Five Inconvenient Truths About Hotel Staff Retention

The staff crisis is all over the news. 

And it’s real: hiring is harder than ever. 

You struggle to find talent, your competition gets the best candidates before you do, and interviews take time-away from keeping your customers happy.

But with all this going on, you need to stay calm and remember one thing: prevention is better than the cure. This means you should aim to retain your team to stay clear of the crisis.

At Tayl, we help hospitality businesses train their staff. This means we know a little bit about how to keep your team happy. 

Here are a few of our favourite tips.

You Need to Put Effort into Onboarding

Nothing is worse than crying after your first day at a new job. And believe us, it happens.

Thankfully, you can prevent your staff from feeling like they just signed away their happiness by organising your onboarding process.

You can create onboarding checklists, write company handbooks, give out fun facts about your hotel, or use software to assign all the documents and training that need signed and completed on someone’s first few days at work.  

You’d be surprised how quickly you can create an organised onboarding process. And only a few hours of extra effort can help build the trust you need to count on your staff for years. 

Some Fun Is a Little Better Than No Fun

Team building activities, nights out together, and joke-laden emails can make some people wince in horror. 

So, you need to be careful with work-based fun and never force it; you should act with moderation and keep it subtle. An extended break, cakes and cards on birthdays, or simply letting staff to vote on upcoming menus and small company decisions can be enough to encourage team bonding.

But remember; no matter what you do, just do something. It can prove to your team that you appreciate them and you understand work isn’t the most important thing in the universe.

Genuine Responsibility & Small Goals

No one likes to obey orders eight hours a day, five days a week: no matter how good the pay is. We want achievable goals, time to improve our skills, and to feel a part of a team. With night shifts and a wide-range of jobs in your hotel, you may think this is impossible. It isn’t, you simply need to get creative.

You can assign training and create learning plans, make space for your team to focus on studying something related to work, or ensure they’re included in decisions that can impact their working life. 

Career development is difficult in our industry, but nevertheless, simply spending time chatting about personal goals and offering effective training solutions can help motivate your business’s most important people.

Be Flexible with Hours

Some of the best hotel managers are organised as a librarian’s cutlery drawer. But unfortunately, some of these excellent managers also implode when things aren’t going to plan.

Housekeepers, receptionists, and chefs: certain roles may seem difficult to schedule; but this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. A slightly inefficient day twice a month is far better than making an employee unhappy every day. 

You can change operating hours of certain hotel functions a few times a month. You can also get creative with working hours by training your team for a broad range of skills, such as social media, excel, accounts. This means they can be rotated onto different hours and still help your business. 

Staff Leave No Matter What

If you’re reading this article, you already know staff leave, and you can’t always stop them. 

But there’s two things you should remember. Firstly, it’s not your fault. And secondly, people who leave will talk about their experiences in your hotel. So, make sure you let them know they were important. Leaving drinks, a nice speech, small gifts: no matter who they were or how they acted, show them the respect the job deserves. And then maybe, if you’re lucky, they talk to someone who talks someone who talks to someone who needs a job.

Tayl are an affordable online training and compliance platform for hotels, restaurants, and growing businesses.