going to challenge that one.
Speaker: And with technology the way it is nowadays, my experience has been it's pretty balanced.
Speaker: Yes, we do hear the complaints and we will always hear the complaints.
Speaker: Because regardless of when they came for orientation, they looked at the building or what have you, they're not checking into the Ritz-Carlton.
Speaker: And that's kind of what they, for whatever reason, that's what they expect.
Speaker: However, we check every year, you know, we get all these accolades.
Speaker: We get these Facebook posts that are actually positive in nature of,
Speaker: how quick my check-in was, how, uh, how attentive the staff was to my check-in experience.
Speaker: Used to be prior to COVID, all of my team, all 150 of us facilities folks, we were here for the weekend of move-in.
Speaker: It was done over a two day period of time.
Speaker: We check, we check in 8,000 students over two days.
Speaker: Sean Dugan used to call it our Super Bowl and that's how we treated it.
Speaker: And, um,
Speaker: And so, you know, my staff were on the front lines when parents were coming in and they would hear the positive things, which helps with the morale and it helps with knowing that they did a good job, that they did what they needed to do so that when they did get that parent who was off the deep end because things just weren't what they expected it to be, it puts it in perspective.
Speaker: Now, since COVID,
Speaker: everything seems to be all digital and, you know, we're not out here every day like we were before because we've kind of spread it out over a week, week and a half.
Speaker: And our touch points are less, but our complaints are less too.
Speaker: So I think it's all about the stress level of that move-in experience, the anxiety,
Speaker: The parents are leaving their child and they're having separation anxiety.
Speaker: All of those emotions are tied into things.
Speaker: And when one thing doesn't go wrong, it's about bringing it back into perspective.
Speaker: Normally, yeah, we feed our staff really well during that time too.
Speaker: If you ever want to get to facilities good side, it's all about food.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But no, it's not always bad.
Speaker: And so I just say keep it in perspective.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's important for you to tell the positives, right?
Speaker: You know, when that person says how helpful somebody was or, you know, they send an email about that, make sure you cycle that around.
Speaker: Don't just, you know, let the only story be told that it was the bad things, right?
Speaker: So when I get those emails that are forwarded to me that come into our accounts, I make sure those get sent to my supervisors and sent out to our frontline teams.
Speaker: I also try and make sure they get pushed up.
Speaker: You know, so that they can be sent to our vice president's level, because you're right.
Speaker: There are a lot of things where people only remember the bad and they don't think to do the math like you did, JC.
Speaker: You know, OK, wait a minute.
Speaker: There were five complaints.
Speaker: It was horrible.
Speaker: Wait a minute.
Speaker: You not realize we cleaned 4000 rooms.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Do the math.
Speaker: You know, what's five divided by four thousand?
Speaker: The percentage is pretty darn small.
Speaker: You know, how many complaints did you get about your faculty last year?
Speaker: You know, was it more than that?
Speaker: Then why are you picking on us, you know, from the president's cabinet level over these five rooms or whatever?
Speaker: Because that's what they remember.
Speaker: But Andrew's right.
Speaker: We all have to give some grace.
Speaker: This is a stressful point in time in the family's life.
Speaker: They're letting their loved one.
Speaker: They're leaving them behind.
Speaker: It's a big turnover thing.
Speaker: And that's why you also need to be prepared to listen and be empathetic and be there.
Speaker: I had that happen last year with a dad who had a meltdown, swore up and down that we were not giving his son a safe environment and wish to live.
Speaker: And he was going to camp out overnight in the hallway on the floor in front of his son's door just to keep him safe.
Speaker: And I was like, okay, I'm done here.
Speaker: There's nothing that I can do with his dad.
Speaker: He's obviously working through some other issues here as well.
Speaker: So just tried to appeal to the mom and the student and be as helpful and supportive as I could.
Speaker: But, you know, remember to tell the students and the staff the positive stories.
Speaker: It's almost like we talk about creating systems to make sure these rooms get flipped, but there's also a value of creating a system that collects and disseminates the positive stories in the same way that we've got systems to go correct deficiencies.
Speaker: So I think that's a good takeaway you all brought up, especially for people that don't work in facilities that might be able to create a system that helps validate and
Speaker: Well, yeah, if you've got a communication group within your housing organization and they're watching the social media feeds or even if it's a university social media group or whatever, and they see those positive things, are we retweeting those or reposting those on our own social media feeds?
Speaker: Are those things coming back through in a way that you can get them out to the frontline staff and their supervisors?
Speaker: Hey, people are excited about the job you did.
