Employment in the hospitality industry, especially here in the Caribbean, can sometimes feel like a revolving door. To get this under control it’s important that your resort has a solid HR plan with strategies in place to make the recruitment and retention of great employees a streamlined and fiscally responsible process.
The steps listed below will aid you in creating an HR process that helps attract, select, and keep the best employees for your unique property.
- Conduct a supply / demand analysis – department by department, identify how many people you need in order to meet your business objectives. This will vary from on-season to off-season. The more detailed you can be the better. Notice that the words ‘business objectives’ are in bold. It doesn’t say ‘bottom line’ or some other fiscally related word. This will force you to think about your human resources in line with what your resort’s USPs and target markets are – be it family friendly, adventure, luxury, etc.
- Use your data. Once you know your needs, look at your past and conduct a trend analysis for the various aspects of your business. For instance, if you need 40 waitstaff / F&B servers and the average turnover is 15% annually and promotion is 3% a year, you know that from a planning standpoint you need to recruit approximately 7 new people annually.
- Do an analysis on recruiting costs vs. retention costs – what are the numbers telling you? Is your strategy for employee retention working? Are you recruiting the rights kinds of people? Are you spending more recruiting or retaining? Keeping in mind your strategy – what are the ideal answers to the above questions and are you achieving those?
When it comes to HR having a formal approach is a best practice, however, keep in mind that industry climates change and your HR strategies should continue to evolve and develop as your resort does.
Need help analyzing your HR trends? Recruiting or retention programs? Get in touch here or at hello@coralrange.com.
