Just about everyone in the hospitality sector is looking for a way to improve their employee experience, recruit and retain staff and cut labour costs.
During our Liquid Workforce event held in London, Deputy gathered critical players in hotel management operations to discuss workforce challenges and how to improve employee retention and recruitment while significantly reducing labour costs.
Introducing the concept of a liquid workforce, we covered how automated rota planning can help businesses flex their rotas and workforce to meet demand, create better work experiences for their employees, leading to improved productivity and morale and freeing up their time to focus on more strategic tasks that drive growth.
Attendees got the opportunity to connect with industry experts who understand the ins and outs of employee-centred workforce management systems and have firsthand experience using Deputy. They were also able to connect and share best practices with their peers navigating the same volatile labour market as they are.
For example, Using Deputy, Atlas Hotels is able to offer one weekend off in four for its staff, and automatically accommodate days in the week when an employee can’t work.
Pay transparency is currently high in the hospitality industry, and staff know where they can earn more so providing a positive employee experience can help counter this.
All hotels reiterated that flexibility is currently extremely important in order to retain talent.
CitizenM is experimenting with fun ways of recruiting, such as casting days which allows prospective staff to demonstrate their skills across a range of roles and help create a more flexible workforce.
The session concluded with a Q&A where participants got to ask questions directly related to their own business and challenges in improving employee retention.
Deputy EMEA Managing Director David Kelly began the session with a retrospective of today’s market.
Hospitality has been hit by an imperfect storm of post-pandemic and post-Brexit factors.
He then moved to define the theme of the event, “Liquid Workforce” - what is it?
Deputy didn’t coin the term but has applied the definition to the shift worker experience. It’s “an organisational approach to workforce management that emphasises enhanced flexibility, operational responsiveness and employee self-service whilst unifying demand against available labour."
It’s a philosophy that has at its core three main pillars: Flexibility, autonomy and agility
Using technology to provide flexibility and autonomy to workers and operational managers can give a business the agility to react to changing conditions. Moving towards a liquid workforce can deliver a myriad of benefits:
The foundational stage of building a Liquid Workforce comprises Platform and Culture and consists of three main pillars:
Automation and AI are central to the advanced stages of building a liquid workforce and driven by three main elements:
David Kelly concluded with the fact that hotels are powered by shift workers. Hotels cannot deliver true hospitality without the shift worker, and all the tasks below required to run a shift-based workplace can quickly add up and become administrative burdens.
Given that it’s not possible to find one system that administers all the above tasks well, building out your tech would require investigating your ecosystem of apps and ensuring that API flexibility is one of your core criteria.
In conclusion, automated rota planning is a powerful tool for streamlining workforce management and improving employee satisfaction. By using algorithms to create schedules based on factors like availability and skills, your hotel can create more efficient and fair schedules, reducing the likelihood of burnout and increasing employee satisfaction.
Deputy can be a game-changer for hospitality businesses looking to improve their operations and retain their employees in a competitive labour market. By automating routine tasks and freeing up time for more strategic activities, your hotel can drive growth while creating a better work experience for your employees.
