Benefits: provide more than just monetary benefits. We cannot always provide raises, but financial compensation is not always what employees want.
- Half days – giving employees “half days” is a great way to maintain most hours needed from employees and promote productivity. It gives employees something to work towards. Maybe tell them if they finish their work in a specific time frame, they can have half days, or provide it as a reward for working in the summer season every week or few weeks.
- Schedule flexibility – when employees feel overworked, it is crucial to ensure they get time off when they need it. Prioritize making sure your employees can take a break when necessary. Additionally, it’s becoming more of a trend for employees to value more time off versus more pay. Some companies even have employees work four-day weeks with 10-hour days giving three-day weekends to employees (or an extra day in the middle of the week). Employees often love and prefer the longer days to enjoy an extra day off.. It gives them more time to recoup from a draining work week, especially when staff is short.
- Paid lunches – people need a break to be productive, so paying them to ensure more productivity, in the long run, will prove more beneficial to your hotel and in retaining employees. It is also just one more way to appreciate employees.
- Reward the work – when people work extra, reward them with bonuses or time off
Work-life balance: it’s so easy with a labor shortage for our current employees to miss out on a work-life balance because they have to work so much to compensate for the lack of staff. This leads to burn-out and quitting.. It’s so critical that people can enjoy their lives at work and out of work. If employees work overtime, provide them with a shorter shift or half-day the following week. Provide discounts and benefits to your hotel or restaurant and other hotels or restaurants. Give them gift cards, tickets, or discounts to outside events and restaurants for activities for employees outside of work.
Manage with trust: understand you hired your employees because you trust that they can do their jobs. Strive to not be too overbearing with meetings or checking in on employees and let them do their job as they know how.
Foster an environment of productivity- there are so many ways to ensure productivity in the work environment. But make sure employees know you value them when they are productive, and they do their job efficiently and quickly. Always reward them when they do so. Rewards can be as simple as a “job well done!”.
