In the hospitality industry, success and longevity have always been measured by the customer’s experience. After all, the goal of any hospitality business is providing guests and customers with quality service 24/7. Giving guests the best experience means hiring the best professionals to attend to their needs. The demand for quality staff is becoming a tall order for some in hospitality, which is one of the many industries that is suffering as the result of what is being called the Great Resignation. As the labor shortage continues to ravage both businesses and nonprofits alike, owners are more incentivized than ever to improve retention in hospitality.
The Great Resignation is one of many reasons business owners are incentive to improve retention in hospitality. The Great Resignation is the name given to the burgeoning phenomenon in which employees are leaving jobs—not simply in search of better pay—but for a healthier corporate culture that can improve their quality of working life. The Great Resignation is just one of many factors that has contributed to the vast labor shortage throughout the United States, and hospitality industries are on notice to create better working environments for their employees, or continue the struggle against high rates of turnover and loss of profit. Luckily, there are a few strategies that hospitality leadership can utilize to ensure they are providing their workforce with the best corporate culture available.
Prioritizing Health and Safety
In these pandemic times, health and safety of employees should be a no-brainer for employers. Employers should be bending over backwards to provide proper sanitation and protection for their employees in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, but their physical health is not the only thing that needs safeguarding. In the pandemic, employers must remain sensitive to employee needs, especially with regards to time off for both illness and personal time in order to avoid burnout in these turbulent times.
Engagement from Leadership
More than ever, engagement from leadership is paramount to improve retention in hospitality. Even in non-pandemic times, it’s easy for leadership to get fixated on big-picture items and not the daily operations that impact the workforce. As such, lower-level problems can go by the wayside, written off for another day, and allowed to fester in the meantime.
Increases in Compensation
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage on, more and more employees are pushing for hazard pay if they must continue to work closely with the public. Fewer industries work closer with the public than hospitality. In hotels, staff is required to clean rooms where sick persons may have been exposed. Those in the restaurant industry have felt some of the strongest impact of the pandemic because of how often they are exposed intimately to the public by getting close to take an order or coming into contact with their dirty dishes. As such, leadership who are in a position to offer hazard pay or pay raises to their employees while they continue to work through a pandemic would be wise to do so in order to improve retention in hospitality.
If your company is having repeated problems with employee retention, it might be time to have a corporate culture audit. Lauth Investigations International has a comprehensive corporate culture audit program suited for companies of all sizes and industries. Call 317-951-1100 or visit us online at www.lauthinveststg.wpengine.com for more information.