How do you get the most productivity out of your hotel maintenance staff?

Dr. Brian Glassman, Director of Product & Research at PropertyHero.ai

How do you get the most productivity out of your hotel maintenance staff?

The hotel maintenance staff are critical to the operations of a well-functioning hotel, and there are many ways to get the most out of them. A well-motivated hotel maintenance staff member will prioritize their work to maximize guest comfort and long-term operations, have the modern digital tools necessary to do their job, and finally, they should feel empowered.

Clear understanding of business value.

Outside of the normal maintenance tool kits (hardware, access to power tools, and replacement parts), the maintenance staff should have a clear daily and weekly task list. Of course, guest maintenance requests take priority; however, during those periods between immediate requests they should be tasked with performing upkeep and preventative maintenance. Having a list of task priorities by value to operations like fixing an AC unit in an occupied high-value suite before an unoccupied regular room. Repeatedly, communicating the business value of each repair in terms of downtime, lost revenue due to a missed occupancy, or impact on guest comfort helps train maintenance to prioritize their work. Next, routine and preventative maintenance is key in preemptively addressing maintenance issues. A well-oiled maintenance department will have a regular maintenance schedule specific to that hotel. For example, the age ACs, local humidity & outside temperatures affect the replacement schedule for AC filters and the cleaning of AC coils. Thinking through the different systems in the hotel’s electrical, flooring and furniture, painting, signage, lighting, HVAC, plumbing, and amenities when working with the head of maintenance to optimize the preventative maintenance & upkeep schedule.

Modern Digital Tools

Next, having modern digital tools to manage maintenance tasks is vital. Printing out maintenance tasks, calling the front desk, or going back to the maintenance office to look at the computer to determine the next maintenance task is inefficient, takes time from other team members, and limits flexibility. Modern digital solutions like PropertyHero.ai Hotel Solution allow the maintenance team to view the maintenance task list on their mobile devices, pull up details of any asset (AC, refrigerator) and its service history in seconds, and enter service records, costs, and photo receipts. Propertyhero.ai software includes automatic SMS and email task reminders which provides a structure for team members and allows employees to list status updates in addition to marking tasks complete. With these digital tools, maintenance requests can be accomplished quickly with seamless communication between departments and allows employees to work on the go without ever picking up their walkie-talkie or visiting the computer in the maintenance office. PropertyHero.ai Hotel Solutions

A Empowered Maintenance Team

Finally, empowering the maintenance team with a combination of training and digital tools is vital. Empowerment is allowing them to make prioritization decisions about what tasks to perform based on business value, schedule, and part availability. The maintenance staff can often feel under-appreciated and having visibility over their productivity lets general managers and other team members see the results of their hard work. For example, Propertyhero.ai has a task tracker that records and displays the time is taken, cost of materials, and labor for each task showing the productivity and results of each maintenance engineer to hotel management. This helps keep hotel maintenance staff accountable.

In Summary

In all, training hotel maintenance staff on prioritization of their work, having a modern digital maintenance management solution, and empowering maintenance staff will help optimize your hotel and improve guest comfort and drive revenues.