Speaker: You guys made this happen.
Speaker: Way to go.
Speaker: And that might not be something your university marketing people are thinking about.
Speaker: how that could be helpful to us and build the morale of our frontline teams.
Speaker: So it's our job as leaders to go tell those marketing people, hey, when you get that, can you send that to me?
Speaker: This is what I want to do with that.
Speaker: A thank you goes a long way too.
Speaker: And I think that's a piece that sometimes can be missed or at least presented as like a, oh yeah, here's my general thank you.
Speaker: Like put a meaningful thank you together.
Speaker: whether that's in a handwritten note to different groups that had done some of the work during the summer, the facilities scene.
Speaker: I mean, Drew's point about food, you know, if you can do something like that, a little like end of move in, let's feed everyone type thing and just kind of be able to also maybe do some little like in the moment group therapy of just talking through some of the chaotic spaces.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But then it helps to like put that number together of like, oh, okay, really we're only talking about a small number of major problems that existed on move-ins and we didn't hear from these other folks and that's okay that we didn't hear from them.
Speaker: But I think from a res life side, especially if you're working with a facilities group, like, hey, for all the thank yous that didn't come through, here's a genuine thank you for the blood, sweat and tears that you put in this summer to make this place happen.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: And that's been a theme on a number of the episodes on this podcast is like the value, the appreciation, the words, like acknowledgement of the pride they do.
Speaker: Like, I mean, that cannot be underscored enough.
Speaker: Talked about final inspections a little bit, or at least alluded to them.
Speaker: And we've talked about preventative maintenance kind of surfacing here and there.
Speaker: But what are little things that could easily be missed on a final inspection, but could mean tragedy later on?
Speaker: A dead bug on the floor.
Speaker: I've loved that.
Speaker: That's no, absolutely.
Speaker: I mean, which, which also I've had to, I've had to sometimes have the conversation with residents and or their parents about like, well, the dead bug is actually a good thing because it means our preventative sprays are working.
Speaker: You need to be worried about the bugs that, that you're not seeing because they're avoiding, you know, whatever.
Speaker: But,
Speaker: That usually adds some humor in at least the moment in the conversation, especially when they're irate about something.
Speaker: They kind of like, oh, yeah, that's funny.
Speaker: OK, but but still there was a dead bug.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And we should have got that cleaned up.
Speaker: But that's an easy thing.
Speaker: I mean, through all those check marks, how easy is it to have like a paper towel or tissue in your pocket to be able to grab that up, flush it down the toilet and move on the day, you know, and be able to.
Speaker: But if there's a dead roach sitting right there when you open the door, now all of a sudden it sets off that initial perception that there's bugs everywhere in here.
Speaker: And now they start looking for, oh, this wall's cracked or that light fixture isn't attached properly or this handle on the sink doesn't close or the whole thing moves.
Speaker: So that one little dead bug can spiral into a dead
Speaker: This was a terrible room, you know?
Speaker: So that, yeah, that's, that's the one that when I saw that and hear you, hear you ask the question, I'm like, yeah, a dead buck.
Speaker: It's right there.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: I'm going to use that.
Speaker: I'm going to give that to our resident people to add that to RA training.
Speaker: You know, that is an example of the effectiveness of our pest control.
Speaker: What are you talking about?
Speaker: It's all about spin.
Speaker: I use that same line all the time.
Speaker: And it can be difficult sometimes when a student is totally like amped up on this like pest issues.
Speaker: And they're like, we got all these.
Speaker: And I'm like, oh, are they alive or they're dead?
Speaker: And they're like dead.
Speaker: And I'm like, well, that's a good thing.
Speaker: It can almost be patronizing in a way.
Speaker: But my wife at home will sometimes say, oh, I found a bug.
Speaker: Thankfully, it was dead.
Speaker: So that's a good thing, right?
Speaker: Take work home with me, I guess.
Speaker: Apparently, I've said that a few times.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, the other thing, because we all have that, right?
Speaker: Whether it's a dead bug or a light bulb that went out or an AC unit that started leaking.
Speaker: Everything was fine in here yesterday.
Speaker: And now all of a sudden it's dripping.
Speaker: What the heck?
Speaker: It's just, it's going to happen.
Speaker: That's why you got to have a service recovery.
Speaker: You got to have team members ready to go.
Speaker: Your question was, what do we miss?
Speaker: Sadly, I think it's the
Speaker: Things that are really high and really low.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Because, you know, that top of the closet cubby that you can barely see into, let alone see the shelf.
