Where the week goes when work changes hands.
A free tool your team runs on their phones in twenty minutes, showing where work waits on a person instead of a rule.
Short answer
Key person dependency is when work in the agency can only move forward once one particular person picks it up, says yes or passes it on, so it stops when they’re busy or off. It costs you in hours lost at every handover, in decisions that queue, and in landlords who only trust one name. You reduce it by cutting the number of handover points, letting the system pass information on automatically, and agreeing with each landlord what the team can go ahead with, so the people managing the property can actually manage it.
Most offices are carrying more capacity than they realise. It never shows up as one big problem. It sits in the joins, where a job moves from one person to the next, or stops while it waits for somebody senior to say yes. Every time it changes hands somebody has to pick it up and work out where it got to, and every time it waits, everything behind it waits too.
None of that is anybody doing a bad job, which is part of why it never gets raised.
On the worked example in the tool, three processes came out at seventeen handovers and five retypes. That is a little over 42 hours a month before anybody does any actual work, and at £24 an hour it comes to £12,192 a year, about a quarter of a person you are already paying for.
Why do clients stick with one person?
If a good friend recommended something to you and a complete stranger recommended something else, you know whose advice you’d take, and clients are the same with the people who look after their property. They want one contact because they trust that person, they’ve dealt with them for a long time, and that person knows the property. That’s worth keeping. The trouble is what tends to get built around it.
Agencies tend to end up at one of two extremes. Either each property manager owns their patch on their own, or everything goes to a team. I’ve sat at the table with both, and neither works on its own. When one person owns everything, notes rarely make it into the system, and you can see why, because in their head they’re the property manager and they already know it. When they’re off sick or they leave, all of that goes with them, and I still see it when I visit agencies.
When work goes to a team, nobody owns it. Send an email to the whole team asking “can someone check this?” and you’ll rarely get an answer, because everyone assumes someone else will pick it up. It’s the same with “when someone’s free, can they get the answerphone?” It reminds me of the “free beer tomorrow” sign you see outside pubs. We laugh at it, but plenty of offices run on “when someone’s free”, and that time never comes.
The sweet spot is in the middle: a trusted person the client deals with, and a team behind them doing the work, a bit like an owner who keeps the relationship but passes the work down. That only holds if there’s ownership and accountability, and accountability needs measures, so each piece of work has a named owner and you can see whether it’s getting done. It helps with workload too. However carefully you share the work out, one person ends up run ragged while another has their feet up, and the one who’s run ragged either burns out or leaves, and their work piles up for someone who doesn’t know it.
Clients don’t mind dealing with more than one person. What they mind is information getting mixed up, something they asked for not being saved, or a job not being done properly. So keep in touch as the key person and check in with them every so often, while the team deals with things on their behalf before they have to ask.
Where does the work get stuck?
At the handover points. Every time a job passes from one person to another there’s a chance it stops, and the aim is to cut down how often you have to worry about that. One of the easiest handovers to take away is passing information from one person to another. If the system is straightforward to use and has automation set up behind it, then when someone clicks the thing they’d click anyway, everyone who needs to know is told. Nobody has to remember to forward it, and nobody has to ask.
Why does every decision wait for someone senior?
Because the team is acting as permission seekers rather than managers. It’s called property management for a reason. Management means someone takes hold of it, is accountable and gets it done.
So the aim is to reach an agreement with each landlord: up to a certain amount, and for certain kinds of work, the team can go ahead without asking, because the landlord trusts them to question things first. That only works if the team does question things. Management can’t be carrying messages. Something being reported doesn’t make it accurate. Is there a way to avoid the landlord paying out at all? Is the quote too high? Those early questions are what tell a landlord you’re managing their property and have their interest at heart, and aren’t only trying to get it off your desk.
It’s slightly harder at the start and much easier later on. Once that’s in place, something comes in, it’s £300, it’s been assessed, it needs doing, and the team cracks on. Every one of those is a handover that no longer happens.
Staff handover checklist
Use this whenever someone is off, leaves or hands a client to someone else. If any line can’t be answered from the system, that’s a key person dependency.
- Every open job, and where each one is up to, visible in the system rather than in someone’s head or inbox.
- Each landlord’s agreed limit and the kinds of work the team can go ahead with.
- Who the client usually deals with, how they like to be kept updated, and when they last heard from you.
- Every date coming up in the next 60 days, owned by a role rather than a name.
- Which updates go out automatically, and to whom.
- Any decision that’s waiting, who it’s waiting on, and since when.
Watch it, start to finish
Eleven minutes on where the joins are in an agency, and how the tool finds yours.
What the tool shows you
Where the work waits. Every point a job stops for a person rather than moving on a rule.
Who carries it. The name that turns up across every process, usually more often than anyone expected.
What it costs. The waiting in hours and wages, worked out from your own answers.
The rule that replaces it. For each wait, the rule that takes it off somebody’s plate.
Run it with your team
Three or four of you write down how one process really runs, on your own phones, at the same time. Nobody sees anybody else’s answers until everyone has finished, because otherwise the second person writes what they think the first one wrote. Twenty minutes, no sign-up, no email address, and your answers are destroyed seven days later.
There is a finished example on the page if you want to see one before you run your own.
Who can help
I’m Sam Olliver. I ran property management for 5,000 properties, and I now help agencies take the handover points out of their work and set up the systems so information moves without anyone chasing it. The Operations Scorecard is free and takes three minutes.
Frequently asked questions
What is key person dependency in a letting agency?
It’s when work can only move forward once one particular person picks it up, approves it or passes it on. When they’re busy, off or leave, the work waits, and clients who only deal with them wait too.
How do you reduce key person dependency?
Cut the number of handover points, let the system tell the right people automatically when something changes, and agree with each landlord what the team can go ahead with up to a set amount, so decisions don’t queue for one person.
What should a staff handover checklist include?
Every open job and where it’s up to, each landlord’s agreed limit, how each client likes to be kept updated, the dates coming up and who owns them, which updates go out automatically, and any decision that’s waiting.
Why do landlords only want to deal with one person?
Because they trust that person, they’ve dealt with them for a long time, and that person knows the property. Keep that trusted contact, but put a team behind them who record everything in the system, so when the key person is off, someone else can pick it up and the landlord doesn’t have to start again.
From Easier To Run, lesson two. See the post on LinkedIn ↗