Strata Council owners routinely move, and when they do, it can create a huge gap in the continuity of your Strata Council. This is particularly true and problematic if that owner was pulling more than their share of the volunteer work, or had been around for a long time and had access to information that others in your strata didn’t. We see this frequently in the strata properties we manage, where a long-term owner essentially runs the Strata Council for a prolonged period of time, and the void that they leave after stepping down from Council can be very difficult to fill. This puts the strata corporation at risk, and should be avoided at all costs.
Here are some tips and best practices to improve the continuity in your business so that you don’t run into issues when someone steps down
Treat your strata corporation’s affairs like any other business. No well run business should operate being completely dependent upon one person, and neither should your strata.
Rotate strata council roles. It’s a good idea to rotate your President, VP, and Tresurer roles every year to ensure that multiple people are qualified to provide the leadership that is required to run a strata corporation. Clearly defining the roles will help in this process.
Eliminate gatekeepers. No one single strata council member should have access to exclusive information that others don’t have access to.
Spread the work around. It’s best practice to not have any one single strata council member shoulder too much work, as this won’t be sustainable in the long run, especially if they end up selling their unit and moving out! Spread things around amongst the entire Council so that no one person is irreplaceable in their role.
Digital access to information. Think about it in terms of if someone were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, would everyone on Council be able to access the information required to carry on. Whether you are using a strata management company or not, you should have information stored in the cloud, and everyone on Council should have access to it. This can be an owner portal, dropbox, a shared drive such as Microsoft or Google, etc. Make sure that everyone has the passwords to log in, and knows how to do so.
Train your successor. Strong leaders should always be grooming and training others to take over for them for if/ when it is required. Add fresh bodies to Council every year, and train them like they are going to take over one day!
These best practices to maintain continuity in your strata corporation are important for any strata corporation, but are absolutely critical for self-managed stratas!
Reach out to us here to see how we can help!