There’s one thing that’s harder than running a hotel and that’s trying to maintain work-life balance while you’re doing it. Hotels run 24/7 and hotel managers are responsible for what happens under their roof during that time. Since the job can be all-consuming at times, finding a way back to real life is can be hard. Keeping hotel managers from burning out requires strict attention to work-life balance.
Here’s how to maintain work-life balance in the 24/7 hotel industry.
Work-Life Balance Tips for the Hotel Manager
Working can be stressful in any job, but particularly for management in the hotel industry. One way to counteract the stress is to create a positive, upbeat, and fun work culture. If you can create this environment, it will motivate employees and lessen their stress, making your hotel a place where people want to come to work. Managers can help create this environment by fully supporting workers that are struggling and acknowledging their voice when customers complain or are unreasonably demanding.
Hotel Managers should participate in and make available additional training for their staff, as well. Sending your chefs to culinary training or your concierges to sales training, or even providing a basic accounting class for the management team will reap big benefits for the organization and staff. Offering additional training shows that you care for your workers and want to invest in them. For hotel managers, additional training is a must; you will improve your task workflows and perhaps even become more efficient.
Leadership in the hotel chain should lead by example by bringing their A-game each day. But they should also exhibit work-life balance themselves for their employees to model. As a culture, Americans are terrible about taking time off; surveys show the majority of U.S. workers don’t even use all of their vacation each year. But hotel management must buck this trend by encouraging their employees to find work-life balance – and by finding it themselves.
Hotel Managers that find they are missing a family event need to schedule their workload to accommodate these activities. If possible, create flexible work policies that engage the worker in the scheduling process. This will help everyone create better work-life balance while keeping customer service top of mind. Employees, including the hotel manager, will be able to schedule around home events or if they’re sick.
In the same vein, having flexible work arrangements can help improve the mood at work. Employees that get sick should keep their illness home instead of coming in to share it with everyone else. The point of flex time also is that employees have a little more control over when they work, which allows them to still attend life events.
In addition to flex time, employees should be encouraged to take breaks throughout the day. People shouldn’t have to feel that they must work nonstop, particularly in an industry that requires everything from the mental demands required to deal with an unhappy customer to the physical requirements of lifting, standing, and walking that many of these roles require. Encouraging short breaks each day during a shift can improve employee attitudes and endurance required for these demanding positions. Hotel Managers should take this advice as well; remember, you are to lead by example. Even grabbing 10 minutes to sit outside on a bench and breathe the fresh air is a good way to regroup.
Sometimes finding work-life balance requires a job change. If this is the case, Gecko Hospitality is standing by to help.
