Your Staff During COVID-19

YOUR STAFF DURING COVID-19

This portion of our Coronavirus Hub will be focused on what business owners do with their staff. We understand that every business is different, but we hope to provide some practical tips and advice.

WHAT TO DO WITH STAFF

You cannot completely control what staff do on your premises, but you always have a degree of influence. Your staff are just as keen to avoid the risks of coronavirus as you are and will naturally heed any advice that keeps them safer at work.

TAKE PRECAUTIONS

Employees arriving home from working in a potentially infected area should visit the doctor before they return to work. This, of course, is to make sure they are free of the virus and will not bring it into your hotel.

BE PROACTIVE

Hopefully, this will not be necessary, but create a crisis plan in case your business is affected. Map out the possible scenarios and how you can resolve each. Look at some of the stories in the news, how would you respond if that was your hotel? How could you lessen the blow? Act now.

STRESS REGULAR HYGIENE

This may sound obvious, but during this time hoteliers need to make hygiene an obsession. Coronavirus is incredibly contagious, but good hygiene can and does prevent it from spreading. This virus doesn’t need to be an inevitability, it can be kept from the door by taking the most basic of precautions.

ABSENCE

If an employee contacts coronavirus then they will need to remain at home until they are fully recovered. While staff being out of action is frustrating for any business, it beats having the virus in and around the hotel. Usual sick pay guidelines should take effect here, but of course, this varies depending on the individual employees’ contract.

Below are some guidelines to help hotel owners understand more about which staff can work during this time:

Hotel staff cannot work in hotels if they:

• Have left (excluding airport transfers) mainland China, Iran, northern Italy or the Republic of Korea in the last 14 days (they must self-isolate for 14 days from their departure). For more information, please see information on self-isolation
• Have been in close contact with a confirmed case of coronavirus in the last 14 days (they must isolate themselves for 14 days after the date of the last contact with the confirmed case).
• If you develop symptoms (listed below) within 14 days of being anywhere in a country or area of concern, or within 14 days of contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19, you should seek medical advice immediately.

Earlier in this blog, we posted various pieces of advice about what hotels can do during the coronavirus pandemic. This advice included the following:

• How to reassure guests
• How to prepare for a pandemic
• What to do during a pandemic
• How a hotel (or any business) can prepare for life after coronavirus 

We are now at the point where only the last two bullet points are still relevant. After all, nobody is staying in hotels while social distancing is in effect. That is unless they are being isolated there.

After this advice we focused our efforts on expanding on the last two bullet points, offering practical advice and reminding those who follow our blog that COVID-19 is temporary. Life will return to normal; our industry will bounce back.

Be sure to take the necessary precautions, but make sure you’re preparing for the day when coronavirus is no longer a hindrance to business.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN NOW?

But what of the first two points? We’re sure we weren’t the only ones giving the above advice, a lot of it was common sense or specially curated marketing tips for hotels and restaurants, but how much of it was of value?

Since making our recommendations, particularly the first two points;

• How to reassure guests
• How to prepare for a pandemic

We’ve come to realise how important advice like this was. The following insights into customer feelings have been shared by EInsights. Each shows what customers felt about how various hotels handled the beginning of the pandemic:

“OUR KIDS LOVE THE OUTDOOR POOL (IT’S HEATED DURING THE COOLER MONTHS) ALTHOUGH IT WAS CLOSED ON OUR LAST VISIT DUE TO THE NOVEL CORONAVIRUS.”

“GREAT HOTEL BUT UNFORTUNATELY NOT THE BEST TIME DUE TO CORONAVIRUS.”

“STAFF VERY FRIENDLY AND HELPFUL. AT THE TIME OF TRAVELING THE HOTEL HAD 10% OCCUPANCY DUE TO CORONAVIRUS.”

“THERE WAS A STAFF COUGHING AT BREAKFAST. SHE WORE A MASK, BUT WAS VERY WORRIED BECAUSE IT WAS THE NEW CORONAVIRUS.”

“I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO HAVE BEEN NOTIFIED THAT A PREVIOUS GUEST WAS DIAGNOSED WITH CORONAVIRUS.”

“DURING CHECK-IN, WE WERE HANDED A PIECE OF PAPER DATED THE 24TH JANUARY INFORMING US THAT THE HOTEL HAD HAD A GUEST STAYING INFECTED WITH THE HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS CORONAVIRUS.”

We will make sure that everything we share with you is practical, useful and helps you recover from this pandemic. Please continue to check in with us as we update it. It’s our mission to support hospitality in any way we can, and right now that means by sharing this advice with you.

If your marketing staff are in isolation and cannot work at full capacity. Then Virtual Solutions Global are also providing a Temporary Marketing Support service. If you would benefit from this then get in touch here https://virtual-solutions.co.uk/temporary-marketing-support/

About the Author

Dawn Gribble is the CEO and Founder of Virtual Solutions - a boutique digital marketing agency delivering services, training, and consultancy for hotels and restaurants. 

She brings over 20 years of F&B and hospitality experience to Virtual Solutions, having worked with award-winning hotels, Michelin star restaurants, international food brands and celebrity chefs. 

She had appeared on MasterChef, and as an Expert Judge on the Restaurant Talent Show.  Her food writing has been featured in the Huffington Post, FooDiva and Menuism. 

As an international speaker, she had delivered talks and workshops at events, such as Social Media Week Dubai, the Restaurant Show, Coffee Shop Innovation, the Middle East Food Forum and the Social Media in Tourism Conference.

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