How Hotel Managers Can Save Time with Online Scheduling Software

11 Apr, 2016 | Tags: , , , ,

As a hotel manager, one of the challenging aspects of your job description is ensuring that all employees work when they’re supposed to. Given the many employees and departments hotel managers have to deal with, there’s no guarantee that every day will run smoothly. In fact, you can probably assume that it won’t!

Employees might not report to work for a variety of reasons and finding someone to cover their shifts can be tough work. Some workers might work overtime and want compensation for the extra hours. Keeping track of the daily employee schedules usually means working long hours, constantly updating records and keeping in contact with departmental supervisors.

But why not automate the processes? Online scheduling software makes it easy to handle employee schedules without going through the daily strains mentioned above. Most hotel managers are adopting this software as a way of managing and saving their time. Some of the ways scheduling software will help you save time include the following.

Accessible anywhere with an internet connection

It’s not uncommon to hear a hotel manager having to abruptly report to work in order to sort out some scheduling issue. Maybe an employee didn’t report to work and the manager is expected to find someone to cover the shift. In such instances, the scheduling system is only available within the hotel offices. Time is wasted traveling to work, sorting through the schedule and contacting possible replacements. With an online based scheduling software, all the hotel manager needs to do is log into their account, filter out employees who are free and contact them. This can be done from anywhere with an internet connection.

Employee input

One of the challenging aspects of creating a daily, weekly or even monthly employee work schedule is determining which hours to assign a particular employee. The process involves a lot of consultations with individual employees. It can also lead to bad relations when some employees are assigned work shifts during hours they don’t like. At the end of the day, employee productivity suffers and this reflects on the hotel’s performance. Hotel staff usually feel comfortable when they have a say about the work and leave hours assigned to them. They will also be more willing to cover for a colleague if they find that the time allocation favors their schedule. Working this out manually can be a headache on the managers part.

However, by using online scheduling software, employees are able to select the work hours they find most suitable for their daily routine. In addition, the software handles issues such as duplicate entries ensuring that each employee works the desired amount of hours every month to get paid. Since the system is web based, each employee can select his or her work and rest hours remotely without having to present themselves at the hotel. For the manager, this means less time spent contacting, consulting and updating the hotel employee work schedule.

Wage calculations

This is another challenging aspect of hotel management. As a manager, you might be handling tens or even hundreds of employees at once. The work schedule is such that you have to account for regular work hours, overtime and even paid leave during each payment cycle. This might require keeping track of every individual employee on a daily basis. That’s a lot of extra hours spent on sorting out the daily wages due to tens of hundreds of employees. Such time can be spent working on other things that relate to the hotel managers job description. An online based scheduling system makes it easy to calculate wages due to each employee. It allows you to easily view the number of hours each employee as worked throughout the month and calculate his or her salary.

Easy to contact employees

Trying to find every employee’s contact information and calling them individually can take up a lot of time. An online based scheduling system makes the process easier and time efficient. Since each employee can insert his or her contact information within the assigned section within the software, this makes it easy for the manager to find such information with a few clicks. In addition, the software allows hotel managers to send a single message to multiple employees at once saving time.

Working as a hotel manager means that most of your time is spent keeping track of employee work schedules and ensuring that each day progresses just fine. You can easily cut down of this time by adopting online scheduling software. The software does most of the heavy lifting allowing you to get more time to attend to other activities that come with the hotel manager’s job description.

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Employee Retention – How to Keep Your Top Performers

09 Sep, 2015 | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Chances are that you know or have seen people that are self-driven.  They work well with others and they excel at their job.  They’re not clock watchers, they want to excel at everything they do, and they always strive to exceed expectations.  Due to their reputation of striving for excellence, they have created an extensive network of cross-connecting with like-minded people and businesses, and their networks continue to grow in size and quality.  They’re the ones that everyone wants, and recruiters (or “headhunters”) can’t wait to connect with them.  When you have outstanding employees of this magnitude, there is always the concern of losing them, especially to competitors.  So the question remains, how do I keep my top performers?  In order to delve into this subject matter further, you must first be aware that your perspective of whom your top performers are might be quite different than someone else’s opinion.  So, be prepared to back-up your opinion with facts, and be able to express them in a private and/or group setting, and in written form.  Remember, you being able to identify top performers can also make you a valuable asset, and yes, a top performer.

Identifying Your Top Performers. 

In order to identify your top performers, you must first be engaged with your staff, and spending time finding what they feel is working well, their concerns, and positive/negative feedback.  They need to feel connected to you and to the company’s purpose (or vision) in order for them to feel comfortable opening up and sharing.  So, build those relationships with your staff and you will build more trust.  After striving for more open communication, you may find out amazing things.   There are instances where managers assume that one employee was responsible for a great idea, problem-solving a customer service issue, or coming up with huge solution to an existing problem, only to find out that someone took credit where credit wasn’t due.  You will also get a better indication of how people within your business react with one another.  Who is spreading negativity, who is spreading gossip?  More importantly, who works well in a team environment?  So, first and foremost, create and nurture those relationships.  Remember, communication is key.

Now that you know who your top performers are, you can better address ways to retain them.   In order to address this challenge, let’s flip it over and look at this from the top performer’s perspective:

What are their needs? 

People are driven by many different motives and what you may assume drives them, may not be it at all.  This is where you need to start digging.  Make sure you’re having informal conversations with these performers; get to know how they tick.  At times, you may want to take them out to lunch, have some one-on-one time with them, and find out what it is that they really want.  Do they enjoy working with the business?  Why or why not?   Figure out what additional training may be beneficial to them and to your company.  Are they looking at your company as potential for long-term growth? What are their short-term and long-term goals?   If not, when you identify what it is that they want, you can better guide them on this path within your organization. What would motivate them to want to stay longer?  Are they open to continuing education?  Would your company reimburse for approved courses.  As they receive more expertise, they should be able to use it in their current job, and/or along their stated career path within your company.  What’s the best part of their job?  Their worst?  Share a little about yourself and ask them to share a little about them.  Find out what do they like to do for fun?  When you are asking and sharing, you can find out what their “whys” are and understand its importance to them.  Share the good qualities that you see in them. 

Do your business needs and their needs match up? 

No one can see into the future, but it’s important that your outstanding employees see that they are being groomed for better things.  They may not remain if there isn’t a clear path to greater opportunities.  So, what are you making available to them?  We’ve already discussed extra training, and now is a great time to expose them to the next level of work, to get the flavor of it.  You can see how they are responding to this and they are assessing if this is, in fact what they really want too. Continue to keep their goals in front of you both and keep the lines of communication open.

Be a visionary. 

Paint a vision of where you see them in one year and in five years.  Remind them of the opportunities in your company and connect it to their vision. 

Perks.  Who doesn’t like perks?  A gift card for two to a special dinner, a couple of tickets to their favorite sports team game, an afternoon off so they can go see a play their child is performing in.  Raises may or may not be available but potential bonuses might be.  Explore different areas and gear them toward their unique perspective. 

Name Recognition.  When they do something great, make sure you bring it up in the next meeting when appropriate.  Introduce them to higher ups in the company so interaction naturally happens.  Invite them to your LinkedIn.  And, what a great time to ask them if they know of anyone else that might be interested in the company.  Top performers know other top performers.

At the end of the day, the more an employee sees that you know who they are, appreciate what they do, open up opportunities and connections for them, and paint the same vision, the more chance you’ll have of retaining those top performers.