How flexibility is helping ease hotels' labor pressures

Nearly a year into the so-called Great Resignation, hotels have been finding a range of ways to attract and retain workers for the long haul.

Elie Khoury, EVP of operations at Aimbridge Hospitality, said pandemic-driven travel restrictions, canceled conferences and mask mandates changed how customer-facing hotel workers interact with guests. “It puts a lot of burden on our industry and caused us to lose a lot of our employees,” he said. Ann Christenson, Aimbridge’s EVP and chief human resources officer, estimated that some hotel companies lost 60 to 75 percent of their workforce over the course of the pandemic and downturn. 

As guests returned, hotel operators had to deal with what Charlestowne Hotels COO Matthew Barba called a “juggling game” of driving occupancy, filling restaurant seats and having enough staff to both support guests “and justify some of the rates that we were able to now command given the demand.” 

That juggling drove a “cyclical sort of scenario” that affected positions across all strata of the hotel’s staff, Barba said: “We were short-staffed, and because we were short-staffed, managers and leadership were having to fill some positions or just chase behind, doing some of the tasks that others weren't there to do.” Managers began burning out, he added—“and then they would leave and then you have no manager.” 

Sea Changes

As travel resumed and hotels returned to full operations, management companies tried a number of enticements to bring reluctant workers back online. Barba recalled the sign-on bonuses and perks companies were using to attract new workers, which faded away fairly quickly. “It was a short-term fix,” he said. Workers who responded to these methods “certainly didn't stay,” he added. Instead, a sea change that alters the whole workplace environment is what keeps workers working. “They don't want to be overworked,” Barba said. “They don't want to be underpaid. They don't want to be taken advantage of and they want to be appreciated and valued.” 

Barba acknowledged that maintaining positive relationships with employees may sound remedial—but hotels are challenging work environments, and it’s easy for managers to be so focused on guest satisfaction that they discount employee satisfaction. “We get so busy,” Barba said. “We are a 24-hour guest-facing business and things just snowball and everybody is running so fast and hard in service to the guests that the employees felt like they got left behind.” 

Flexibility

The key to employee satisfaction, Christenson said, is flexibility—a word that means something different to different people. “Our ability to work with people around ‘what does flexibility need to be for them?’ has really helped address some of the staffing needs,” she said. 

Rikki Boparai, VP of operations at Benchmark Hospitality, said other people on a hotel’s team can be flexible in taking over some housekeeping responsibilities. “Can we make it into a team effort instead of one person having to clean X amount of rooms?” he asked rhetorically. In some Benchmark hotels, he said, housemen have been partnered with housekeepers to go beyond cleaning hallways and floors. They can help strip the bed, take the trash out and restock the carts, he suggested.

Flexibility in scheduling is also important, and hoteliers may need to consider accommodating a wider range of worker schedules instead of the standard eight-hour shift, Boparai said. Khoury agreed, noting that when interviewing or hiring new workers, the existing team is scheduling around availability rather than choosing an applicant who is available when the hotel needs a worker. “We're saying, ‘When can you work?’ and then filling in the gaps with other associates,” he said. Aimbridge even hired a worker who is only available one day a week. “We're working with our associates on what works for their schedule, whether they have children and they need to pick up their kids, or whether they have … other personal commitments or family-member commitments that allow for different hours and schedules.”

While the “gig economy” of contract workers may be the most flexible of all, Barba said hoteliers should be careful about what roles they fill with these employees. “There's a knowledge base there that you need some continuity with,” he said, especially for front desk and concierge roles that may involve answering hotel-specific questions. But some food-and-beverage, custodial or housekeeping positions can be a good fit for gig workers, and Barba said that Charlestowne is more willing to take on these workers than they may have been in years past. 

Aimbridge also used daily paydays (letting workers get paid on demand), sharing shifts and letting workers take shifts at different properties in the portfolio to meet worker needs, Christenson said. With all these initiatives in place, she estimated that Aimbridge is now “very close” to 80 percent of what its workforce was before the pandemic.