A recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed that close to 3 million people voluntarily quit their jobs a couple of years ago, a 17% increase from the previous year, proving that opportunities for employees are abundant and we have shifted back to a candidate-driven marketplace. Why is this important? Employee retention should always be of utmost importance, but requires awareness as to why employees leave to begin with. Numerous statistics show that the #1 reason people quit their jobs is a disconnect or poor relationship with their boss or immediate supervisor or manager. This shows that turnover of staff is mostly a manager issue. READ MORE

Worldwide, the hospitality industry is going through a transformation. In response to workforce shortages, many employers have looked for---and found---ways to reduce staff by using automation. Despite this trend, there are continuing shortages of skilled workers from front line housekeepers to general managers. Hospitality leaders are looking for and finding innovative ways to find the talent. This article will give you an overview of what's working for general managers and their human resource professionals to find the people they need to staff their properties. READ MORE

As new properties explode on the scene and traveler choices abound, hotels know they have to pull out all the stops to make every guest experience a positive one. Are staff friendly are courteous? Are rooms clean? Are meals excellent? Are bills accurate? We rely on our employees to execute their jobs, not just correctly, but with enthusiasm. And, if they don't, business suffers. We do our best to hire good people (in a competitive market), we give them a little training, and then we HOPE they create raving fans. Ever heard the expression "hope is not a strategy"? READ MORE

Baby boomers, Gen Xers, and especially Millennials, who now make up more than 50 percent of the workforce, want a sense of purpose at work. It's clear that today's workforce is increasingly concerned with doing good. People are tired of just showing up every day to perform a job. They want lasting fulfillment at home and at work. In his book, Drive, Daniel H. Pink suggests that we are in a time where individual desire to have a positive impact in the world often ranks higher than pay scale when selecting a job. Millennials, in particular, want to feel like their work has real purpose, and they want to be home for dinner. READ MORE

So where will we find the next generation of leaders in the hospitality industry? Like their counterparts in other business sectors, this question remains top-of-mind for those responsible for finding, managing, and developing the talent needed to ensure the vitality of their organizations. While, arguably, not as glamorous as a new guest amenity or as important as a cost-saving innovation, there is nothing more critical than talent to succeed in an increasingly competitive and challenging global business environment. Leveraging the best strategies and tactics related to talent management, succession planning, workforce planning, training and leadership development are, quite possibly, a company's most critical work. READ MORE

Engaging and retaining talented, trained workers is a critical component of success for any business in any sector. When employees are disengaged or turnover is high, organizations face challenges of subpar customer service, high costs, and human resource inefficiencies. Gallup estimates rampant disengagement among employees costs American businesses between $450 billion and $550 billion per year. In the hospitality sector, delivery of impactful customer experiences is strongly connected to employee engagement and satisfaction. Happy, engaged employees can make happy, loyal customers. Currently; however, the hospitality sector suffers higher than average employee turnover. READ MORE

You're just being politically correct! In America, being politically correct has taken a new meaning and now has a negative connotation. But why? Definitions can help identify the reason. The definition of political correctness is "the avoidance, often considered as taken to extremes, of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people who are socially discriminated against." In simple terms, political correctness is going to the extreme to avoid insulting socially disadvantaged groups. What could be wrong with that? The issue is not them or the term, it's us! READ MORE

Ever wonder what planet your new hires are from? For most, it is called Millennialland. It is my homeland, and it is a whole different world than where Boomers and GenXers were born. So why are your younger workers from this strange land so hard to understand, manage and retain? Why is it that they lack the loyalty of those who came before them? Why do they need so much handholding in the workplace? And where does this tremendous sense of entitlement come from? Being born in a certain generation does not give everyone in that cohort the same personality. It is more about the fundamental similarities they hold due to the time in which they grew up, and the way their parents raised them. Allow me to explain. READ MORE

Employee engagement in the U.S. is a mess. Gallup tells us only 32% of our employees are engaged, and that figure has hardly budged over 15 years. Worse, Deloitte says we are about to spend $1.53 billion a year to “fix” it. Unless we get smarter, we'll be flushing that fortune instead of fixing. It gets worse. Again according to Gallup, those remaining 68% are either sleepwalking or sabotaging. So unless your company is different, two-thirds of your employees aren't giving their all. One has to wonder: How much better would our economy be if we solved employee engagement? READ MORE

Robots have reshaped manufacturing, technology, aerospace and online retail/warehouse supply chain structure and process. That same quantum leap is on its way to hospitality just as surely as the computer changed the front desk process late in the twentieth century. Robots entering the hospitality industry will be very different from their fictional counterparts and certainly won't possess the artificial intelligence of the sinister HAL Computer, at least not yet. READ MORE

