As a hotel manager, one of your key responsibilities is ensuring that your facility has the requisite talent to meet guest needs while simultaneously keeping costs to a minimum. Housekeeping represents one of your biggest areas of need, as this sector of the hospitality industry is known for high turnover and frequent shortages.

The good news is that you can cut housekeeping costs while improving retention by using some established strategies and best practices. Here’s how to manage housekeeping like a pro while reducing your operating expenses. 

How to Cut Housekeeping Costs

You can drastically cut housekeeping costs by implementing the following measures:

Restructure Your Schedules

Start by reviewing your current scheduling practices and identify any shortcomings in your existing plans.

For example, consider when your hotel is the busiest and when you need the most housekeeping staff available and align your scheduling strategies with fluctuations in demand. That way, you can minimize the amount of time workers spend sitting around with nothing to do while ensuring that your other shifts don’t get overwhelmed. 

It’s also a good idea to explore different rotations and scheduling strategies to give your team adequate time off while also satisfying the hotel's staffing needs.

You might use rotating or block schedules to make sure the same staff members aren't always working on weekends or evenings. Promoting fairness in your scheduling practices can improve morale across the entire team. 

Create Standardized Checklists 

Inconsistencies in housekeeping practices can require staff members to make secondary visits to rooms and reduce overall efficiency.

Create standardized checklists to help your team work through all essential tasks in a timely manner. Include basic tasks like replacing dirty towels with clean ones, wiping down hard surfaces, and replacing bedsheets.

If you’re using housekeeping software, your team will be able to check these tasks off their to-do lists before closing each room-cleaning request.

Digitizing the back end of housekeeping processes helps keep everyone accountable, as you’ll have a record of all work that’s been completed. Cutting back on reworking can also help you reduce total labor hours, thereby lowering housekeeping costs. 

Upgrade Your Checkout Processes 

If you’re still checking guests out the old-fashioned way, it’s time to make a change. Consider a contactless or self-service checkout solution that integrates with your housekeeping scheduling tools. These solutions allow guests to check out faster while reducing the burden on your front desk team.

That’s not all. Another major benefit is that the software will automatically notify your housekeeping team when a guest leaves their room. They can add that room to their cleaning schedule and make sure it's ready when the next guests arrive. 

Automation tools enable you to do more with less, reducing your wage expenses in the process. This can be a big advantage if your hotel is struggling to find and retain reliable workers.

Encourage Guests to Reuse Linens and Towels

Encouraging guests to reuse towels and linens can reduce the workload on your housekeeping staff while unlocking huge savings. On average, hotels can save about $6.50 per day per occupied room through towel reuse. This translates to tens of thousands in yearly savings for a 200-bedroom hotel with a 65% occupancy rate. 

You’ll also eliminate thousands of gallons of water consumption each year, which is great for the environment, not to mention all of the detergents you’ll be saving in the process. When guests reuse their linens and towels, everyone wins. 

Use Housekeeping Software to Improve Response Times

Labor expenses are one of your largest housekeeping costs. While you can’t slash your labor force to a skeleton crew, you can reduce overtime expenses using some creative task-management strategies.

One solution involves adopting housekeeping software. Traditionally, guests must contact the front desk if they have a special housekeeping request. By digitizing this interaction, you can expedite the flow of requests to your housekeeping personnel, allowing them to work more efficiently while meeting your guests’ needs.

Cutting down on response times means each worker will be able to get more done during their shift. Increasing each employee’s output even slightly will improve housekeeping operations and can have significant implications for your annual expenses.

How to Manage Housekeeping to Reduce Turnover

If your employees are constantly calling in sick or quitting, it's eventually going to put a strain on your talent management team, burden the organization with high recruitment costs, and drive up the cumulative expenses associated with housekeeping operations. 

With that in mind, here are a few ways to keep your housekeeping employees around longer and unlock long-term cost savings.

Identify Sources of Turnover 

Hiring and onboarding just one employee can cost upward of $4,000. If you’re plagued by turnover, your onboarding costs will quickly cut into your operating budget and eat away at your profit margins.

Try to get to the bottom of the problem as quickly as possible — the longer this issue goes unaddressed, the higher the risk that the trend will negatively impact company culture. Resolving absenteeism and turnover issues could save you tens of thousands of dollars on housekeeping labor costs.

Use a Talent Management Firm 

Teaming up with a talent management firm can provide access to housekeeping staff and help you fill immediate vacancies. However, it's important to work with organizations that understand the unique needs of hotels. 

One Haus works exclusively with hospitality organizations, including hotels, clubs, and restaurants. Our team can help you source housekeeping talent by connecting you with screened and vetted candidates. In doing so, we can accelerate the hiring process and enable you to meet key needs quickly.

Improve Housekeeping Operations With a Hospitality Recruiter

One of the best ways to improve your housekeeping operations is to partner with a hospitality recruiting firm.

The right talent acquisition partner can help you save money and connect with pre-vetted housekeeping talent in your market. They may also be able to shorten your hiring pipeline, reducing the need to carry vacancies while also ensuring that you’ve got enough staff to serve guests.

Once you’ve acquired new talent, the strategies outlined here can help you retain them and put your housekeeping management woes behind you for good.