Three times this week I’ve seen restaurants post temporary closure notices to their social media pages, citing the pandemic. Here’s the rub: They didn’t close because employees were out sick with the virus; they closed because they didn’t have enough people to cover shifts.
An excerpt from an Instagram post by management at Nettie’s House of Spaghetti in Tinton Falls, New Jersey: “We’ve been trying our best, but it’s proven to be absolutely impossible to find kitchen help. We’re now at the point where we can no longer operate the restaurant. We’ve all been working overtime to keep things moving, but it’s time to surrender and take a much-needed break.”
I hope hoteliers are hearing this warning bell.
Every restaurant I pass has a “Help Wanted” sign in the window, and every conversation about bringing people back to work in restaurant jobs here in the United States ends with someone saying, “Well, it’s because people are making more money on unemployment, so why should they go back to work?”
The same can be said for many property-level hotel positions. It’s reality in many places around the U.S., but like it or not, at the end of the day you still need to find ways to hire people in order to keep the doors open.
I’d like to highlight two interesting reads on the topic: Last week we ran this column by Kerry Ranson, now CEO of HP Hotels: “How Will We Replenish Our Hospitality Talent Pool Post-Pandemic?”
And yesterday we featured this story by HNN's Danielle Hess: "Hoteliers Cope with Dramatic Changes in Labor as Demand Shifts."
Ranson asks in his column, “In such a tradition-bound industry, do we have the courage to allow our frontline workers to help define their roles and work routines? Not to diminish our service standard, but to exercise some freedom in crafting the routes to getting there. Not to reject sound principles of guest service, but to possess a willingness to try the new and fresh, which many of our guests would embrace.”
It's an absolutely fascinating concept, and I want to know so much more about how the hotel industry finds ways to accomplish this.
Ranson talks about allowing scheduling flexibility, letting people share jobs or shifts. He recommends educating and advocating around competitive wages and “finding what benefits will best attract new candidates to hospitality.”
He talks about expanding your viewpoint around who the ideal candidate for your team might be.
The voices in Hess' article answer that call. Dawna Comeaux, executive vice president and chief operating officer at Spire Hospitality, talks about the need to be "extremely thoughtful in making sure we were hiring the right number of people in the right number of positions for the long term."
Del Ross, chief revenue officer of Hotel Effectiveness, points to strategies like dynamic staffing and job sharing as examples of "flexibility [hoteliers] have to have now."
This conversation about finding different and innovative ways to staff a hotel is interesting, but it must be so difficult. Just the idea of planning split jobs and shifts alone sounds like a full-time job. Who has payroll systems equipped for that? And how do you let certain people who need flexibility take it, without appearing unfair to the rest of the team? Do you make case-by-case changes? Do you change job descriptions? Do you standardize flexibility in your employee manuals somehow? And we haven't even talked about wages.
Then multiply this problem by the thousands of hotels around the world in the same boat. You're all accustomed to competing for guests in your markets, and now you're competing for employees more than you ever have before.
Again, I urge you to see what's happening in the restaurant industry. I don't love the idea of robbing Peter to pay Paul, but this may be an opportunity for the hotel industry to step up as an employer of choice in the neighborhood. Job- and career-hopping are happening. Wouldn't it be great if your hotel is the best place to land?
I’d love to know more about how you and your teams and companies are — or are not — finding and executing on this kind of adaptability. How possible is it, and what changes does it require?
Email me, or find me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Let me know what I don't know.
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