6 Benefits of Using Total Square Footage Worked
Managing the labor needs of a hotel can be a challenge, particularly when there’s a labor shortage. One metric, the total-square-footage-worked by housekeepers, can provide critical insights about the needs of your hotel that can help you increase your efficiency, enhance your guest experience, and improve your hotel’s bottom line.
1.) You know the workload of each housekeeper. The total square footage that a housekeeper cleans can serve as an objective measure of workload. It can help you understand the distribution of tasks and ensure workload is equitably divided among the team.
2.) You know how efficient your team is. By tracking the total square feet cleaned per shift, you can evaluate the efficiency and productivity of your housekeeping staff. With that insight, you can identify opportunities for process improvements and if additional training is needed to enhance efficiency.
3.) You have data to guide staffing decisions. For instance, if the square footage cleaned per staff member is consistently high, it might indicate a need for additional staff to maintain cleanliness standards and prevent staff burnout. On the other hand, if the square footage cleaned per staff member is low, it might suggest overstaffing or inefficient processes.
4.) You can manage costs better. Understanding the relationship between labor hours and square footage cleaned can also help manage costs. It allows for more precise forecasting and budgeting of labor costs. By analyzing this data, you can identify cost-saving opportunities, such as adjusting shift patterns to match cleaning needs or investing in equipment or technology that enhances cleaning speed and efficiency.
5.) You can maintain a higher service quality. High cleaning standards are crucial in the hospitality industry. Guests rank cleanliness as one of the most important influences on their experience with hotels and how they ultimately review them online. Cleanliness can be compromised if your housekeeping staff is overworked or under pressure. By tracking the total square footage cleaned, you can ensure your staff has an appropriate workload that promotes high-quality cleaning standards.
6.) You can stay in compliance with local ordinances. If your property is subject to local hotel ordinances requiring limits to how much housekeepers can work in a day, the total-square-footage-worked metric will help you stay compliant and mitigate your risk of costly fines.
Total-square-footage-worked is an important metric that should be part of a comprehensive approach to managing housekeeping operations in the hospitality industry.
Now that you know the benefits, the next question you might ask yourself is how to measure and track it. Thanks to technology, it’s easy. With the leading housekeeping and maintenance tool MOP, for example, the total square footage worked by each of your housekeepers is automatically tracked for you.
For more information and a quick demo, click here!
About Visual Matrix:
More than 3,000 properties in 30+ countries worldwide choose the Visual Matrix hospitality operating system to optimize hotel operations and serve guests from reservation to return stay. Our system includes a game-changing PMS and an independent mobile operating platform (MOP) for use with Visual Matrix and most other PMS systems. Our PMS offers powerful features and key integrations that are easy to use, like revenue management with automated rate/discount tiering, a fully integrated channel manager, and a mobile app for tracking performance on the go. MOP automates routine tasks and streamlines communication to keep the front desk, housekeeping, and maintenance staff focused on guests. It also includes a built-in panic button as an Emergency Safety Device to help keep hotel staff from harm. For more information, visit visualmatrix.com.
