Welcome to the new PMR website, as MD it falls on me to kick off our regular blog spot and I want to spend a little time talking about the most important part of the PMR Verto business, our people.

I don’t mean the highly talented and dedicated recruitment teams we have across the group, but the people who are the core of what we do, our site staff.

Throughout the last nine months, whilst many have been able to work from the relative comfort of home, our teams of concierges, cleaners and caretakers have been in workday after day. They have unfailingly ensured that our clients’ blocks are secure, mail and parcels collected and distributed, common parts cleaned and sanitised, and that the increased workload they have been faced with by flats having much higher daily occupancy, has been coped with. There are also the dozens
who we employ on waking watches, keeping residents safe from the threat of fire in blocks with unsafe cladding.

Our industry is very fortunate to have been largely spared the devastation that has been wrecked on many sectors and it is precisely a time like this when we must acknowledge the valuable efforts of these people. They are every bit key workers as many others whom we routinely applaud, in the NHS, the police and our armed forces.

As an industry, we need to also take time to invest in their training and development, something we are trying to build with the launch this year of Verto Training, with our courses accredited by ARMA. Not just that, but we need to work as an industry to attract good people in at all levels, from Concierges and Caretakers to Development and Estate Managers. We should have a great story to tell of an expanding industry, delivering a safe and secure residential environment for residents to live (and increasingly) work in, long term jobs with potential for advancement and security.

I hope that amongst the many lessons we learn from the COVID-19 crisis, is our commitment to value our people more and to unite as an industry to show that working in residential management is a sound career choice.