Hospitality: How do you manage frequent employee turnover?
Turnover in the hotel industry is 3 times higher than in other sectors. This is due to the particular working conditions inherent to the profession.
However, the impact of staff turnover in the hospitality industry can be considerably reduced with solutions tailored to each specific context. How can you manage staff turnover and optimize your hotel’s cost management? We answer your question.
What is hotel staff turnover?
Turnover is defined as the renewal of a company’s workforce. It is the sum total of employee departures and hirings over a given period.
Turnover varies between 0 and 100%, depending on a number of factors: the company’s economic and financial health, the general atmosphere within the company, the mismatch between the position and the employee’s skills, and the arduous nature of the job.
The consequences of high staff turnover are extremely harmful for hospitality companies. This is because the departure of an employee represents a financial cost that managers are not always in a position to anticipate. Not to mention the cost of the recruitment process and, above all, the economic losses incurred by the absence of staff, even for a short period of time.
How do you manage employee turnover? 5 essential solutions
Modernize workstations to avoid turnovers
Particularly in the hospitality sector, the vast majority of employees are seasonal and young. As far as open-ended vacancies are concerned, these are filled by experienced staff, with a strong preference for graduates.
In today’s modern technical environment, it’s essential to keep your equipment up to date, to avoid turnover. Not only to improve and facilitate the various tasks to be carried out, but also for the pleasure of working with up-to-the-minute equipment.
For example, the use of mobile terminals is essential for taking orders in the restaurant. Or equipping switchboard operators with wireless microphones facilitates mobility and fluidity at their workstations. But also, setting up an online reservation system and collecting hotel room keys from a kiosk improves the automation of your business.
Valuing employees’ skills
In addition to the theoretical skills and qualifications required for certain professions in the hotel industry, employees are also endowed with considerable human qualities. What’s more, it’s important to implement a salary strategy that’s commensurate with each employee’s qualifications.
To achieve this, it’s essential to frequently assess employees’ skills. This is because the most talented employees tend to leave the company more easily, especially if the salary does not match their expectations. The same applies to employees who feel undervalued. To avoid this salary turnover, the team leader’s managerial mindset needs to emphasize the individual skills of each team member.
Improving working conditions and reviewing the company culture
Whatever the position held by an employee, his or her material and relational environment has a major impact on working conditions. Ergonomics, choice of equipment and managerial communication are the 3 points that need to be reorganized in order to avoid the risk of turnover.
For example, if the reception area of a hotel residence meets all the requirements of the job, the team of receptionists is less likely to leave. The same applies to maintenance staff positions. Indeed, if the conditions of human dignity enable them to carry out their work in an optimal atmosphere, a chambermaid will have more interest in keeping her employment contract.
Adapting requirements and preventing the risk of overwork
In the hotel industry, each job has its own specific constraints. To avoid the risk of dropping out, it’s important to adapt job requirements to the expectations of the job. In this way, each employee assigned to a job performs his or her work in material and human conditions that are favorable to him or her.
What’s more, in order to avoid excessive staff turnover, this job adaptation helps prevent the risk of overwork. This last parameter is also a major source of resignations and therefore of staff turnover. However, you can also set up psychological support units within your company.
This can take the form of an individual interview carried out on a voluntary basis, following the detection by team leaders, for example, of an employee at risk of overwork.
Offer training adapted to each workstation
Whatever the job, it’s essential to offer appropriate training to every new employee recruited. If, from the very first day of their arrival at your company, employees are confident and fully aware of the challenges of their position, they will find it easier to evolve in their professional environment.
At the same time, the training time you offer each new recruit is a long-term investment. In fact, a clear, healthy welcome ensures that employees are familiar with your company’s operating rules. What’s more, they will also be able to make constructive proposals inherent to their position, ideas put forward on the basis of outside viewpoints which are, in any case, always beneficial to your company. But also, the personal involvement of each and every one of your employees is a key factor in preventing turnover.
Key points to remember: staff turnover in the hospitality industry represents a real financial drain for companies. However, there are a number of solutions you can implement, which may represent an investment, but which will enable you to reduce employee turnover as much as possible. This starts with the working environment: by offering modern equipment, by implementing a strategy to prevent the risk of staff dropping out, or by placing human relations at the heart of the managerial system.
In any case, it’s always possible to reduce the number of people leaving the company. But you can also increase your employees’ well-being at work, so as to keep them for as long as possible, and offer them professional fulfillment they won’t find anywhere else!
