Do your Housekeeping & Maintenance departments still use manual tracking? (Most still do!) How much paper do you think they use? These two departments are definitely the last to go "paperless" in hotels. We've updated and upgraded most departments in our hotels except those. Why is that? Perhaps today's article will be a tipping point, permanently shifting our industry forward, at least for you.
Let's begin by getting down and dirty with some hard facts:
- The average employee uses 10,000 sheets of paper each year. (Some more, some less but this is the average.) 1
- Since we also store, copy, print, mail and dispose of paper, in reality the cost can increase up to 31 times the price of the ream you bought at Office Max. This does not include labor. So, that $5 you spent is now as much as $155. 1
Are you thinking ‘I do not believe that for one second!'? I have an example. "Citigroup, a large financial services company, determined that if each employee used double-sided copying to conserve just one sheet of paper each week, the firm would save $700,000 each year." 1 That is a big savings for such a small change! Let's make this relevant to our industry…
How many trees do you think are affected by this?
- The average pine tree produces 80,500 sheets of paper.
- According to BLS, there are 14,000 employees in the US Leisure and Hospitality sector. 10,000 sheets of paper multiplied by 14,000 employees equates to 140 million pieces of paper used in some fashion in the industry. That is 1,739 pine trees chopped down every year by just hotels.
Oh wait, it gets even better (well, worse actually):
- Making one piece of paper requires over 1.5 cups of water.
- 40 reams of paper equates to 1.5 acres of pine forest that is no longer absorbing the carbon in our air.1
- 50% of the garbage in a landfill is paper. 2
- In 2006, the US pulp and paper industry generated over 200 million pounds of hazardous wastes. Have you ever driven by a paper-mill? You will know if you have! The EPA website likens the smell of a paper mill to "a hundred cooks boiling a thousand cabbages right under your nose." Was that descriptive enough?
Ahhhh, "But we buy recycled paper!" and… "We have a recycling program at our hotel!" That's great but those figures above are current. That means much more can be done! And perhaps more importantly, more money can be saved at your hotel.
Let's talk about some current myths that get in the way of streamlining housekeeping, making them a little more green, and moving in the direction of the 21st century. Here are four Myths & Facts for your consideration that might motivate you to start drastically reducing the amount of paper your property consumes.
Housekeeping Myth 1: Manual systems are more cost effective and faster than electronic options.
Having just detailed the cost of paper, let's put the spotlight on how much paper is used by Housekeeping, a predominantly paper-based department: schedules, room assignments, inspections, maintenance tickets, deep cleaning tracking, etc… Let's focus on just one of these: Room Inspections.
- In speaking with a hotel recently, they had the jaw-dropping realization that they use (waste) more than 20,000 pieces of paper every year from each inspector just documenting 5 room inspections a day!
Additionally, how many hours, and therefore labor dollars, do you think is spent on this paper only process?
FACT: In a recent sampling per room:
- Paper tracking averaged 5-7 minutes
- Spreadsheet tracking averaged 15 minutes
- A web-based mobile application averaged just 2 minutes per room
- For example, a 100 room hotel saved $13,000 in labor costs from January – May 2013 by eliminating Housekeeping & Maintenance paperwork. Imagine your departments' productivity if it were paperwork free!
Front desk went "paperless" a decade ago. Why can't housekeeping automate as well? Web-based systems do currently exist that help Housekeeping & Maintenance staff eliminate paperwork and improve efficiency. As we just saw, this is resulting in substantial labor cost savings and increased productivity as these individuals are now able to put their time and energy where it belongs – on their people and their product, not on paperwork. If you could capture and document inspections from anywhere on your property paperlessly, how much paper would you save, and how much would your productivity numbers increase?
Myth #2: Manual systems are effective.
FACT: Paper tracking does nothing for progress. Much like running on a stationary bike, you are spending time and energy and ultimately just spinning your wheels. You aren't going forward.
If your inspection process is effective, you will know the answers to the following questions:
- What is your #1 missed item this week?
- Are your room inspectors inspecting the same? Or are your scores actually dependent on who inspected the room vs. the person who cleaned the room?
- What does each room attendant personally need to work on? Are you using this information for coaching, counseling and your review process?
- What rooms could cause negative hits on TripAdvisor?
If you don't know the answers to those questions, don't despair! A system like the Stark Housekeeping PM Touch SystemTM can answer all of those questions for you and get you moving forward ending the fruitless wheel-spinning of yesterday.
Myth: Implementing a software system will require a capital investment
FACT: Many cloud-based web systems are super affordable. There is usually a low setup fee and then a low monthly maintenance fee. The upside to going cloud-based is that somebody else hosts all of the servers and hardware.
Maintenance is not your responsibility. Additionally, many systems allow you to customize to fit your hotel. Do you have certain items in your hotel you want to ensure are cleaned regularly? In your new system, you can ask pointed questions to ensure these areas are addressed.
Myth: We need computer savvy people
FACT: Does your staff know how to use their mobile phone? For many systems, that's all you need!
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AT&T Case study: 3 In 2001, after implementing a company-wide intranet, introducing online billing to customers and instituting several e-systems they eliminated the number of sheets of paper listed below:
- Environmental Health & Safety Newsletter – 1,800,000/year
- Training – 2,000,000/year
- Employee Services – 6,000,000/year
Moving the newsletter to an online format saved 100 trees and 2,400 gallons of oil. Moving to intra-company email saved 2,174 trees and 50,000 gallons of oil.
Shifting to online billing for business accounts eliminated over 22 million sheets of paper. Cost of rendering a bill:
- Paper bill – $17.00 per bill/per customer
- Electronic bill – $.03 per bill/per customer
Money saved for only the 43,000 new customers AT&T added from January, 2001 to August, 2001: $730,000
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As you can see, we have the opportunity to improve the environment just by making changes to one department. These changes will not only reduce pollution but they will also save your hotel money AND increase efficiency and scores! It cannot get any better than that! So, become a "tree-hugger" – even if it's a money-tree!
- http://156.98.19.245/paper/
- http://www.epa.gov/osw/education/quest/pdfs/unit2/chap4/u2-4_landfills.pdf
- http://sustainability.tufts.edu/wp-content/uploads/BusinessGuidetoPaperReduction.pdf
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About the Authors:
Naomi L. Stark, President & CEO Stark Service Solutions, LLC, Current Former Chair, AH&LA Technology & E-Business Committee
An expert in hospitality operations, Ms. Stark founded Stark Service Solutions, LLC in 2001 following several years with Starwood Hotel and Resorts as an Area Director of Guest Satisfaction Management. Ms. Stark has developed transformative training and software programs helping her clients internationally achieve remarkable successes in satisfaction and loyalty ratings. Ms. Stark is very involved in industry organizations and is an industry event speaker, including HITEC and the AH&LA Fall Conference. www.starkservicesolutions.com
Amy Bair, Lead Consultant Business Process Excellence, LLC
Amy Bair is a Problematic Process Problem Solver focused on the Senior Care and Hospitality industries. Her company Business Process Excellence (www.BPeNow.com) partners with organizations to improve productivity, increase revenue and reduce costs. She recently worked with a hotel where together they created a method for saving over $30,000 in housekeeping wages annually. Sign up for her monthly newsletter here.
