For your corporate real estate department to save time in its everyday activities, the focus should be on efficiency and communication between team members and between other departments.
1.Communication.
The most important thing to think about is how to improve the transfer of information both inside and outside the corporate real estate department. Time savings will be earned by eliminating redundant work, that may already have been done by another team member. These situations can be avoided by the utilization of a good commercial real estate software system.
2. Role definitions.
Nothing wastes time more than idle workers who lack direction. The less focus there is in a team, the more people will wander off message and be unproductive. It is a good idea to assign secondary roles to team members so that if they are actually finished with their assignments, they can seamlessly start helping with other tasks instead of sitting around. Or, on the flip side, when employees are functioning in essentially the same role, they lose the time to work on other projects and activities. Redundancies hurt efficiency.
3. Anticipate future work needs.
The nature of the work in this department is that it involves many tasks that do not come up very often, but when they do, their completion is critical. Thinking ahead and preparing as much as possible for future by getting as much foundational work done as possible will both eliminate unproductive time in the short-run, but will decrease the stress of completing those tasks when they are due.
4. Listen to staff.
It is important for all corporate real estate department heads to encourage team members to give feedback. Fostering an environment that makes workers feel at ease with giving new suggestions and constructive criticism should help expose inefficiencies in a timely fashion.
5. Keep up with the industry.
Best practice articles are freely shared in trade journals and conferences. Keeping up with how others are improving their corporate real estate departments will surely give insight into how things are going at home.
Good management and an appetite for increasing efficiency will pay off just like it does in any business.
