Installing a Workforce Management Program at a Luxury Resort
Branded, Luxury Hawaiian Resort
After a history of successful collaboration, an ownership group requested Carpedia Hospitality’s support in identifying opportunities for improvement and enhancing the service model of its newest investment, a luxury resort on Maui.
THE CHALLENGES:
Upon acquiring the sprawling oceanside resort, the owners engaged Carpedia Hospitality to install a workforce management program like those that had been implemented successfully in a number of their other properties. The Hawaiian resort experienced challenges in delivering the luxury product its guests expected while effectively managing the labor cost associated with its tenured, unionized team. An absence of time-bound expectations for tasks created difficulty around driving the team’s performance, and there were limited tools and resources available to inform schedule planning or to track productivity on a daily and weekly basis.
The resort was also interested in understanding the gradual decline in guest satisfaction scores around its elaborate arrival experience, which involved multiple touchpoints intended to extend a thorough, welcoming arrival to guests. Reviews and feedback indicated that there were regular service breakdowns at multiple points of the process and that it was not following the steps of service as it was designed on paper. Leaders hoped to diagnose the causes to ensure the resort consistently made an excellent first impression.
THE SOLUTIONS:
Carpedia Hospitality conducted observations of hourly employees across each of the resort’s operating departments, and established labor planning standards for each role based on the optimal amount of time to execute individual job duties. These productivity goals were built into new tools for schedules and assignments, allowing the leaders to align their daily and weekly strategies to their overall financial goals. In order to further improve planning, forecasting tools for each area were built using historical data and trends to project daily and hourly guest volumes at the time of schedule preparation.
Updated productivity standards were built into the budget and financial forecast, and reports were created to review daily and weekly performance and assist the leaders in keeping their departments on track. A weekly review meeting was established for department heads to analyze results, celebrate wins, and collaborate on problem solving to counteract variances on an on-going basis.
To better understand the opportunities within the arrival experience, Carpedia observed and mapped out the process step-by-step, highlighting breakdowns and redundancies. Unnecessary steps were then removed, and other procedures were refined to become more error-proof. The team was trained extensively on the new process and Carpedia supported the leaders in implementing and monitoring to ensure buy-in and success.
THE RESULTS:
The resort’s team quickly embraced a culture of labor management and achieved 105% of planned improvement in most recent tracking. Guest satisfaction scores improved due to the new focus on continuous improvement, especially around the arrival experience where the trend reversed and steadily increased. The ownership group was impressed with the leaders’ adaptability and appreciated Carpedia Hospitality’s support on another effective project.
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