You found your perfect candidate. Their resume is a dream come true-it matches your requirements exactly and you hire him or her. The anticipation of having this amazing person on your team builds as you eagerly look forward to their first day on the job. Once they are on board, however, your excitement quickly turns to dread as you realize your perfect candidate fails to live up to their perfect resume. Have you found the perfect candidate and on their first day of work, that candidate was not what you expected? This happens far more often than one might expect, and it can be avoided with some strategic thinking about your recruiting process. READ MORE

How would you like to decrease employee satisfaction, decrease employee performance, increase burnout, and encourage employee turnover? Not very appealing? Well, the good news is that there are some relatively easy ways to make your employees happier, more loyal to your organization, and thus more likely to perform well and stick around. The secret: work-life balance. Before we jump into our tips for improving work-life balance in your organization, we must first define what we mean by “balance.” When you think “balance”, you probably think 50/50 or a scale with equal weight on each end. READ MORE

The key to retaining good talent in the hotel industry is in developing and maintaining a positive organizational culture. We all know what it is like to work in an environment with a positive organizational culture. The feeling is infectious and the energy is electric. When employees are happy, they come to work and display an enthusiastic attitude about being a part of something special. In addition, they display loyalty and commitment and produce results. If happiness exists as a result of a positive organizational culture, an employee will likely stay with the hotel as opposed to leaving for an opportunity at another hotel. READ MORE

Great hotel salespeople are hard to find. Our Sales Leaders and Talent Recruiting Professionals commit time, money and energy recruiting for high performing, passionate and productive salespeople. Our best salespeople consistently drive revenue, inspire confidence and loyalty with our customers, generate new business, increase brand trust and contribute to the company culture. Conversely, turnover is expensive and negatively impacts our property's performance. Successful leaders must cultivate engaging environments and maintain high business standards to retain their salespeople and to create successful teams. READ MORE

This discussion suggests the formalization of human resource metrics in a lodging property as an effort to optimize decisions, cut costs and support the goal of the hotel's leadership. Many of the larger lodging operations, brands etc. have already adopted and implemented some of these metrics and processes in human resources. However, there are smaller properties without corporate assistance that will need to align their human resource processes in accordance with defined metrics to better compete for the highest quality candidates. READ MORE

It started as a favor: a local politician looking to help a constituent find a job. As Steve Wynn's HR guy, I was responsible for hiring lots of people and told him I had some ideas: try this guy out as a laborer and see how it works out. The referral turned out to be a gang-banger wanting to go straight: but his buffed up physique, tats and missing-eye-without-an-eye-patch were intimidating. Fortunately he was more soft-spoken than gruff, and definitely sincere. I took him to meet a hiring manager who over-reacted a bit when he first saw him, but like me, decided to give it a try after hearing his story. Moral of this story: don't judge a book by its cover when thinking about giving someone a second chance. READ MORE

The U.S. labor market continues to tighten with The Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting a decline in the unemployment rate to 4.6 percent in November of 2016. The unemployment rate is even lower in many states and metropolitan areas. Unrealistic expectations and increased stress, due to staffing shortages, is causing many employees to reconsider their current work situations. Many will soon choose to depart. This will only add to the need for organizations to involve more than HR, if they are to fill job openings promptly or at all. READ MORE

There is increasing awareness in the hotel industry that something intangible is missing in hospitality because generally speaking it is not making the sought-after emotional and energetic connection to the guest's heart, which will increase revenue and make guests flock to the brand. Hospitality still feels energetically and emotionally weak in spite of all efforts to change this, and I would like to shed some light on why this is so. In short, the hotel industry would make the connection and revolutionize hospitality by changing from the mechanistic Newtonian worldview to the energetic Quantum worldview, which replaced it in 1925. READ MORE

Human Resource leaders in all business sectors are stumped by how to hire the talented employees needed by their businesses in order to meet company strategic objectives. This responsibility is especially difficult in the service sector of hospitality. In no other sector is the one-to-one personal connection more important, perhaps with the exception of medical providers. In hospitality, an employees' air, attitude, a wrong word or gesture can be perceived badly by the customer - a kiss of death. Or, with another customer the same circumstances can be received with over the top joy, acclaim, compliments, and kudos - a big win! READ MORE

In the service sector, people are the lynchpin of any business, and success or failure hinges upon them. Though this success can only be unlocked if employees are spotted, nurtured, engaged and developed; the key to which is great hotel leadership. In this exclusive article for Hotel Executive, Vice President for People and Organisational Development at luxury management company, Dorchester Collection, and author of Be A People Leader, Eugenio Pirri, explores what it takes to be a people leader in the 21st Century and why businesses across the world are currently experiencing a leadership deficit. READ MORE