The hotel industry is one that requires balancing the needs of your customers and balancing the needs of your labor budget. The key to doing this is by increasing your staff productivity, so you get the most from every hour an employee spends on the clock. How can you do this?
Here are five productivity-boosting ideas to help you improve the overall guest experience while remaining cost-effective.
Encourage communication
Anything you can do to promote communication and make it easier for staff members to discuss issues with each other and with management will increase productivity. Hold regular meetings, implement an open-door policy, create an email message group or even consider using social media for internal communication. This gives your employees a forum where they can discuss any problems — before they become big ones.
Employ Accounts Payable (AP) automation
Processing invoices is a time-consuming process. Furthermore, one small mistake can lead to hours of extra effort for your accounting department. Automating your accounts payable processes will save time, and improve productivity by making the entire cycle more efficient. A quality AP automation solution can provide a return on investment for hotels of every size.
Provide incentives
Your employees may want your hotel to improve productivity, but they have less of a natural incentive than owners or management. Increase this by providing monetary or other physical incentives for productivity. The “prize” does not always have to be BIG; the competition will often inspire the employees to give a little bit more of themselves to their jobs.
Go paperless
How much time is wasted at the front desk or office area by sorting through old paperwork for information? What if you could cut the time you spend shuffling papers down to a bare minimum? Going paperless is a big boost to your productivity, especially in the front of the house. Today, you can scan nearly every document you have on file and add them to a computerized system, saving you from touching those papers ever again. Future documents can be created directly online; this has a positive environmental impact as well.
Reduce workloads
What tasks around your hotel are the largest time wasters? Could you outsource those time-wasting functions? Or would it be possible to eliminate the tasks altogether to get your employees back on track and serving your guests? Perhaps this means having donuts delivered for continental breakfast instead of making/serving them. Alternatively, maybe you decorate with silk plants instead of the real thing. These changes do not have an impact on the guests, but they do offer more time for your employees to devote to the tasks that matter.
Change in the workplace is never easy. However, since reaching higher levels of productivity is such an important part of success in the hotel industry, it is important to make these changes and get the most from your staff. When you kick your productivity up to the next level, you will be amazed at what you can accomplish.
About the author
A forum participant and noted BPA industry contributor, Warren Glick is currently Director, Corporate Marketing for ACOM Solutions, Inc. Atlanta, GA and Long Beach CA. Serving in executive leadership roles in enterprise software organizations throughout his career, Warren has been responsible for developing and executing corporate strategies in marketing, sales, operations and product development.
