The hospitality industry has been struggling with a talent shortage for years. Seasoned customer service professionals have more employment options than ever. A 50 cent raise, a better lunch break, or a more consistent work schedule can be all that it takes for another hotel to come along and poach your best team members.
Company culture is becoming increasingly important in frontline industries. If your hotel is serious about optimizing operations and reducing high turnover, then creating a dynamic, inclusive company culture for your employees is a must.
But how can hotels improve employee engagement within their organization? Fortunately, there’s an organizational and operational communications platform that has proven results in improving retention rates and boosting engagement among frontline hospitality workers. It’s called Beekeeper and it’s becoming a popular operations management tool for hoteliers.
Here’s how you can retain top talent and lower your overall operating costs at your hotel.
Confirmation Campaigns
If your hotel is still relying on a bulletin board in the break room to convey vital company information to your team, then you’re going to want to hear about Beekeeper’s confirmation campaigns. Essentially, confirmation campaigns are a lifesaver for both HR leaders and operations managers. Here’s why.
With confirmation campaigns, hotel managers can send important company updates, new corporate policy information, or any other important update to their team, and request a read receipt confirmation. This means that when the employee receives the information, they have to click a button confirming that they’ve reviewed it.
Here are just a few ways that Beekeeper’s confirmation campaigns can improve organizational and operational communications for hospitality leaders.
- Send emergency alerts – “Fire on 1st and Main. Please confirm that you’re safe.”
- Forward new policy updates – “Process for requesting a schedule change has been updated. Confirm that you read this document.”
- Change event location/times – “Holiday party has changed to 5PM. Confirm that you read this message.”
- Submit training materials – “HR onboarding files are ready for review. Confirm that you’ve read the files.”
Confirmation campaigns can be especially useful for communication during a crisis situation. When hurricane Irma hit Florida, InterContinental Hotels in Miami relied on Beekeeper’s confirmation campaigns for communication. During the hurricane, a chat campaign was sent to every hotel employee with the number for the Emergency Employee Hotline and other helpful crisis resources.
After the hurricane, management continued to use Beekeeper to update team members on the status of hotel operations and a timeline for when they could return to work.
Analytics Dashboard
Perhaps one of the most useful operational features of Beekeeper is their analytics dashboard. The dashboard provides real-time usage data, so HR and Internal Communications managers can accurately gauge how often their employees are using the team app.
Here are some best practices for how to measure employee engagement at your hotel.
- Create surveys to gather data on your employees’ experiences, opinions, and overall job satisfaction
- Track when people open messages and when they respond
- Send confirmation campaigns (see above)
- Create messages and track responses to determine what type of content receives the most feedback and optimize your content calendar accordingly
Employee satisfaction, company culture, employee engagement: these abstract ideas actually have measurable outcomes. Your hotel probably already uses internal data to optimize the guest experience, so why not do the same for your employees?
Creating a culture that truly sets your workplace apart from the competition takes more than an employee of the month award. You need a collaborative, vibrant culture of communication and inclusion that your team can take part in. With a team app for frontline hospitality employees like Beekeeper, you can actually gather actionable data to make your workplace better for your team. Happy hospitality employees give the best customer service!
