Recruiting and retaining workers in hospitality is difficult enough. Though the industry may no longer be in a dire crisis, hospitality businesses are continuing to report challenges in filling all vacant positions. Worse, attrition remains a severe concern, with hospitality jobs across the board experiencing an average annual turnover rate of 65% during the pandemic. Pandemic or no, the journal Tourism Management reports that the hospitality sector has the highest turnover rate of any sector.
Yet, few businesses within the hospitality industry feel the enduring staffing issues as acutely as seasonal hotels. Hotel managers dealing with severe seasonal swings in bookings need to be able to recruit and rely on loyal seasonal staff, who can provide the quality service seasonal guests deserve. Unfortunately, short-term, seasonal jobs tend to be even less attractive to the few hospitality job seekers on the market.
Fortunately, a strong, loyal seasonal hotel workforce is not an impossibility, even in the current hiring climate. Here are a few tips and tricks for hotel managers looking to improve the retention of seasonal staff.
Improve the quality of the workplace
Businesses within the hospitality industry typically focus on providing a pleasant atmosphere to patrons and guests — but too often, hotels are not particularly enjoyable places for employees. Hotel managers willing to alter the quality of the workplace are likely to see greater retention not only in their seasonal staff but in their entire workforce.
To start, it is essential that workspaces are safe and comfortable. A significant component of fostering safety in work environments is adequately training staff and providing efficient processes for incident reporting. However, management might also consider equipping the hotel with safety technology, including accessible panic buttons that staff can trigger in emergencies. Workers recognize when their well-being is a priority, and many will opt to continue working for a hotel that puts their safety first.
Many hotels feel immense pressure to deliver the highest quality services to guests, and that pressure can be transferred from management to staff in a toxic and troubling way. Managers should strive to create a more wholesome workplace culture, which rewards good behavior rather than punishing workers for mistakes. Frequent offers of praise and gratitude will encourage seasonal staff to put forth their best effort. Additional employment benefits for high-achieving workers, such as bonuses, hotel discounts, and professional development opportunities, can compound this effect.
Improve relationships with seasonal workers
Too many hotels have the opinion that because seasonal workers are only in the workplace on a temporary basis, for a few weeks or months at most, they are not worthy of a meaningful relationship with management. However, this attitude will always ultimately lead to disengagement from seasonal staff, and in addition to impacting the quality of service, disengagement will inevitably lead to higher turnover and more vacancies.
Hotel managers should strive to build strong relationships with their seasonal workers during both on- and off-seasons. While employees are on the payroll, managers should put in the time and effort to get to know them. Striking up frequent conversations is a good way to show personal interest in employees; managers should share information about themselves and remember details about their workers to demonstrate their interest and investment in their relationships with individual staff members.
As the season comes to a close and seasonal workers’ contracts are nearing their end, management can take several actions that will help preserve their relationships and encourage employees to return next season. Exit interviews can help managers explain how much they value a worker’s contributions to the team and provide a place for the worker to offer feedback that might help seasonal recruitment and retention. During this interview, managers can also express their keen interest in rehiring workers when bookings pick up again, and they can use employee responses to gauge retention rate for future seasons.
Managers should try to preserve their relationships with temporary workers who are eager to return. Arguably the best way to do this is to help seasonal workers find available positions during the off-season, which will show the hotel’s care and consideration of their workers’ needs. Managers might partner with another seasonal business that has complementary hiring patterns, so they can share a seasonal employee pool and keep top workers engaged. At the very least, hotel management should offer quality reference letters to their staff and provide glowing recommendations to any potential future employers.
When and if employees do come back, be sure to offer refresher training instead of assuming they can jump right back in. This will show them you care about helping their skills evolve with your business.
Improve HR processes
A high-quality workplace and winning management go a long way toward attracting and retaining staff, but every hotel will experience some turnover. To manage seasonal staff turnover, hotel managers should strive to improve efficiency with their HR processes, especially onboarding and payroll, which are essential to bringing on new workers.
The simplest and best solution in most cases is the adoption of agile HR practices. Agile HR tends to be simpler and faster, which means it is easier for hotel managers to get new staff members up to speed and able to provide quality service. Thus, even if workforce turnover remains a struggle during the high season, hotels can quickly onboard new employees to meet their needs. What’s more, agile HR models also tend to make it easier for managers to create and maintain engaging workplace cultures, which will attract more job candidates to openings and make retention efforts more successful.
The pandemic took a toll on hotel employment, but as staffing shortages across hospitality persist so many years after the COVID crisis, it is clear that management practices are not entirely free from blame. By shifting management’s attitudes toward the seasonal workforce — and by introducing more agile processes into HR — hotels should find it easier to manage staffing swings during their on- and off-seasons.
