With housekeeping week on the horizon, hotels across the country will be hosting pizza parties and other staff activities to celebrate Guest Room Attendants. While these recognitions are fun and well intentioned, these team members also rely on their leadership for meaningful, engaging work design that allows individuals to flourish.

Is it possible to cultivate a vibrant and sustainable brand without thriving team members? Our “heart of the house” team members are responsible for mission-critical first impressions and represent our organizations in every guest interaction. In an era where recruiting candidates to these job roles has become increasingly challenging, is it appropriate to re-imagine how the heart of the house fits into our hotel operations ecosystem?

Clear Path to Growth

Hope is defined by a belief that tomorrow can be better AND we have the power to make it so. A leaders’ role in championing hope is identifying clear pathways that when traveled, transform the position of people, teams, and organizations. For hope to exist, there must exist two distinct conditions: a GOAL and a PATH.

A goal without a path is a wish, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FALSE HOPE. What is your assessment regarding the presence of hope when scanning the career paths for heart of house team members in your organization? Are these vibrant jobs in which you have full confidence in the team to create outstanding impressions, or are the positions cyclical in nature and a department that tends to be chronically short-staffed? If the latter, when should we invest the time and resource to redefine our approach to create a more meaningful employee life cycle? Perhaps the first step in all of this is not trying to create an entire paradigm shift, but seek small, incremental gains that mark significant achievement for team members.

An example of how incremental improvement can be achieved, and an action we are currently taking with multiple operators, is allowing housekeepers to earn self-inspection status. Instead of requiring inspectors to police the completion of specific cleaning tasks, we are leveraging certified inspectors to educate housekeeping team members about how to achieve the highest possible inspection scores. When housekeeping team members master this skill and consistently produce inspection scores at or above the property standard, a room attendant is eligible for promotion to a Self-Inspecting Attendant. This promotion includes a title and pay change, creating a pathway by which team members establish forward momentum while elevating their confidence and grit. As their career path continues to take shape; Self-Inspecting Attendants continue receiving weekly room inspections and with continued performance on weekly inspections at or above property standards, the attendant then becomes eligible for promotion to Advising Guest Room Attendant – a role in which they will receive additional compensation and the privilege to build the capability of fellow team members. As these roles become more difficult to recruit, our intention is for each of these steps to serve as a pathway that moves housekeeping team members forward in our organizations as they increase their capabilities and collaborate on the how to best go about their work.   

Room Design as Product Design

Best-in-class organizations invite housekeeping staff to collaborate on matters of room design while those that do not miss an incredible opportunity. A condition we observe regularly are hotels that design room product with guest preferences top-of-mind and little thought or consideration provided to the fact room design is one of the most impactful features on the heart of house employee experience. Extending a seat at the table to the heart of house team during design has multiplying value, as simple changes can produce outsized impacts in this phase. Additionally, including heart of house people in the process levels-up their engagement and sense of ownership for the property.

Some very real examples of design phase conversation that we should all have – How many clocks are needed for each guest room? Keeping in mind there are two time changes each year, these items require regular attention and updates. Perhaps we can start by answering the question “What is the value of having clocks in our guest rooms?” Considering the proliferation of cell phones, where is the opportunity to create incremental guest satisfaction through time notifications? How should this opportunity, or lack thereof, inform our decision-making about microwave selection or whether to have nightstand clocks? What about terry PARs – do we really need a different set of towel rules for every room type? The overarching theme from operators is this; there is a strong willingness to add job complexity in the name of guest service. What then is our process for removing unnecessary complexity to improve the job design of heart of house employees?  

Human Connection

Humans  are social creatures that thrive when in the community with others; however, most heart of house work is currently accomplished in isolation. This isolation negatively impacts recruitment, job satisfaction, engagement, and retention. How much better can we be at connecting with and bringing guest room attendants into our workplace communities? What are the first steps an organization can take to implement this initiative? We observe many operations executing 1:1 development conversations for guest service agents and front desk, but far fewer doing the same for guest room attendants. Hotel leaders have the opportunity to create incredible energy by sitting with attendants for no other reason than to share – discuss what’s on their mind and inquire about the effectiveness of the tools they are currently using to do their job. What’s working…what’s not working. When we care enough to find out and have an authentic personal interest in their story, the energy is returned to our guest in multiples. The ideas we have witnessed from these sessions are amazing and serve to advance the position of the team and organization. What areas of growth are most important to the people on your team? What is each individual’s vision for personal and professional success? Making work about the job task and the paycheck is how we arrived where we are today – different outputs require different inputs.

Putting the heart of house job design top-of-mind allows these team members to feel seen, heard, understood and part of a larger community with a shared purpose.

As we celebrate our housekeepers this fall, let’s embrace hope and focus our intentions on creating clearer career paths, job design and moments of connection for our heart of house team members that gift us with their time so our hotel operations can thrive.

Onward and upward,

Chris Province & Ben Scholl