Speaker: And so is somebody going to get on a ladder and go up there and wipe it out and double check there's nothing in the back?
Speaker: Or could
Speaker: the very back of the very bottom drawer, right?
Speaker: Because again, they don't have to bend down that far.
Speaker: They're in a rush.
Speaker: They're tired.
Speaker: It was the end of the day and they just got a little bit, you know, haphazard.
Speaker: Those are those things that, you know, get missed or behind things that aren't like the windows or the blinds were down.
Speaker: Did you raise the blinds up and look at the window behind the blinds, you know, and then, you know, or the blinds were, are they up?
Speaker: Did you lower them to see if they worked or not?
Speaker: You know, those are the things that attention to detail that you got to have your people do.
Speaker: But part of it is when you're doing that many turns, those things get missed.
Speaker: Well, that's part of sometimes the systems, especially on very repetitive where we're talking 4,000, 5,000, 7,000.
Speaker: It's like that is literally the 500th drawer I've opened up today.
Speaker: And I've got 500 more drawers to open up tomorrow that we can start cutting corners and
Speaker: Or people tend to if they're like, well, every drawer has been good so far for the last 499.
Speaker: So this one's going to be good.
Speaker: But law of averages says otherwise.
Speaker: That's where that bug lives.
Speaker: Drew, you once mentioned to me that every room is considered a first new impression.
Speaker: And based on the conversation so far, I think everyone in this room would agree.
Speaker: But let's talk about that and all the little final touches that kind of help shape that first impression.
Speaker: We've talked about some of the negative things that can be missed, but are there little things you all do in terms of setting a room to make that first impression?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: One of the things we started doing many years ago is we...
Speaker: We created business cards for each of our housekeeping staff and we leave the cards in the room on the sink so that parents and the student who check, who move in, they see the picture of their housekeeper with their information.
Speaker: That has been a, we get so many compliments from parents about that just provides a level of comfort
Speaker: 99.9% of the students and the parents, they never call or they never email or they don't ever use it, but it's just a sense of, again, they have a lot of emotions going on.
Speaker: It's that sense of comfort.
Speaker: We also have
Speaker: strategically put tips on how to use the thermostat.
Speaker: The things that we're constantly getting complaints about, we try to be proactive with providing that information, transparent about bedbugs, what those are, how to locate them, what happens if you do or you think you have them.
Speaker: We put all of that stuff out, not to hide anything, but to be transparent so that parents think
Speaker: oh, well, they're not hiding anything.
Speaker: And if they have a question, they know who to talk to.
Speaker: Again, having our staff being present when they're moving in, they expect to see the Res Life staff.
Speaker: They expect that.
Speaker: It's an added touch when they see the person who's going to be cleaning the area that their son or daughter is in.
Speaker: And then it's our opportunity to showcase what we do.
Speaker: And so if there is a problem in a room,
Speaker: Oftentimes, they're the first line of defense when the parents are upset.
Speaker: And so we do train them on how to handle that, how to escalate things up with a smile.
Speaker: And as Kyle was saying, we do care.
Speaker: We genuinely care.
Speaker: We understand that this is a very important time for your son or daughter.
Speaker: And you are putting a lot of trust and faith in us
Speaker: to take care of them and we don't take that lightly.
Speaker: And so any of those opportunities to really be there, be present and be able to provide that additional sense of family and sense of comfort that we can are all opportunities.
Speaker: They're all touch points.
Speaker: And then just as Kyle said, our customer recovery is on point.
Speaker: I mean, we take that part seriously as well.
Speaker: And we know that we have options if we miss something, we take care of it right then and there.
Speaker: That becomes the priority.
Speaker: We drop what we're doing to ensure that it is fixed before that parent leaves so that that parent doesn't have to think about that all the way their eight or nine hour drive home where they're continuing to fume.
Speaker: So, you know, it's just the relationship.
Speaker: It's our opportunity to...
Speaker: to forge those relationships.
Speaker: And they're all part of the team.
Speaker: The parents are part of the team just as much as we are.
Speaker: Drew, I tell staff that I intentionally screw things up on purpose sometimes just so I can show how quickly I can resolve it and how much I care to make it a priority.
Speaker: So I put that in my talking points to parents that, oh, you got one of the rooms we messed up on purpose because we wanted to show you how much we care to fix it.
Speaker: Let me know how that goes for you.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: This is any listeners out there that want to take that on.
Speaker: You got a shot, a spot on the show in the future.
Speaker: I remember having a conversation with one of our area maintenance supervisors and ideally in his world, he told me that he would love to leave nothing more than to leave all the lights on.
