Your hotel business runs non-stop on a 24/7, 365-day schedule. Round-the-clock operations often add a layer of complication to working in teams. Therefore, communication failures between the teams that provide coverage on different shifts can be problematic, and it can be common to run into problems between shifts. Hearing comments from your staff like “Well, we couldn’t get to it because third shift didn’t…” or “I would have done that, but I didn’t know…” can get very old very fast, and cost you time, money, and create guest frustration.
Luckily, by taking some proactive steps, you can help promote good communication between your shifts, and cut down or even eliminate the more common communications hassles by providing what is known to most hotel staffs as a Front Desk Log. Once done only manually, such handy record keeping tools can often be found as part of today’s more advanced property management systems (PMS), and are often known as Community Boards.
Here are three simple actions you can take to help you identify key issues and successes encountered by the outgoing shift while making good use of your Community Boards:
Have your management and staff place updates in the Community Boards, then designate what items will be updated by each shift.
Distribute what is known as a shift transition email. Ideally, this type of email should be in a standard template that has been previously communicated to all staff so they can quickly read it and get on with their work.
Create a designated “Communicator” role on each shift. This role would be responsible for meeting with all previous shifts and following shifts at transition times to communicate key issues.
