Innovative Insights

When you consider productivity and labor management, scheduling is always part of the conversation. And over the years, scheduling has become an integral part of ERP systems, but the term scheduling is really not sufficient for today’s service-based economy. Demands have changed, and because of it, scheduling must take on a whole new meaning.

Throughout hospitality’s long history, one thing that has remained constant has been the need to replace staff who it seems, left as quickly as they joined. Far from representing a new challenge for the industry, what the ongoing labor shortage has done is simply further expose a recurring issue where unsatisfied employees are leaving for either better opportunities or better work environments.

In today’s business environment, we frequently discuss engagement coupled with loyalty. We study whether our staff is engaged and assess the economic impact of different levels of engagement.

At the same time, we want to understand how loyal our team members are and how we can retain these individuals, especially in a very competitive environment. And while this discussion will focus on new methods to meet these objectives, I would suggest that, to a large extent, businesses have addressed these issues when it comes to their customers.

The hospitality industry has always suffered from high turnover, but the ongoing labor crisis has made the current situation more untenable as operations either grind to a halt or are so poorly staffed that service quality dips below acceptable levels. Guests who gave operations more leeway during the pandemic are beginning to demand more value for the rates they're paying.

Addressing workforce resource issues is as much about restructuring labor-management standards as it is about simply finding enough employees to fill a shift.

For any type of service industry, news outlets have repeatedly focused on businesses across the world experiencing a shortage of labor. With everything else that is occurring because of the pandemic, it's easy to believe that dips in productivity and customer service quality are solely the consequence of operating a business with a smaller workforce brought on by Covid-19.

Across all industries worldwide, today’s employees are making their voices heard on the growing need to revamp traditional work schedules and rules based on evolving lifestyle preferences. In fact, recent survey results indicate that as much as 83% of employees would feel more loyal toward their employers if more flexible work options were made available to them. Yet from hotel, restaurant and retail businesses to senior care and student housing facilities, many employers have resisted offering that flexibility and, until recently, have continued to adhere to outdated practices and antiquated labor laws.

As every hospitality leader tries to address declining employee satisfaction, one simple way to think about the problem is to spend two weeks in their shoes. Why two weeks? Because that’s typically the time frame that an employee is waiting for another paycheck to arrive, and those 14 days can feel like an eternity. According to research from PYMNTS.com, 125 million adults in the U.S. are living paycheck to paycheck. For hotels and all service-related businesses, what needs to change is clear: It’s time to eliminate that waiting period.

A new survey reports that more than half of U.S. hospitality workers aren’t going back to their old jobs, and a third are leaving the industry entirely. As service operators grapple with this unprecedented labor shortage, it has placed a glaring spotlight on another longstanding issue within the industry: meeting the diverse needs of the service sector’s employees.

The widespread staffing shortages plaguing hospitality enterprises are not solely due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Sure, the pandemic has intensified them, but the shortages are more so a direct byproduct of ineffective labor structures that fail to align with the needs of a new generation of workers. From low wages, restrictive shift duration limits and outdated overtime rules to a lack of flexible scheduling and work-life balance, the fundamental components of hospitality’s labor structure have a negative impact on the overall work environment.

The hospitality sector’s record-low revenue per available room (RevPAR) rates and guest volumes as a result of Covid-19 are finally in the rearview mirror, but hotels and restaurants have another crisis on their hands. While demand is returning, their employees are not — and an industry that once accounted for 1 in 25 U.S. jobs now faces a serious staffing shortage problem. Talent acquisition experts labeled 2021 as the beginning of “the great rehire” era for the U.S. economy. For hotels and restaurants, however, the past five months have resembled a far different outlook.