[0:05]Some of the main causes of turnover for leased labor as well as hotel employees is employees feeling valued. Other factors would be environment, work environment related, whether they have the tools, schedules or even their workloads. And then looking at do team members have a path forward, whether it's looking at current pay rate, how is pay rate looked at against cost of living or other similar industries, as well as being in the role and understanding that there's a path forward for those individuals. There are simple fixes that can be done at property levels and it really leads into employees feeling like they're part of the team and feeling valued. And when we really take the time to get to know an employee, then we'll know what their traditions are or where they came from or their likes and wants and needs. And one hotel we had dishwashers. So someone would come in every day and it was the hotel employees, they're playing, you know, their genre of music that they like. Well, we looked at that to say, gosh, everyone has kind of different tastes, different likes and we established a playlist for everyone on the team that's working on that shift, so that everyone kind of gets that taste of excitement when they're at work. We worked with one property and they were really having a hard time, not only retaining team members, but recruiting as well. And it was a hotel that was predominantly in a college environment. The hotel kept sharing that there was high turnover. Students don't want to clean rooms and really the leader or the manager that's operating that business has to really look inwardly and say, hey, how can we think outside of the box to really change the retention or the demographic of people that are at our fingertips. Through our partnership with them, we talked about relooking at traditional housekeeping shifts as eight hour shifts to say, I'm not sure someone wants to clean for eight hours a day. But if a college student has the afternoon off or the morning off, maybe they'll come in for two, three, four hours. So we looked at that and we actually were successful at hiring college students to clean rooms with shorten shifts, same expectations, same productivity standards, short and shifts. Now, as a staffing partner, we also looked at transportation. So we built in a transportation allowance that allowed those that were working perhaps an hour away to really find value in coming to the property because now we had an opportunity to transport them in. We also paid them for the time of that transportation and so the property at the time was agreeable to work with the pay rates for those individuals. And we, we took the transportation as an allowance as well as paying them for that time. And ultimately, I think the impact really was two prong. We expanded the talent pool and we boosted recruitment and of course, improved the retention meeting both the students and the staffing companies needs.
[3:27]Recognition is absolutely important when it comes to retention. When we put our core value of people first, we see retention improve me and through recognition, being at the hearts of the individuals and treating them as individuals and caring for them, is really the key. When we pick up the phone at 6am, the employee answers because we care for them. When someone is on their day off, we will pick up the phone and ask them to come to work and they come to work because they care about us, because we've cared about them. Some of the things that hotels do to recognize employees would be to incorporate them into their, their family. So if there are morning huddles and our employees are part of those morning huddles, there are celebrations, also from a recognition standpoint is um incentive programs that are also all inclusive of our team.
[4:29]Co-employment is often on the radar of especially human resources and when you talk about co-employment, it's not one action that would determine co-employment in a property. And so us managing our own schedules, us supervising our own employees, really, it it's really the cumulative actions that are taken at a property that would demonstrate co-employment. We're all in the same uniforms, we're all being directed by the hotel. If we're have their benefits. And so there's a fine line and that's where recognition really comes in is how do we make sure people feel that they're part of the property rather than trying to make this co-employment line where there's not a feeling of belonging.
[5:25]When it comes to development of our employees, again, it goes back to looking at our employee as someone who can actually have a career in hospitality. And so if you begin to change your mindset of the people that are coming into hotel properties as those employees have true, true uh career growth in mind. I mean, they're not coming because they want to be a room attendant all day, every day for the rest of their lives or a dishwasher or a server and leaders at those properties that really understand that will work with us. And we work together in developing some succession planning and succession planning is very real in the staffing industry. So if you worked with a hotel that says, you just need room attendance and that's all we're taking, that's all we need from you. Whereas other partners may say, hey, let's build in some succession planning here so that we retain the team member and they feel that there's a path forward. And how we do that is looking at the opportunities for them and I'd like to take just housekeeping as an example. In the housekeeping department, we may start with a training rate and then from there, there's a housekeeper one, two or three rate and those have incremental pay increases with incremental responsibilities. There you can be a self-inspector, you can become an inspector, you can become a supervisor. So, as you can see, that that employee that came in simply at a training rate, now can see a path forward. And actually just recently, we had one of our managers because of that relationship with the hotel, went through our external system, became a manager with exclusive and now has been hired on to be a leader at one of our hotel partners. And that is a true success story. The impact of turnover is threefold. And when we talk to our hotel partners, we really frame it from a financial standpoint because that's how everybody will gain attention from anyone, right? If you, if you tied numbers to it and one, there's a cost of course to recruiting, there's a cost to training and that ultimately with turnover becomes a cost to your company through guest satisfaction. And so as we retain team members, we see an increase in guest satis because they know the ins and outs of the hotel. They know the brand standards, they become more and more proficient in their careers. And so from a financial impact, I think that is really what we what we focus on. Stay interviews are a great way to learn and understand how employees are feeling that are currently working. We often look at exit interviews, stay interviews are extremely valuable to understand what is keeping someone at the property and what they're not happy with. And really taking that information as valuable tools for improvement, but what's really valuable for us is conducting those stay interviews and then meeting with the property. And often times those stay interviews align with the hotel. employee feedback as well and it just further reinforces the changes that we can make at the property level. Acting on the feedback is important because again, when you tie it to the framework through a financial lens, it's really understanding the importance if we don't fix these challenges, you may have turnover. We may have turnover and it will affect the bottom line and guest satisfaction.
[9:29]And so bringing that information back to the property really sheds a light on areas for improvement. Quick wins would be to ensure we have the tools available to all employees and often times, we look at hotels or the properties that we work with that are streamlining, right? Streamlining budgets, trying to work with less and when we tie those back to productivity, it really has an impact on the business. So if you have to go back to rooms to add the bedding that wasn't cleaned at the time because our par levels are down. Um, those are definitely quick wins for the morale of the people that are working at the property.
[10:17]What exclusive is doing that is different, I will always wholeheartedly go back to the relationships. We maintain relationships with the property as well as the individuals that work for us and we treat them as a human being, not as a number. And when it comes to hotel properties, we want to have that relationship so that when they have a situation, they can call us at any time. We have certainly part of our onboarding and training with our managers is really to go into what are those skills that you have as a leader to continue to build relationship and that is so very important. And again, going back to technology as really the way of the future, we want to ensure we adopt technology and embrace technology, but at the same time not lose that personal touch.
