Every year, burnout drains $322 billion from businesses worldwide.¹ Property management teams feel this most during the holidays—but there’s a way to get ahead of it.
By building a proactive staffing strategy, you can keep workloads balanced, morale high, and service levels steady no matter how busy the season gets. The right staffing support helps you enter the new year with a stronger, more resilient team.
What Is Employee Burnout?
Employee burnout goes beyond everyday stress. It’s a state of physical and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged workloads, constant pressure, and limited support.
In property management, it often appears as fatigue, disengagement, or declining performance among leasing staff, managers, and maintenance teams. If left unaddressed, burnout impacts not only employees but also resident satisfaction, retention rates, and overall property performance.
Read more: Is Your Property Management Team Overworked? Signs It’s Time to Expand Your Staff
Why Burnout Spikes During the Holidays
The holidays may bring joy to residents, but for property teams, they highlight every weak spot in staffing. Here’s what drives burnout most this time of year:
1. Too Many People on Vacation
December is the most popular month for time off. When several team members are out at once, the remaining staff carry double the load. Tours get pushed back, service calls stack up, and everyday tasks like paperwork or resident follow-ups take longer. The more weeks this goes on, the heavier the pressure feels for those left behind.
2. Last-Minute Call-Outs
Beyond planned vacations, unexpected absences spike in winter. Colds, flu, and family emergencies leave managers scrambling to cover shifts on short notice. Without extra help, the same few employees end up covering gaps, which quickly erodes energy and morale.
3. More Resident Requests
Holiday traffic brings added strain to properties. Residents host gatherings, guests stay over, and cold weather creates maintenance issues. Work orders pile up—sometimes 150% higher than average—and residents expect fast fixes.² With fewer staff to respond, your team feels like they’re constantly behind, fueling stress and frustration.
4. Compounded Pressure Leads to Burnout
Each factor—vacations, last-minute absences, and rising work orders—would be manageable on its own. But stacked together, they create unsustainable workloads. Staff feel drained, disconnected, and less effective in their roles. And once burnout sets in, it often carries over into the new year, making recovery slow.
Smart Staffing Strategies to Reduce Employee Burnout
When it comes to preventing burnout, managers can look at many solutions: better training, better scheduling, even wellness programs. But in property management, the most immediate lever you can pull is staffing. A strong staffing plan not only lightens workloads, it also ensures residents continue to get the service they expect. Here are three core staffing strategies that directly reduce burnout for property teams:
Seasonal and Temporary Staffing
Temporary employees provide extra coverage during peak periods, especially October through December when demand is highest. Bringing in seasonal staff ensures that day-to-day operations don’t fall on the same few people, which is the fastest path to burnout. These workers can step in for:
- Leasing consultants to handle tours and renewals
- Assistant managers to manage admin tasks and resident requests
- Maintenance techs to keep up with repairs and turns
- Groundskeepers for daily property upkeep
- Concierge or front desk staff to manage deliveries and guest traffic
Seasonal staffing adds flexibility without long-term payroll commitments. You can scale support up or down as demand shifts, keeping service levels steady and your permanent team focused on their core responsibilities.
Building a Talent Pipeline
A talent pipeline is a group of pre-qualified candidates you can draw from quickly. Unlike starting a new search from scratch, a pipeline means you’ve already identified people with property management experience who are ready to step in.
Pipelines are often built through a mix of past temporary staff, referrals, and candidates sourced by your staffing partner. Maintaining this pool of talent ensures you don’t lose time to lengthy job postings or rushed interviews during peak season. The faster a vacancy is covered, the more supported your current employees feel, and the smoother your operations run.
Partnering with a Staffing Firm
Working with a staffing partner takes the burden of sourcing, screening, and onboarding off your managers. Instead of scrambling to find reliable people in the middle of the holidays, you gain access to a pool of vetted professionals who have already been checked for skills, background, and reliability.
This ensures you’re not trading one problem (burnout) for another (bad hires). A staffing partner gives your team confidence that reinforcements are both available and qualified.
End employee burnout with staffing solutions from The Liberty Group
With The Liberty Group, you gain staffing strategies that keep workloads balanced, residents satisfied, and your best employees supported. From temporary coverage to direct hires—and even same-day solutions through our RapidHire service—you’ll always have qualified talent ready when you need it most.
Choose The Liberty Group for your next hire. Contact us today to secure holiday coverage with confidence and keep your team strong through the busiest weeks of the year.
Reference:
- Gallup. “Employee Wellbeing Is Key for Workplace Productivity.” Gallup, 2024, Gallup.com, https://www.gallup.com/workplace/215924/well-being.aspx.
- “3 Ways to Enjoy Your Vacation and Avoid Holiday Backlog.” PropertyMeld, 2024, https://propertymeld.com/blog/avoid-holiday-backlog-and-enjoy-your-time-off/.