Staff Meetings: Successful? Needed?

                    At one of my previous properties we had a staff meeting. During the meeting, one of the associates had her head on her hand. She was completely bored and disinterested. It didn't occur to me until much later, that the meeting itself was that boring and completely unnecessary. We got nothing accomplished that couldn't have been handled differently, and without 2 hours!

• Ask yourself if you really need a staff meeting. Maybe you just need a better challenge identification and resolution plan.
• If your department closes at a certain time, than it is much easier to have everyone together. With a set and adhered to minutes and format, a staff meeting may work very well with that model. 
• Positions like the front office, which never close pose a serious logistical challenge. Why not use your pre shift lineups? Is this information both shifts need to have? Do these items pertain to all or a specific shifts? There should be an ongoing challenge/solution board where everyone can add their input and within a certain timeframe, is solved.

• A front office meeting is created, set, cancelled, and rescheduled.
• Herein lies the problem. If you don't have the information enough to schedule a date and stick to it, you're in trouble. Get a consensus first. Don't waste paper reprinting posts for the office. The more you change the date makes the date and the event itself seem unimportant.

• Schedule the meeting on a day that the most people are already working on.
• Staff meetings should be a desirable thing. You don't want your 12 hour a day teammates having to come in for 2 hours on their day off. They won't be happy to be there.
• ASK.  On occasion you will find someone that doesn't mind because they have to be in the area anyway.

• Allow people to park on site.
• This is ridiculous when it doesn't happen. Why not show more contempt for your staff by making them park in a lot, or battle downtown traffic just to pay 10-20 dollars to park to come to your meeting. This is just stupid, and plain mean.

• Assign proper coverage.
• A GIANT morale killer: After the meeting and on shift, they have to go back and correct everything from the last 2 hours, and field complaints that nothing ran properly. Schedule proper, trained coverage during the meeting.

• Have food and beverage and do it right. Don't have your assistant pick up a pizza last minute.
• You ask people to come in on their day off. And besides that, your team is the reason you are there. Make it nice! This is an easy way to show appreciation. Have lunch set up. It doesn't have to be crazy. Nothing too filling. Some nice finger foods, hye rollers and whatnot. Why not use it as a chance to debut some of the restaurants new dishes? This is the worst with properties that have large food and beverage establishments. You go to a staff meeting and "oh look, a cookie" NO. Your people bust their butts and put up with a lot. The least you can do is feed them well.

• Keep it closed door.
• Remember the staff member that almost dozed off? This was during a point when the G.M. came in and launched into a 30 minute story about something completely irrelevant.
• People are already there on their day off. Be relevant, have the meeting, and get everyone on their way. Part of protecting morale is remembering people have a life outside of work.

• Remember why you are there.
• A staff meeting is not a giant question/answer session. The purpose of a staff meeting is not to figure things out. That is a brainstorming session. You are there to speak to the staff about new changes, procedures etcetera. A few questions can be taken, but prompt your staff to see you with specific questions for one on one sessions. This is so you know the information is communicated properly and with complete understanding, to the individual.
• You should have an ongoing challenges and problem solving forum with the staff where ideas and solutions are constantly being investigated and put into place within a certain time frame. A staff meeting is too difficult to arrange just to nail down specific issues.

Walking guests the proper way. Emergency!

                    If you find yourself in a situation where you need to walk someone pretty quick, here are some helpful tips.

• If you have an operator or a spare staff member, and it's not busy, ask them to do a call around.
• Try to find the best property for their walk rate closest to the rate the guest paid you, closest to your property.
• Make sure you are closed out with all ota's, booking engines and internal systems. Anything that sells rooms for you. Make sure everything is set to zero unless you want to play the wash game!!
• Try to do this the earliest you can.

• If you know ahead of time
• Look for single travelers. It's much easier.
•  A personal reach out to the guest will be warranted. Managers, don't make your agent handle it!

• One nights are the best. There are some upsides.
• Hopefully you got them a nice room equal to yours and close to things.
• They wont have to move.
• There are ample ways to salvage the situation. The degree and style with which you respond will be varied.

• For the Future.
• Download HotelTonight on your phone. Even though you may have a call around list, you can't call everyone. It'll tell you who has rooms left that night.
• Implement a cell phone number prompt in your operator script, online booking engine, OTA listings, etc. This is to insure moving forward we have that information and can place calls directly if needed.

"The Right Person" idea and why it's going in the wrong direction.

          I have heard this term used more and more in the hospitality industry. I feel however the general idea of who a "right person" or "right hire" is, has become confused.
          The "right people" has become this ambiguous term, more relegated to personality traits, appearance, and a certain "feel" from the interview process. This is the way I have understood it the last few years since the term has come into more use.

• Initially you have the resume. This is your indication of work ethic and progress. Depending on their previous history, length of duration and other factors, you can measure their success to a certain degree.
• References speak about the type of person they are and are an invaluable tool. You can also view their social media such as LinkedIn and Facebook to get a better sense.
• The interview process brings you a certain degree of knowledge and feel about the person sitting in front of you, although this can be contrived to any extent.  

          Always searching for "the right person" shouldn't mean we place these verifiable items to the rear. The ambiguous nature of "the right hire" takes away from the true strengths and weaknesses of a perspective applicant.



As long as their background checks out, their resume is progressive, and they have shown a solid direction in their education and future, they should be considered. These are concrete achievements that people have attained through hard work and dedication. Great work histories don't happen by accident. Rather than spending month after month trying to track down the right hire using relative intangibles, a new direction needs to be taken.


          Right people are built. They are built as per your business model, standards and expectations. There are plenty of "right people" out there. I have personally interviewed great people only to see many of them never return because they somehow didn't fit the category of "the right candidate" but yet, 3 different department head managers were fully committed to their hire being the actual staff that would have to work with them.




          Take your solid foundation and well referenced candidate and turn them into "the right person". This means the following:

• Be involved. Know your hire. What makes them happy/unhappy. What are their goals? Map out their interests with yours. Knowing your staff means retention. There is no reason why your staff's goals can't be mapped out for at least a year. This will help you forecast future moves with staffing and give a clearer picture as to future budgeting.
• Proper training. You want a specific standard, train it.
• Proper and sensible procedures and guidelines. If your policies and procedures make no sense, or create more hardship, staff will chafe against it. Line staff are savvy individuals who's attention to detail on a daily basis see these deficiencies. 
• Proper management oversight. You want a specific thing, train it and follow up immediately until it becomes second nature. Lack of oversight means deficiencies occur.
• Proper equipment. You can't have an expectation of a happy employee empowered to shine towards the guest, if they have consuming technology issues.
• Daily follow up and action. Follow up. Every day. A huge morale killer is staff that faces the same issues every day. A lot of time this is chalked up to "nature of the job", and on occasion it is. But if something can be fixed and the staff knows it can be fixed, it should be. Positive empowered staff need to have as clear a path as possible. If their own management is apathetic, don't expect world class hospitality. It all runs downhill.

The greatest hallmark of a property from a service standpoint is staff retention. The most highly rated properties have some of the lowest turnover margins. Taking a progressive approach to your hiring and staff management will in turn create the staff that provides world class hospitality, guest retention, and world class profits.