When is the Last Time YOU Cleaned a Guestroom?
Guest contributor William D. Frye suggests one thing owners and managers of lodging properties can do to increase goodwill, understanding and empathy in the workplace.
As owners and managers of lodging properties, it is easy to become preoccupied with the multitude of encompassing responsibilities that tend to consume our time and attention. One’s focus can often be consumed by strategic planning, financial administration, marketing implementation, and owner interaction obligations, thus making it easy to forget and more significantly appreciate the core basics of what being a hotelier means. In the most simplistic terms, hotels provide clean, comfortable, and safe lodging accommodations to our guests. And consumer research continues to reinforce that cleanliness, comfort, and safety are the three biggest drivers of most guests’ decision to book and stay. This is where the hard work of guestroom attendants is frequently overlooked and underappreciated.
On average, room attendants will clean 13–17 guestrooms during an eight-hour shift.
On average, room attendants will clean 13–17 guestrooms during an eight-hour shift. The work is highly repetitive, strenuous, and involves a range of ergonomic activities including lifting, carrying, reaching, bending, and kneeling. Aside from traditional-tipped positions, housekeeping personnel are frequently the lowest-paid hourly personnel in hotels, sometime earning only minimum wage pay; yet, they typically incur more frequent injuries on the job. Most room attendants work independently and out of the presence of each other, hotel guests, and most managers; so monotony is a concern that challenges each individual’s personal motivation to remain productive.
Low pay, exhausting working conditions, lack of human interaction, and minimal job enrichment makes it difficult for hoteliers to retain and motivate veteran room attendants or to earn their respect. And while your hotel may not be in a position to pay higher wages or redesign the room attendant position, managers and owners alike can do one thing to earn the respect of these hardworking men and women…walk in their shoes for just one week, one day, or even one hour.
Yes, I am asking you to clean guestrooms to the same performance standard as you expect your housekeepers to meet.
You may not be able to clean 13 rooms in eight hours, at least at first, but you will still be expected to achieve the same level of cleanliness.
Such a small demonstration will yield vastly positive results. Once room attendants see you flipping mattresses, making beds, emptying trash, scrubbing toilets, cleaning bathtubs, and even wiping down tile floors, their perspective for you as an owner or manager will change dramatically. While you will not do a perfect job, it is the demonstrated effort that will deliver the intended message. You will truly experience just how labor-intensive the room attendant position really is. Your body will ache; you will sleep like a baby at the end of the day; and most importantly, you will quickly be reminded just how hard room attendants work each day. Even more significant is that you will immediately understand that room attendants are perhaps the most important employee in a hotel. Without their presence and efforts, your hotel has no room inventory to sell each night.
To ensure that the leadership lesson is not forgotten, by either you or your housekeeping employees, make a personal commitment to walk in a room attendant’s shoes at least one day each year. The intangible benefits of goodwill, empathy, understanding, and appreciation will be realized by both the employees and management/ownership. Finally, your “in the trenches” work experience will serve as a continual reminder and a guidepost affecting your future leadership decisions.
Dr. William D. Frye is an Associate Professor in the College of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Niagara University and co-author of AHLEI’s housekeeping textbook Managing Housekeeping Operations.