Speaker: before move-in day because he's like, there's a different experience coming into a room and knowing the lights already work when you turn it off instead of coming in and you have a switch to turn it on and it doesn't work.
Speaker: And it could either be a light bulb out.
Speaker: It could be one of those that you have to pull the cord because the fans are on or off or whatever.
Speaker: And I always think about that from like a little thing of like that makes a big difference in the experience.
Speaker: Well, that's a great question.
Speaker: you know, attitude to have.
Speaker: And it shows a big, bigger picture awareness, right?
Speaker: About that impression that someone's getting and how can you start them off on the positive as opposed to a negative.
Speaker: Just to go back to Drew's point, that's a disappointment they leave with, you know?
Speaker: And again, if you flip them all on, let's say move-in starts at nine, your team's there at seven.
Speaker: If you're flipping all the lights on, you know, they all work.
Speaker: So there's no, you know, you know, surprise there.
Speaker: That's a great attitude for a supervisor to have.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think about keys, like there's nothing worse than I'm moving into my first apartment and I'm so excited and I walk up to the door and my key doesn't work.
Speaker: And all of a sudden it's like, I got to go all the way back to wherever I got it and find somebody to do.
Speaker: Like, it's just like those little things matter so much.
Speaker: That's a very interesting take on the lights on.
Speaker: And just as you described that, I was like, well, I mean, I recently moved and I've recently went to some open houses and yeah, all the lights were on.
Speaker: Didn't have to flip switches, you know, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker: So it's an interesting thought there on that front.
Speaker: One of the other things that we kind of tried to stress while at OSU, and I plan to replicate it here, is the grass cut.
Speaker: Did the maintenance team, the grounds group, like did they come through, like especially when you have different waves of move-in dates and times, getting them that information ahead of time so they can build it into their schedule, their routine of just like making sure
Speaker: Hey, this area, the grass was cut the day before.
Speaker: That way there's not clumps laying out there that people are having to walk through, that kind of stuff.
Speaker: that first, even before they've entered in the building, even before they've talked to a student or a staff member, that the property is maintained, you know, and just being able to do that.
Speaker: But then how do you, how do you further that?
Speaker: You know, the hallway is all cleaned up or, you know, then the rooms and the doors, you know, all that stuff.
Speaker: It all plays together in that welcoming environment.
Speaker: Because again, like we already talked with the broken windows concept, one thing that's off can spiral into people nitpicking other things.
Speaker: So if you can
Speaker: Eliminate that or at least, and yeah, maybe it's a little bit of, I don't know, the word escapes me right now, but it's a dog and pony show in the sense of like, hey, here we go.
Speaker: Things are ready.
Speaker: Look at this great environment.
Speaker: Now, all of a sudden, you don't hear from that person right away, as opposed to they've got that key that doesn't go in the door first thing.
Speaker: Now they're mad.
Speaker: Now they're already mad.
Speaker: So now they're going to find every other little other thing and start nitpicking left and right.
Speaker: Well, I think there's some of these little things.
Speaker: So the staff, the coordinators and the students in my area are the ones responsible for doing like the final quality control, the move and ready walks.
Speaker: And so I'm always very mindful of like all the little things they can do.
Speaker: And a lot of it is unfortunately goes against like green practices.
Speaker: Like it's not a good practice to leave the lights on a room to be made ready at an apartment.
Speaker: in early June for the next two and a half months till August.
Speaker: But it's also like one of the things we always get is like mineral buildup in toilets that around the ring where it becomes brown over a couple of months because it's hard water.
Speaker: And then we get all these complaints about toilets that are dirty.
Speaker: And I'm like, well, it's not really dirty, but yes, you're right.
Speaker: Like, it's like, we can't go back and keep flushing toilets all summer or go back and flush.
Speaker: Like, but there's a value to leaving toilet seats up because leave cabinet doors open that go against like the, like you don't want to walk into apartment where all the cabinet doors are open, but doing so creates air circulation.
Speaker: That's going to reduce elevated moisture levels that sometimes build.
Speaker: And we know what causes, what we're not allowed to say in writing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Glitter.
Speaker: Hair, hair, we call that glitter.
Speaker: Glitter or results of excessive moisture.
Speaker: But, you know, it's such a such a balancing act sometime.
Speaker: Or we do leave fans on on a low setting just to help create that circulation.
Speaker: Well, I think you have to do that.
Speaker: There's things that, because our buildings are designed for 100% occupancy.
Speaker: When an engineer designs the system for your HVAC or your other things, they're assuming it with a full occupancy load.
