Task Assignment & Planning Policy
This policy applies to both Bramlett Residential & Treaty Oak employees & VAs.
Everyone operates the most efficiently when they have time to plan under as little stress as possible. As such, our goal is to provide a reasonable amount of planning time for everyone. In order to do this, our policy is to assign all tasks
the prior business day before the assignee's last
email batch. Skip below to
Eric's long-winded explanation why.
Simple Rule: Tomorrow's tasks should be assigned today by 4 pm or earlier. (VA's cutoff time is 5 pm.)
Examples:
- A listing agent needs new information added to the description of a listing by EOD on Wednesday. The LA needs to assign this to a VA before 5 pm (the VA's last email batch) on Tuesday.
- A property manager needs a lease written for a property by EOD Monday and has asked a US-based co-worker to do this. The PM needs to assign this task to their co-worker before 4 pm (the co-worker's last email batch) on Friday.
- An LA needs flyers delivered to a listing by EOD Tuesday. The LA will assign the task to the US-based LC by 4 pm on Monday.
Teamwork
We're all a team and we're here to help each other out. As such, you will sometimes
ask for a favor from a co-worker to complete a task in a shorter time frame. In this case, please ask the co-worker: 1) Do they have time to do this? 2) Would they mind doing it? You'll find that, most of the time, the answer is yes. If the co-worker says "no", then they're either too busy, maybe they're having a bad day (and it's a bad time), or maybe you've asked for too many favors recently. :)
Eric's Long-Winded Explanation
This policy is in the interest of helping everyone work efficiently and it also encourages everyone to plan well. When you know that you have help if you plan ahead, you'll plan ahead. When everyone expects that they can always plan ahead, they'll make a habit of planning ahead. Great planning breeds efficiency and an awesome work environment.
- If someone calls our LC at 10 am and asks them to run flyers to Leander that day, they've probably added a 2-hour task to the LC's 8 hour day. This just ate 25% of the LC's time and added a ton of stress (and possibly resentment.)
- If someone asks a VA to update a listing that same day, they've asked the VA to adjust their schedule, which is a task in and of itself. So, the VA was asked to stop what they're doing (which reduces efficiency), adjust their schedule (which takes 10 minutes), update the listing (which takes 10 minutes), and then communicate everything (which takes 5-10 minutes). So, the 10-minute task took roughly 30 minutes. Not efficient. :)
No one likes Bill Lumberg, so Lumberg isn't welcome at Bramlett or Treaty Oak.
The overpaid, lazy boss is a common trope. When an emergency hits, they don't worry about, and they just pass it on to their co-workers (who they think of as "their employees".) Our policy disallows that practice because it renders it ineffective. The lazy boss's poor planning isn't solved by "passing it on" because the boss can't hand his fire off to someone else to immediately solve it. Everyone here is a boss and everyone here is a co-worker. No one here is a Lumberg.