Excerpt from CoStar
Higher Wages Aren't the Only Solution to the Hotel Industry's Labor Crisis
While wage negotiations are always at the center of hiring, recruitment and retention, hotel leaders said young employees are also being more direct with their expectations of a career trajectory in the industry.
How the hotel industry navigates the labor shortage in the next year could put it ahead or put it behind five or 10 years from now.During the "Shaping the Workforce for Today and Tomorrow" panel at the Hotel Data Conference, industry leaders spoke about the ways they're trying to better reach young employees. Part of that effort includes paying competitive wages, but modernizing career development tracks and emphasizing company culture are just as important, panelists said.
Chris Green, president of Remington Hospitality, said the veterans and leaders of the hotel industry need to put in more effort to understand their younger associates better. Often, they might want a quicker track to career advancement that goes against the historical way of doing things, but that line of thinking has to change.
"The first thing we have to do in today's environment is — and it's easy for me because I came from that environment — you work this many years at this job and then you can maybe get a chance at the next job. We have to take off our thinking caps and listen to this generation because they have no reference for how we feel about where they want to go with their careers," Green said.
Green shared a story about his niece who recently graduated college and works in the pharmaceuticals industry. After nine months in the business, she applied for a promotion to a regional sales position but didn't get it. Green said first he asked his niece why she thought she was qualified for the promotion so soon after joining the workforce, but he admitted it got him thinking about the young employees in the hospitality industry.
"We can either be frustrated by it and we could push back against it, or we can lean into it and learn how to work alongside them," he said. "Because I'm not going to be in this room 10 years from today; somebody else is going to be in this room, and we have a responsibility to figure out how to let them make it their own and succeed. And if we don't, we're just going to be fighting against it. We don't want to be the industry fighting against the talent that wants to work."
Leticia Proctor, executive vice president of sales, marketing and revenue management at Donohoe Hospitality Services, said her company has broadened its hiring search to job candidates that may not have hospitality experience.
"We are really focused on introducing hospitality to people that have transferable degrees that can also work in our space," Proctor said. "We want to expose them to it at a high level, not just at the property level. We do dual tracks. ... I have a responsibility to make sure that other people have an opportunity to grow. That's how we follow that pipeline; if we don't make a concentrated effort then we'll be in this space five years from now. You've got to introduce them and also reach them where they are."
Tess McGoldrick, vice president of travel and hospitality at Revenue Analytics, said she looks for a certain X factor in a job candida te that will make them not just a good revenue manager, but a great one.
"I can teach somebody hospitality revenue management. I can't teach you how to be a critical thinker or how to tell a story of data or how to want to dig in, always understanding the why," she said. "We do a really good job of hiring folks that have that intellectual curiosity, and then once they're there, they find what they're into. And you just spend time with them to figure out how to give them more of that."
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