Multifamily Residential: Be Prepared for the Onslaught of Holiday Packages

It’s already the holiday season? This year has flown by! Multifamily residential staff can definitely tell when the beginning of holiday season has arrived. The first sign is seeing the delivery of holiday packages multiply. 

Throughout 2022, each resident receives an average of 9.41 packages delivered every month, according to ApartmentData. Think about that. Ten packages a month, in a community with 100 residents- that’s 1,000 packages a month! Do the math and you’ll see this is an average of 33 packages per day. These numbers reflect a normal month, however, and the number of holiday packages skyrockets during this time of the year. 

This is a heavy burden on the staff who may be shorthanded. An NMHC/Kingsley Package Delivery Survey has found that 68% of multifamily residential employees spend between one to four hours every week handling residents’ package deliveries. The number of packages climbs by 81% during the holidays when compared to the non-holiday season. 

Moreover, an article in The New York Times quotes Dan Wurtzel, a property manager, who says package deliveries are a year-round problem. The article opens with a resident complaining about package management in their multifamily residential building, describing it as chaotic. Wurtzel recommends using technology to manage the packages as manual processes could contain mistakes. These are not mistakes you’ll want to let continue, as they could upset residents.  

It’s possible to use technology and human intelligence to make holiday package delivery more manageable. 

Better Ways to Manage Holiday Packages 

While your employees may manage packages without a problem most of the year, some falter when it comes time for holiday packages. How your property handles package management year-round can affect resident satisfaction and loyalty.  

When your employees take good care of residents and their property, it can both boost resident retention rates and enhance the overall resident experience. The three ways listed below will go a long way toward achieving these aims. 

1. Install remote video surveillance

Employees can’t be everywhere on the property. Fortunately, remote video surveillance, with cameras and monitoring, helps deter package theft by taking a proactive approach to security. It can watch your property from a variety of angles and increase overall property activity visibility. This setup adds another layer of security with saved video recordings for later review when needed.  

The high-resolution security cameras can better make out faces and useful identifying information. The advantage of these technologies is that they do more than help stop package theft. Any time someone finds out about a problem after the fact, video analysts can search and review the video surveillance footage to piece together what happened. They can send the video clip to the police, insurance, and anyone who needs it as directed by the multifamily residential point of contact. 

A proactive video surveillance system like the one from Stealth Monitoring helps maximize security by combining video analytics and human intelligence. Your building can benefit from full-site monitoring and faster response times from law enforcement. The technology pays for itself within months. Plus, security is a high priority for residents, especially with more of them working from home. 

2. Add an access control system

An access control system manages who can access different parts of the community and can be used to let delivery carriers into the buildings. There wouldn’t be a need to station an employee at the front or require them to open the door for delivery people and vendors.  

If you store the packages in a room, then an access control system can improve security. Only individuals with the proper key, fob, or code should have access, such as delivery drivers or residents who have deliveries. You may consider creating a package locker room similar to Amazon’s hub locker. Access control can open the door for the delivery staff to enter and store the package in the locker. 

Remote video surveillance with security cameras can operate with or without an access control system. However, using both adds more layers to your security. The more layers you have, the harder it will be for someone with insidious plans to accomplish their goal. There are a variety of solutions that use both an access control system and video surveillance.  

An access control system benefits your multifamily residential property in other ways. You can control who has access to the other onsite amenities, such as the laundry room, the fitness room, the swimming pool, and other resident-only facilities. For this to work well, you’ll need to educate both residents and employees on policy, which lead us to our final item: 

3. Educate employees and residents

Security is only as strong as your weakest link. The weakest link is typically human. It’s critical to close the gap by educating your employees and residents. How can you educate them? The best way depends on your community’s communication preferences.  

Maybe you have one resource all employees and residents rely on to get updates from property management. You may need to use multiple resources to ensure you reach everyone. Perhaps, a good place is the avenue that you use to send them their bills and announcements.  

It’s recommended that you partner with a security expert to create the training and education. This can include tips, such as using the package tracking feature. Most businesses involving package delivery offer this as an option.  

Processes are only effective if people follow them, which is why it’s important to train employees and have them sign off on the training. Depending on how packages are handled, employees may need training on the package management process. If you add remote video surveillance and access management, then it can ultimately be much easier on the employees.  

Employees typically undergo security training at least once a year, and the package management process can be part of that. Requiring everyone to attend training regularly helps keep them vigilant and security concerns top of mind. 

A Better Way to Manage Holiday Packages

The holiday season can place additional stresses on many people as they have to plan for family gatherings while doing their full-time jobs. It’s no surprise that when the holiday season rolls around, it can become a huge stressor for employees as managing residents’ influx of holiday packages engulfs their day. Investing in remote video surveillance can help ease the workload of multifamily residential property employees. 

Check out these videos from multifamily residential properties where video surveillance helped deter crime: 

• Package thief caught in the mail room 
• Trespasser arrested after piggybacking into the apartment building 
• Multifamily residential mail and package thefts 
• Arrest of apartment package theft 

A video surveillance system can come with an audio deterrent. This allows the operator to issue a warning to the intruders, which becomes another layer of security. 

Here are some benefits of multifamily residential video surveillance: 

• 24/7 monitoring: There are always residents on the apartment property. Around-the-clock monitoring/video recording will help ensure everyone stays safe.  
• Liability protection: With security cameras saving all recordings, you can gain access to evidence you may need for lawsuits and insurance claims. 
• Faster response times: Stealth Monitoring has relationships with law enforcement across the U.S. and Canada. When most police dispatchers get a call from Stealth, they know it’s not a false alarm and typically respond quickly.  
• Complete site coverage: Video surveillance cameras can monitor the entire property including the roof and parking areas. 

The thing that surprises video surveillance clients most of all is the cost savings. Video surveillance costs up to 60% less than security guards. It delivers a quick ROI and may increase revenues. Residents value security according to the surveys by National Apartment Association and  Schlage and Wakefield Research. Video surveillance can provide the peace of mind everyone wants. You can’t put a price on that. 

Stealth works with many multifamily residential properties. In selecting Stealth Monitoring as your video surveillance partner, our security experts can design a custom security camera system for your property. We build right-sized solutions. 

If you already have security cameras installed, we can typically watch your cameras. We can also run system health checks to verify there are no problems. If our system health check finds a problem, we can often resolve it without coming to your property. 

To learn more about multifamily residential security, pick up your free Complete Guide to Securing Your Apartment Building. This guide lists options for securing your property to help protect your residents and employees as well as holiday packages. It reviews four lines of defense to enhance multifamily residential security. To learn more about video surveillance and access control, please contact us. Have a great holiday season!