4 CALIFORNIA LODGING NEWS www.calodging.com FINDING AND KEEPING QUALIFIED HOTEL employees is a conundrum in the best of times. It challenges a property’s viability in the worst of times. Today, many hoteliers are confronting the lasting effects of the “great resignation” spurred by the global pandemic and the extended closures of California hotels. They are learning to adapt to changing expectations and attitudes of a fresh-look generation of workers, many of whom seek careers defined less by pay and hours and more by greater diversity of colleagues, a variation of tasks, and a detailed work/life plan that puts concerns for the individual’s needs on par with those of the hotel. This emerging view of the workplace, of career paths and of staffing hierarchy seeks greater flexibility, a greater voice in job scopes, and to work for an employer that “walks the talk” about diversity and respect for the individual. It comes just when hotel owners and top managers are eager to make up for the “lost years” of the pandemic when they were closed or had little to no business, yet continued to incur expensive maintenance, tax, and regulatory costs. It also comes when the public is eager to resume travel after two years of being “cooped up”—adding more pressure to managers to increase occupancy even when their hotel may not have a full complement of staff to support all their guests. This dynamic is fueling discussions at many California hotels that range the spectrum of “just get back to work” to finding and embracing solutions to this workplace cultural shift that may, in some cases, pit old-school managers against self-absorbed Generation Z-ers. Fulfilling the 24/7 needs of guests and adapting to employees’ re-envisioned view of work can be difficult in hospitality where there are long-established management norms and inescapable daily must-do lists. Fairmont Hotels from the San Francisco Bay Area and West Coast are tackling this challenge head-on with what is believed to be a first-in-the-region approach that upends some of those long-standing traditions and reframes working life for managers and leaders around flexibility, communication, and individual needs. The shift has its roots during the depths of the pandemic when hotels were closed to guests and maintained only a skeleton management staff. “It started for us when there were only a dozen of us working,” said Markus Treppenhauer, General Manager of the historic Fairmont San Francisco hotel on Nob Hill. “Every afternoon, we would have an informal get together, just
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