Speaker: And when you go into summer and even if you have a robust camp program or summer school program, you're not going to be at the same occupancy you are in fall and spring.
Speaker: So you have to then figure out, okay, what are the adjustments we need to make
Speaker: So we don't create problems where we have a glitter outbreak.
Speaker: I love that term.
Speaker: And have you figured those things out to do that?
Speaker: I've got one building where our staff take the recycling bin and hang it on the doorknob.
Speaker: because it then keeps a gap between the door and the hallway and allows better air circulation.
Speaker: Because these old legacy halls, as we call them, are vintage.
Speaker: They don't have the indoor air quality fresh air standards that our current new construction standards do.
Speaker: So they depend upon your residents coming and going for their air exchange rates.
Speaker: If you don't have that happen during the summer, you're going to have a glitter problem.
Speaker: And so you've got to do something to help facilitate that airflow.
Speaker: And that was a creative idea that I think my custodians came up with.
Speaker: And they hang that recycling bin on the handle.
Speaker: It leaves that gap, which allows the airflow to keep moving.
Speaker: Plus, as you said, the fans are on.
Speaker: But you've got to be prepared to do that.
Speaker: And then, yeah, come August, the week before, you know, the Super Bowl, as Drew said, then you go back through and you shut all those doors.
Speaker: You take those hooks off and you're good to go.
Speaker: I love the code words and it always reminds me, I love West Wing and they said something about a recession.
Speaker: He's like, no, you never say that word in this building.
Speaker: He's like, I don't care, a bagel, a boat show, a beer garden.
Speaker: He's like, okay, well, if there's gonna be a bagel, it's gonna be a mild bagel.
Speaker: Like at a school I was once at, like rats were coated as bagel and, you know, bed bugs or something else.
Speaker: It's like, these are the words you do not use in public.
Speaker: Mm-hmm.
Speaker: We just say biological growth.
Speaker: There we go.
Speaker: Fungal growth.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's good.
Speaker: Are you trained?
Speaker: Do you know how to define that?
Speaker: Are you sure?
Speaker: What's your certification level?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Dan Meiser's presentation at Swakuho several years ago where he just put a Petri dish out and it grew in front of us.
Speaker: All right, let's talk about resource limitations because we've talked about scheduling to try and provide balance and schedule things out appropriately.
Speaker: So shelter or housing is the foundational base of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Speaker: So I would argue nothing is more important than providing adequate shelter.
Speaker: I know many schools have struggled to fill maintenance positions in the last year or so.
Speaker: So my question is this.
Speaker: what accommodations, modifications, or shortcuts have you had to take in your make-ready systems to get the job done with limited staffing?
Speaker: Because it's not like we can say, oh, we're down 25% of our maintenance staff, so 25% of our rooms won't be ready in August.
Speaker: We increased the amount of temps that we hired to try and offset some of that.
Speaker: There's a couple of temp agencies that we're able to tap into.
Speaker: We normally would not use them, and so we did.
Speaker: We also went back to some of our
Speaker: pandemic retirees and said, hey, you want to come back and work part time?
Speaker: You know, and of course, some of them were like, heck no, not during the turn.
Speaker: But some of them were like, yeah, I kind of missed it.
Speaker: OK, I'll come back and do that for a while.
Speaker: And then we worked weekends.
Speaker: You know, like I said earlier, we tried to avoid that at all costs if we could to give them that time off.
Speaker: But we had to work more weekends during the pandemic and during this maintenance and custodial shortage period.
Speaker: One thing that we did at OSU was we actually, we had to work with our facilities team to kind of get them on board with the mindset.
Speaker: We cut a week off of the summer maintenance window.
Speaker: And in doing that, we said that week is going to be our, I don't know, whatever term you want to use, rush week, whatever, where it's
Speaker: did everything we could do in the summer.
Speaker: Now we're going back through every space again and find the things we missed and tried to amp up that quality control piece and tried to build in as many additional spot checks because we knew we weren't going to be perfect.
Speaker: And so we just had to try to build in a way to
Speaker: get us another set of eyes through there to catch that, oh crap, we missed this.
Speaker: Let's start working it now.
Speaker: Do we have to have conversations about trying to find, reassign someone so they're not moving in here to buy us a couple more days or whatever, just to be able to have that extra, that last week as all hands on deck.
Speaker: We're going through everywhere, even though hopefully we got most of it on the front end, but.
Speaker: Yeah, staff shortages.
Speaker: I mean, we're still hearing it.
