November 2, 2016 Read time: 4 mins

Make Your Guests' First Impression Memorable

Hotels have a limited window when it comes to creating a great first impression. Every member of a hotel staff has the chance to be the face of the hotel, from the concierge to the front desk clerk to the room attendant. Guests at a hotel, resort, or other hospitality industry location won’t ask if they’re speaking to a guest relations representative -- they’ll simply want their questions answered, their problems fixed, and their experience improved. That’s why it’s important to remember that every employee is a customer service representative.

But high turnover, unconventional work schedules and managing a large part-time staff can create challenges in training, timekeeping and payroll. Exit interviews across the industry indicate that better training can retain employees, which would lead to better, more consistent guest experiences -- and higher profits. Here are a few tips hotels should consider to help resolve employee management concerns.

Choose the right people, and track their progress.
Everyone you hire must be able to respond to guest concerns with confidence, sincerity and grace under pressure. That’s why finding and retaining top employees is such a focus. Recruitment ads can attract an overwhelming number of applicants, so knowing where to post job openings, internally and externally, to attract the best candidates is critical to eliminate high turnover. Beyond choosing employees with the most potential, HR best practices and training can help you to retain and improve the quality employees you hire by recognizing talent and opportunities for growth. An increased focus on training and conducting performance reviews can lead to more active engagement which in turn will lead to more productive employees.

The first step toward creating a memorable stay for your guests is to invest in the right employees. And remember -- the way you bring new employees on board is the foundation of your company culture.

Make it easy for employees to track their time. Once you have the right people in place, give them more time to engage with your guests -- and remove obstacles like hard-to-use timekeeping software. Part-time employees make up more and more of the hospitality industry, making intuitive timekeeping systems a must. Create and share schedules, track time off requests, approve time cards and understand the big picture view of your timekeeping needs with innovative timekeeping software that is flexible and easy to use for both employees and administrators can help make your staff more productive, efficient and engaged.

Make payroll pay off for you.
Less paperwork and system management means your supervisors and employees can stress less and engage more with guests. It’s critical to not only find a user-friendly system your employees can easily adopt and engage with, but to understand what features and functionality you need to improve your business. Bring together managers and end users to discuss your current HR and payroll processes, such as benefit open enrollment, and how they could be automated or improved. These discussions will help outline your true needs.

Investing in the right HR, timekeeping, and payroll systems will provide you and your employees the tools -- and the time -- to focus on what matters most: guest engagement.

Make HR and payroll stress free. Contact us and we’ll be happy to learn more about your current processes and walk you through a demonstration to show how Paycor can help you become more efficient.

Sources: Huffington Post, Hotelexecutive.com, hcareers.com and Hospitality Upgrade