As the demands of the festive season take hold in the Hospitality Industry, as a manager you’ll be faced with plenty to get your teeth into and no doubt the next month or too will pass like a blur. It’s worth remembering though, that these five tips will help you not just through the busy period, but into next year too.
Monitor and Manage Risk
In such a busy and hectic industry it can be easy to forget to manage at a strategic level; planning the direction of your organisation, assessing risk and addressing issues which affect the wider picture.
The problem with being so focused on the daily challenges of hospitality means you may be missing opportunities to improve the organisation, the conditions of those within it and extend the offering overall. Taking time regularly to look at the organisation in this way means you’ll be able to identify Health and Safety and Human Resource risks, both near and far, and manage them appropriately. The work now to identify, assess and mitigate risk could save you an HR heartache or a Health and Safety nightmare.
Work Hard to Retain Staff
Happy staff are loyal, hard-working staff. Take the time to listen to them, improve their working conditions and be flexible enough to accommodate their needs. The industry has a high staff turnover but that doesn’t mean you have to join the crowd; build a culture of listening, understanding and improvement and involve all your staff in this.
This isn’t just great morally, but it’s good for customers to see the same staff, to ingrain company values and ethos and build a well-functioning team that knows how to work together. There are time and the cost saving too – hiring and all its related activities cost much more than retention. This doesn’t mean every member of staff is right for the organisation, it just means you can create a culture of growth, development and loyalty.
Have a Recruitment Strategy
Despite efforts in retention, recruitment will always play a significant part in your resourcing; put a strategy in place to manage resourcing around seasonal demands and build-in contingencies for unexpected requirements. Ensure you have formalised staff profiles to make recruiting for the same roles easier and use best practices to get those people on board. Park City can help you with creating this strategy along with the recruitment process, ensuring everything is in order to make taking-on staff hassle-free and conforming to the law.
Embrace Social Media
Ensure both you and your Front of House Managers are aware of Social Media and allocate time to be active on important platforms such as TripAdvisor, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. You may need to invest in some social media training but the rewards will be forgiving, affording you better communication with your customers (and potential customers) and allow frank, first-account feedback that you can tackle in real time. As your presence on social media grows you’ll be able to spot trends and filter these into your Risk Management – perhaps there are certain times when service levels are dropping below standard, or when food buying isn’t keeping up with demand.
Treat Everyone Like a VIP
This goes without saying, but Hospitality 101 is treating every customer like they’re a VIP. Every customer has value and the potential to be an enhancement or a detriment to your brand – the rise of social media ensures that every customer is empowered to influence others in an instant. Ensure your staff have the training to understand the importance of service and know that going the extra mile should be part of their role day in, day-out. Your appraisal and performance management strategies should enforce this.
Park City can help you ensure your HR and training needs are catered for, leaving you free to concentrate on other aspects demanding your attention. What’s more, we offer great training courses for your managers (including yourself) along with coaching that will help you lead and manage more effectively.
Our coaching services help you improve your communication, how you manage your time, make decisions and focus on improving both the organisation’s performance and your own.