Speaker: That's the biggest piece here at SMU that I'm hearing from the facility side is they just, they can't compete.
Speaker: What some folks are able to get not working at the university.
Speaker: And so trying to staff is hard, and especially for our cleaning folks, I don't envy the position that our management teams that are over the cleaning area, the cleaning services, I don't envy the spot that they're in because the
Speaker: There's a lot of people who don't even want to clean their own toilet at home, much less someone's that they've never met, much less a student's.
Speaker: And so it's like, and you can't pay them a lot.
Speaker: And it's like, are there ways that we can try to up the pay somehow?
Speaker: Can we supplement from a budget somewhere?
Speaker: But everybody's budgets are tapped, you know what I mean?
Speaker: And so it's like, all right, how do we get the word out there to try to get folks here?
Speaker: But it's tough.
Speaker: It's heavy lifting.
Speaker: We're in the same boat.
Speaker: I mean, we do rely on our temp agencies to try to offset some of that.
Speaker: We do work on weekends, particularly closer to August we get, the more of those weekends we'll be working.
Speaker: But I think it's also being creative and prioritizing and knowing what your priorities are and what you're willing to cut out and working with
Speaker: all of your team to ensure that we get rooms clean.
Speaker: It may be that we're short on housekeeping and so my maintenance folks are helping to clean rooms.
Speaker: And are they going to clean it to the same caliber as our housekeeper?
Speaker: Probably not because they don't have that training.
Speaker: but they can make it a lot easier for the housekeeping to come back behind them if needed.
Speaker: And so utilizing that, I think it's also not being afraid to utilize your ResLife team to help also if you're in a pinch.
Speaker: And if you know that you're not going to get to a specific spot or a place, it's notifying those people ahead of time.
Speaker: There have been a couple of years where we know that we had construction and we were
Speaker: delayed on a project and we knew that that building was not going to get the red carpet that we pride ourselves in doing.
Speaker: And so we did the best we could, but we notified parents ahead of time.
Speaker: We communicated that everything is clean, but we're just now finishing construction.
Speaker: And so the grounds may not be as clean as normally they would.
Speaker: There may be trash in the
Speaker: the alleyway kind of deal.
Speaker: And that's because we focused on the front of the house.
Speaker: And so we were willing to let the back go a little bit, but we owned it, as Kyle said, we owned it.
Speaker: And, and, and I mean, again, I think it turned out well for what it was.
Speaker: And you just, you sometimes have to be creative though.
Speaker: And you're,
Speaker: You might have people here talk about having an A-plus rating.
Speaker: Sometimes you may have to deal with and accept an A-minus, and that doesn't mean everything is bad.
Speaker: And so it's just kind of reiterating what our standards are and ensuring that we meet the basics of our standards.
Speaker: Well, and I think, Drew, what you're talking about really is kind of managing expectations, which is a skill on it all on its own.
Speaker: And it's one thing to manage expectations down, but anyone care to talk about how do you manage expectations up where it's like based on the reality of this situation, boss and boss's boss and boss's boss's boss.
Speaker: Like this is what what is going to be the reality of.
Speaker: and making them okay with that, that not every room is going to be perfect.
Speaker: And in this res hall, we have only been able to address the high priority, critical aspects.
Speaker: Whereas every little wall ding and every little thing we didn't even look at, like I know this last summer, like,
Speaker: We didn't there were rooms we didn't do anything at all in, but we knew the plumbing worked, that the showers were good.
Speaker: And like these are rest hall rooms, which typically take less work than like your full two bedroom apartments and all.
Speaker: But it's like I think it went all right.
Speaker: You know, we did not have an abnormal amount of complaints in that building.
Speaker: Yeah, I think when you talk about managing up, right, that the communication piece that Drew talked about to parents is equally important, if not more so up, right?
Speaker: Because you do need the boss and the boss's boss and the boss's boss's boss to know about this so that when it comes onto their desk via email or Twitter or whatever, they're not caught off guard.
Speaker: oh, this is what they were telling us might happen.
Speaker: Yes, it is.
Speaker: But also to show we have a plan for addressing it.
Speaker: You also have to be able to tell that story about what all the things that you've done, both what are the challenges you were facing, where you were understaffed and under-resourced, how much you were able to accomplish, and that you took an intentional approach.
Speaker: I always tell my staff, you're the boots on the ground person.
Speaker: you're going to have to deal with something that's going to come up and no one else is going to be there.
Speaker: So take some time, think about it, make a choice based upon the information you have and move forward.
Speaker: I will have your back as opposed to just, you know, shooting from the hip and just whatever that, that gets us into trouble.
