Looking for bottom and top line impact point. This one is easy

We hear a lot about staff turnover, they worked one week and left, they worked to get a pay check and never came back, they did a bad job the first day they started, their attitude was bad, they thought the job is too hard, and on and on and on.

Some Managers are of the view that increased compensation and benefits should be the primary method to retain workers. However, such a strategy implies that the hotel / resorts is in a position to increase its compensation. Managers must therefore consider retention strategies that do not rely on the hotel / resorts ability to increase compensation expenses (Budget was completed for2017)

Our mindset should be, what we could have done differently” and place blame on the employee.

When we ask General Managers or a Department Head what you have done with the newly hired staff, they all have the same story, “I assigned them to a great worker to show them the ropes”. I then get feedback from that employee of their progress, I gave them their job description and the company exaction, and we will keep an eye on them and will see. We probably should hire 2 people because we know one will not make it. Wow, really?! Are we that blind in understanding what it takes to have a happy employee? What happened? Has it been that long since you were a happy employee? Or have we lost touch of the world of hospitality!!

What have you done to impact there stay, what have you done to make them feel welcome, what have you done to give them the love they need , what have you done to give them the comfort? It is ok to make a mistake, and what happened to the open door policy, have we given them the comfort they so they can improve the operation if they see something needs to be changed? It is ok if we will listen. All this means is that General Managers and Managers have to have contact with the staff. We don’t want staff to feel as though they cannot ask General Managers questions. . We could write a book on what we are not doing to impact the retention of our most valuable team members, or we have to trust each and every one of you have working with you. You have to allow your staff to ask questions and you ask them what can be done to make improvements. Then ask again and again. You will be surprised that every time you ask you will have more answers.

Retention strategies to be effective, must focus on providing employees with opportunity to grow their careers in our hotel / resort with a solid business foundation. The following retention strategies is one of the suggestion as best practices for employers:

  We need to invest in the staff for them to invest in us, we need to provide employees with career development opportunities. This is because employees are more likely to invest in their jobs if they feel the hotel / resorts has invested in them. It will surprise all of us if one of the manager ever asked the employees what they would like to be doing within 3 years and be sincere about it!

The on boarding process: the on boarding process will never ever work without human touches and phiscally communicating with the employees. This is because an informed employee is a humanly connected employee at the work place therefore will remain in their jobs

When is the last time we invited the new hire to a welcoming reception? This should be done monthly or every opportunity we can, it does not have to be big or lavish it could be as small as walking with them to all departments and let them interact with the different department employees or it could be a welcome cake.

 Instead we hire staff and we don’t even know them. Wow, this is not how to retain years of a loving employee and loyal staff member that value our human touch and see our core values and or mission. 

How about implementing the Three R’s Rule: Recognize, Reward, and Repeat. Managers and supervisor need to scream loud for every opportunity that a team member preforms a great act, to recognize them for their great performance. We literally must pat our team on the back for every job well done to continually reinforce appreciation of their performance!!!!

 Don’t lose a great employee because of $0.25. You just wasted $500.00 from $0.25.  Offer fair compensation for great employees, keep your outstanding team. All within reason and your ability to sell!!

 Measure employee satisfaction with the same conviction applied to measuring guest satisfaction, as the first will determine the latter, no don’t hire major companies for feedback and questioners. Just develop- the feedback process.

It is also argued that positioning the hotel / resort to evoke emotions of compassion and community pride will generate greater company allegiance among present and future employees, our company recognition alone can be the best strategy for attracting the industry’s best and brightest. However, name alone can’t protect against high turnover .Retention strategies must be designed to suit individual employees. This therefore requires individual employee’s participation in designing retention strategies. Get to know your team.

The question is whether retention strategies have been understood and put in place by the hotel / resorts to reduce the negative effects of labor turnover. We all can argue that retention strategies have influence on labor turnover in our hotel / resorts. We see how much onboarding was completed and some time we don’t even give them the tour of the hotel / resort. We ask, what is the most important thing General Managers do in a day?, we all can reference so many thing. We would all be wrong if we didn’t say, the number one answer is walking the hotel / resort and welcoming the staff. We should also be checking there work environment, and see if they have the tools to do their job. The next thing should be finding ways to retain our most valuable assets, the Team, staff, employees. We then pose the following questions: What are the causes of labor turnover in the hotel / resort? Do retention strategies have any influence on labor turnover in the hotel / resorts? What is the impact of retention strategies on labor turnover in the hotel / resorts? Do we even have one??? . Team, I leave you with these final thoughts: you need to develop with your team a retention strategy before you even start looking for staff. If you don’t even know what the retention strategy for your hotel / resort is we are all missing the boat. Stop, rethink and let’s start again. Without breaking the cycle by looking inward we will continue complaining about employee’s loyalty and commitment.