What to Consider in Hiring Housekeeping Staff

Housekeeping is a notoriously low-paying job, but you can use the people you do hire to do some of the recruiting for you. It could very well be that the person you hire knows other people who would be open to working for your establishment under the right circumstances.

Who better to extol the benefits therein than someone who just heard about a certain place and accepted a job there?

It’s hard to gauge this for a number of reasons, but you will want to consider the speed at which the folks you’re thinking of hiring can move, and the extent to which they understand that the quicker a room is sellable, the better. Perhaps seeing mess after mess may become daunting, but someone who knows how to focus on the overall goal at hand can look past the immediate issue much easier and thus work much quicker.

If someone does not work out in a housekeeping role, consider whether it would be smart  to repurpose their efforts into some other job on the property. Many of the lower-level, vital jobs at a hotel don’t necessarily have to go to someone with a degree, so if you can plug someone in where their skills fit, you can save some time.

Done correctly, you also have the added benefit of keeping someone who may well be desperate for a job. Do your best to repurpose the staff you do have into roles that might fit, since doing so can be less costly and more efficient.

Ask about shifts, too. Ideally, you want people to work the shifts that best fit with their family dynamics, or the other obligations they have in their lives outside of work. In other words, if you get someone to work the third shift but they have a wife and young kids, it may be a short stay.

Your job is to figure out how you can promote longevity in these types of roles, and part of that is accommodation where your employees are concerned. The third shift might be a better fit for a college student, for example, who can easily fit their class schedule around the hours you would like them to fit.

Temperance is an issue, too. People who work in housekeeping many times get exposed to many disgusting and horrible aspects of hotel stays, but guests seem to enjoy not having the responsibility of cleaning up after themselves. Fluids are common, no doubt, and so are trash and a host of other issues.

Those can’t in real time keep rooms from being clean, and your staff cannot get so frustrated or fixated on a certain issue that they are slowed down to a crawl. There is also the specter of dealing with guests who are unhappy.

Guests may complain if a housekeeper only speaks English, for example, or if a knock on the door interrupts a romantic tryst. You can’t control how people treat your staff, necessarily, but you can defend that staff from vitriol as a manager and help other employees steel themselves up against criticism.

Trust is key. Anytime your guests lose something in the room, they will ask about housekeeping or cleaning staff since those folks have access to guests’ rooms for the purpose of cleaning them.

Housekeepers need to be trustworthy to where you never even have to think about whether they would steal an item from any guest.

Your business can’t afford even the appearance of an issue along those lines especially with how quickly a disgruntled guest can see their messages amplified via social media.