Speaker: But that's so much fun to shoot from the hip and just do whatever.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And again, if you've thought it through and you've made a good decision based upon the facts and the reality and you've passed that on to your supervisors, they know what you've done and why.
Speaker: It's that rationale.
Speaker: This is how we're going to approach it if that happens.
Speaker: And then you can tell that story.
Speaker: And then also your boss can help tell that story about what happened and why and all the things you did to minimize and mitigate problems, but you couldn't cover everything.
Speaker: It's all about transparency and early.
Speaker: When you have a project that's not going to finish on time, that's an advantage because you know that ahead of time.
Speaker: It's not like that just, oh, it's Saturday.
Speaker: Oops.
Speaker: You have an idea a month before they're behind schedule.
Speaker: So you start contingency planning and you start making sure that you
Speaker: have those plans and that you've communicated those plans up and that you're honest about what the end result is going to be.
Speaker: And I think that's what the higher ups need to know because oftentimes, you know, last time they've been in a hall has been years.
Speaker: And so they're utilizing what you tell them.
Speaker: And so you have an advantage there.
Speaker: of making sure that you're being honest up front with the, what you're dealing with and, and what you've done to minimize it.
Speaker: Now, if you have a separate issue where you just ran out of time, um, because of poor time management, you have to own that too.
Speaker: And that, that's a whole different, you know, sometimes you just have to eat the cabbage and say, you know, mess it up and, um,
Speaker: we're not gonna let this happen again and here's what we've put in place to make sure this doesn't happen again.
Speaker: And then you go immediately into customer recovery
Speaker: It can be difficult, but it also can be very rewarding.
Speaker: And those are the kind of conversations that if you are a young professional, if you get comfortable in delivering those kind of conversations and being a part of those, it is huge professional development, professional growth, because you will experience those the higher up you go, the more common they become.
Speaker: So my previous supervisor, Shannon Bachman, she's still at Oklahoma State.
Speaker: It was, it would always, usually late July, we had our meeting with facilities management and it was always the first agenda topic of what are we going to hear at move in?
Speaker: What, what weren't we able to, you know, this giant checklist that we started at the beginning of the year, now that we've rolled through the majority of the summer, which ones do we,
Speaker: Do we facilities know didn't get the best attention?
Speaker: We'd rather hear it now so we can start making those contingencies plans, start having those conversations, start sharing up and sharing out and preparing our res hall staff to make sure like, hey, you're going to hear about this.
Speaker: Don't know what specific route, but you're going to hear about it from somewhere.
Speaker: And here's the action plan of how we move forward with that.
Speaker: Because the frustrating part on the back end is you get this laundry list of like,
Speaker: We asked the question, what were we going to get hit on?
Speaker: And it was clear blinds based on all the work orders that came in were the things that got missed.
Speaker: Come on, like, let's just own it on the front end.
Speaker: Let's not lie about it.
Speaker: I mean, professional development tip, it's not worth the lie.
Speaker: You know, just own it.
Speaker: Be honest and say, here's what we missed or here's what we're struggling on.
Speaker: so that the team and the group can rally to figure out how to, as a unit, to move forward.
Speaker: Well, I think that's great practice just in general, because if solutions are best solved at the lowest possible level, then having the lowest level already armed with talking points, company lines, whatever it's called, just kind of helps alleviate the log jam at the front desk or at the coordinator's office or wherever it is, is that
Speaker: What a great like that's like red teaming.
Speaker: It's like we know we're going to pick holes in our process to find the problem so that we've already armed ourselves with responses to help reduce the whatever.
Speaker: Love that.
Speaker: As we wrap up, despite my vast experience as a podcast host, I was not able to integrate a couple of comments that were put on the bio sheet.
Speaker: So I'm going to quote a couple of things and let you all talk about it if you want.
Speaker: Drew, you said in the prompt, is there anything else you want to talk about?
Speaker: You said it is not rocket science.
Speaker: but the best practices and processes are done as a team as each room is considered a new first impression.
Speaker: I think we covered that one pretty well, but anything you'd like to add, Drew, to the not being rocket scientists in our jobs?
Speaker: No, I think that's pretty straightforward.
Speaker: Don't get bogged down in the minutiae.
Speaker: And if you mess up in one situation,
Speaker: okay, right around the corner is a new opportunity to get it right.
Speaker: So just keep focusing on improving and doing the best you can day in and day out.
Speaker: Well, Drew, to your point, it's not just that there's another one around the corner.
Speaker: You actually have at your campus 5,499 other opportunities to demonstrate your competence.
