The Secret Weapon for Hotel Owners and Asset Managers to Turn Around Labor Issues in the Hospitality Industry

February is Heart Month and has implications for the hospitality industry in 3 ways:

1. It’s a terrific opportunity to get folks back into hotel restaurants. In addition, Valentine’s Day 2022 falls on a Monday, making for a perfect three-day getaway for couples and families alike.
2. You can use this opportunity to remind your team (and yourself) of heart disease risks and prevention tips. Refresh training with frontline employees on what to do when someone in the hotel has a heart attack or stroke.
3. You can recalibrate your leadership team to lead from the heart.

While generating topline revenue typically falls on the shoulders of the sales and marketing department to promote special occasions such as Valentine’s Day, an often-overlooked revenue opportunity comes with improving how leaders treat and interact with their employees.

If there’s just one step hotel owners and general managers could take in 2022 to improve labor issues, it’s changing their manager’s approach from bureaucratic and unfeeling to leading the team from the heart. It creates a well-known domino effect: leaders show employees empathy, and employees show more kindness and compassion toward the guest.

In addition to increasing revenue, it impacts profitability because it reduces employee absenteeism, increases productivity, and potentially eliminates the costs of hiring and training new employees and ramp-up. Businessolver[1] states that 93% of employees are more likely to remain in a job with an empathetic employer.

Before anything is rolled out to the team, this approach must be embraced by the most senior person, such as the CEO or hotel general manager, who champions the new direction verbally and by their actions, even when they are away from the office. In this age of social media, falling off the wagon and being rude to someone often goes viral for all to see.

The ‘great resignation’ that we are experiencing now in hospitality is having a significant impact on providing adequate service delivery at hotels. How we treat employees trumps improving compensation and scheduling issues. While these are important and need review, creating an environment that employees want to be part of because they are treated with respect, kindness, and compassion and as individuals is key to fixing labor challenges.

[1] https://www.businessolver.com/search?searchtext=empathy

Heart Month is the perfect time to start championing a culture transformation within your hotel so that it focuses on leading from the heart. Doing so will lead to greater employee retention and act as a magnet for new employees who want to be part of a caring culture.

This is the antidote to staffing issues most hotels are facing in 2022.

"People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care." – John C. Maxwell

"The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers." – Deepak Chopra

Take the Next Step Now

Need help figuring out how to start leading from the heart and transforming your hotel? Contact Jo-Anne at
[email protected].

About Jo-Anne Hill

Jo-Anne is an industry expert who founded JH Hospitality Consulting to help hotels around the world dramatically improve revenue and profitability in creative ways. Her strategic thinking, skill, and practical approach to problem-solving come from hands-on experience at companies such as The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, the Mandarin-Oriental Hotel Group, the Dorchester Collection, and Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts.

Jo-Anne’s recently published book ‘Cultivating Leadership: How great leaders make a difference, one hotel at a time” dives deeper into the equation: happy staff = happy guests = more revenue.