How to Effectively Manage Hotel Staff During Crisis Time
People are at the heart of hospitality, which is why people management is a critical success component for every hospitality organization. As a service-oriented sector, our product is inextricably linked to the person who delivers it. As a result, a hotel’s performance is determined on how motivated, pleased, and engaged its workers are, as this directly influences its product. So how does a people-centric industry care for its employees?
Great leadership is crucial for improving team morale, but it has an even greater impact during a crisis. Human resource motivation has always been a challenge for many managers, especially during tough periods like the current state of instability brought on by the covid-19.
Managers in the hotel industry are required to carry out a very specific mission; to improve their workforce and motivate people no matter how difficult the conditions maybe. After all, you need to keep providing awesome customer service, no matter the situation, so that you don’t lose your existing customers!
Few Pointers for Hoteliers to Manage Staff during Crisis:
1. Communication with Transparency: Communication should be done openly with the staff when facing any crisis. Your leadership can be defined by how you communicate; that could be the difference between an excellent manager and an average one.
Give your employees facts; don’t keep them in the dark if something serious is going on. Yet do what you can to make sure they remain positive and hopeful.
Your major priority during periods of uncertainty is to make your workers feel as comfortable as possible by admitting the true reality and stopping them from dramatizing the existing scenario.
2. Trust Your Employees & Value Them: Share with employees what results you want from them, and then put trust in their abilities to reach great results. You may need to keep providing them with feedback and guidance. It’s crucial to understand that each employee is necessary for the organization, so value them as if they are precious. “Trust brings out the best in employees”.
3. Commitment to safety: Workers need to feel safe at their job. It is the responsibility of the management to ensure that all necessary steps are taken to make the workplace as safe and comfortable as possible for everyone concerned. Remember, safety is not just for the customers.
Hotel employees also want the same things as the visitors in terms of safety. If they feel safe and secure, they may be able to perform their duties with full focus and ease.
4. Motivating Employees: Positive reinforcement and complimenting exceptional achievements from hotel employees may appear insignificant, but they demonstrate to the workers that they are valued and not taken for granted. When the organization is going through turbulent times or through some crisis, it is all the more critical to celebrate minor triumphs in order to maintain the morale.
Employees want to know that their efforts are being recognized. If they don’t feel appreciated it can affect their performance and even make them totally dissatisfied with their jobs. Employee turnover can do lot of harm to your hotel, so make sure you don’t lose your employees due to your own management mistakes.
5. Checklist: Checklists can be an amazing tool for getting important things done. They can help you make sure that no important task is skipped. Effective use of checklists can make it clear to the staff as to what tasks they are expected to perform without fail, and it can help the management in monitoring whether the critical tasks are done or not.
Proper monitoring, co-ordination and clarity are very important in order to gain stability in hotels during times of crises. The workers need to be clear about their individual work responsibilities. It can keep track of operations being consistent in eyes of your associates.
Another excellent use of checklists during this current Covid19 pandemic could be to maintain a log where, when and with whom the employees have been interacting. This can be used to track the spread of virus if any employee gets affected.
6. Training: Training the people is very important to get the best out of them. If you don’t train them properly how can you expect they will do an optimal job? When you are going through tough periods, the management has to ensure that employees know what to do and how to handle whatever crisis they are currently facing.