Speaker: So
Speaker: Kyle, in your bio, you said professional networks are critical to success.
Speaker: So get off your campus and go see how someone else does it.
Speaker: Anything else you'd like to elaborate?
Speaker: No, I mean, I think that's been one of the beauties of, you know, being able to get out and go to professional conferences.
Speaker: You don't even have to do that, though.
Speaker: If there are other places that live or, you know, their campuses are within driving distance, go take a day trip, take your team and go see how somebody else does it.
Speaker: It just really helps you have a different perspective or maybe convince them to come to you, right?
Speaker: And if I offered a fee...
Speaker: especially the facilities people, right?
Speaker: You offer them a good food, they'll come in, right?
Speaker: So bring them in for the day and have them share what they've done that's unique and interesting and bring the new ideas to them as opposed to making them go to a conference somewhere.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So as we look to wrap up, any closing thoughts that you all would like to share that we haven't talked about so far?
Speaker: I think back to, I mean, I used it in my presentation to get my current job was the Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Speaker: And so much is that base.
Speaker: component that all of the as we as student affairs professionals would want to develop individuals we want to see them thrive we want to see new new members of the campus get engaged and and connected and love the place as much as we do or we love our the place that we went to that base level that of Maslow's hierarchy of needs it's the place shelter you know safety security all of that stuff
Speaker: That's what a lot of this work is.
Speaker: And as long as you're checking those boxes, I really think that as professionals in at least the ops world, that helps to lay your head down and heighten, you know, in the fact that
Speaker: being able to sleep and being able to know that, hey, we did everything we could to address these basic things.
Speaker: Like, yes, we didn't get every building painted this year, but is it secure?
Speaker: Is it safe from the elements?
Speaker: Is it somewhere that someone can feel like this is their home away from home and hopefully become their real home for at least their college experience?
Speaker: Because that is going to lead to all that other stuff that
Speaker: that the res ed side is what they love to do, that development component and moving people towards that self-actualization at the very top of that triangle.
Speaker: You know, none of that can happen if we're cutting corners around safety and security and that stuff.
Speaker: So I think it's a lot of heavy lifting and it takes a lot of folks.
Speaker: I think there's also a we component at play here.
Speaker: I mean, I have an athletic background, so that just oozes out of me with that we are a team and yes,
Speaker: We utilize another department and another team to do a lot of this work, but their faults are our faults.
Speaker: And when there is something that's gone awry, it's our bad as a unit and as a group.
Speaker: But then how do we rally as a team to fix the problem?
Speaker: Because you're not going to win every game.
Speaker: It's just not going to happen.
Speaker: Even the Golden State Warriors lost a couple games that year that they were so good.
Speaker: So, I mean, it's just one of those components that,
Speaker: There's going to be hiccups and bumps in the road, but how do you rally as a group to move forward in all of that?
Speaker: So that's my last spiel, I guess.
Speaker: Well, and to tack on, I would say also don't blame others or rat out others in that situation.
Speaker: team mentality that is easy.
Speaker: It is to be like, well, I'm not maintenance.
Speaker: It's not my problem.
Speaker: You know, maintenance is really slow or whatever.
Speaker: It's like, you're all, we're all in this together.
Speaker: And when we put down somebody else, we're putting down ourselves.
Speaker: You know, I think the other thing that I would say is we've been working here about an experience mapping experience exercise and in thinking about it from the very beginning to the very end and how you contribute to
Speaker: you know, before they get here, once they get here, when they're here, as they exit, after they leave.
Speaker: And so what can you do to help them understand that, yeah, this is going to be a home away from home, set them up safety, security, but is it a good experience?
Speaker: Do they feel welcome?
Speaker: Do they feel like, you know, the message that this space is sending is that I matter and that
Speaker: for the parent that, ooh, my student matters to these professionals.
Speaker: And they've taken the care to provide a good experience for us when we move them in.
Speaker: Or are we setting them off for failure that they've come in and had a bad experience in that first 15 minutes in the door?
Speaker: And then that provides a jaded experience.
Speaker: So just helping our teammates see that they really have a huge impact
Speaker: on setting the whole year up for success for those people.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, I appreciate all of you joining us to, as I said at the beginning, get a peek behind how the sausages are made.
Speaker: Certainly our rooms are much cleaner and nicer and more well thought out than your average sausage, but can't thank you all enough for sharing your expertise, especially in an area that doesn't often get a lot of attention on our facility side.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: Make sure to join us next time.
Speaker: And with that, I say to you, good day.
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