Examine the impacts of statutory minimum wage on the service quality of property management companies in Hong Kong

Abstract

In Hong Kong, statutory minimum wage has been implemented for three years. Under the implementation of statutory minimum wage, the property management companies have to pay at least $30 to their staff per hour, it increases the staff cost of property management companies and reduces the profit of the companies. On theother hand, the property owners have to pay higher management fee due to the increase of staff cost, they expected that they should receive better quality of services. If the service standard of the property management companies could not match with owners' expectation, it would affect the customer satisfaction towards the service of the property management companies. As a result, it would increase the conflicts between the property owners and the property management companies and it might affect the relationship between each other. Indeed, the property management companies are facing high pressure on it now. Therefore, it is meaningful to study the impacts of minimum wage on the service quality of property management companies in Hong Kong. In this study, we try to investigate whether the implementation of minimum wage can improve the service quality of the properties management companies in Hong Kong and increase the satisfaction level of the employees and the customers. The scope of study will be focused on two different types of property management companies. One is a large-sized property management company (Company A) which is the subsidiary of large developer in Hong Kong. The other is a small to medium sized property management company (Company B) which is a non-subsidiary company. By doing this research, it could compare the service quality of different types of property management companies after the implementation of minimum wage. Two sets of questionnaires were sent out in order to collect the viewpoints from the staff of the property management companies and the owners/residents' of middle class residential properties. There were altogether 250 questionnaires were done, the results showed that both Company A and Company B were in the same direction. The results expressed that either internal customer (staff of the property management companies) or the external customer (owners/residents) of both companies did not think that the service quality of management office have significant improvement after the minimum wage. Based on the results of the research, we suggest some ways to improve the service quality of the service team and also give some recommendation to government in implementing the minimum wage policy so that it could benefit for people working in the property management field in Hong Kong.