Remington Hospitality CEO Sloan Dean said although staffing continues to be a challenge, it has eased in some ways: “We now have fewer open jobs, and wage growth has cooled from about 8 percent to 4 percent.” Yet, he said, there’s no denying the problem of turnover, especially among hourly employees in housekeeping and food & beverage, where average turnover is 100 percent.
Liv Wang, lead data scientist, ADP Research, cited a recent report from the company noting that leisure & hospitality was the only industry to see double-digit pay growth for ‘job stayers’ during the COVID recovery period “where wages really elevated for everyone.”
Wang added that hospitality and leisure was in the leading position among all industries in terms of wage growth from 2021 to early this year, at which time it started to come back to the pack.
“We already passed the stage where there’s a lot of moving parts caused by COVID when there was a labor shortage, and now we’re kind of back to a new normal. This elevated pay growth was not sustainable,” she said.
Dean, meanwhile, described approaches that boil down to hiring the right people, supporting them with the right technology and training, and creating an environment where people want to stay.
Citing Remington’s value statement “The Place Where Passionate People Thrive,” Dean said he aims to create “the highest culture company,” where “high-energy and passionate people thrive and become magnets to attract others like them.”
He said he “learned the hard way” that a high IQ isn’t enough. “I see now that it is the softer skills, the intangible leadership qualities and communication skills, that differentiate leaders.”
While Dean said there’s no getting around those intangibles at all levels, technology can help fewer team members work more efficiently, so they can focus on guests, colleagues, and their workloads. “We’ve been able to reduce staff in some departments, for example, in human resources by using resume-screening software and in legal, by using AI technology that screens our contracts.”
