Conker celebrates World Productivity Day and offers its tips on making hospitality and leisure more productive
Productivity is defined as “the efficiency and quality of production of goods or services”. Some barriers to productivity include distraction and interruptions, lack of information, ineffective communication, insufficient training, inadequate tools and equipment, stress and too much to do.
Conker, which provides a range of rugged, wearable and scannable devices for mobile workforces, offers its top tips on productivity for hospitality and leisure managers.
Tenneil Olivier, hospitality business development executive at Conker, comments: “An efficient hospitality operation is critical for customer satisfaction because it helps to ensure quick and accurate delivery of service, increasing brand loyalty.”
Attracting and retaining employees
The hospitality sector is known for high employee attrition, according to Marsh Commercial1 42 per cent of employees leave their jobs within 90 days and with an attrition rate of 30 per cent the hospitality sector is double the UK average. Keeping up with the latest trends and utilising technology that is familiar, easy to train or just intuitive means investment and time in training employees can be reduced whilst helping to retain staff for longer.
Reputation management and loyalty
Online platforms and reviews and ratings are becoming commonplace. For new hospitality businesses that don’t have any or many ratings, build these up before you set your chosen review partner live – better to wait 6 months to have a bank of reviews than jeopardise bookings with few or no reviews. Tie this strategy into a loyalty programme and the reviews will build faster – successful loyalty programmes are ones that are simple to understand and represent real value to the customer.
Adopting technology to improve productivity
Adopt technology that can handle business demands and will ultimately help in improving productivity.
Using tablets will help staff provide informed and accurate table service. Taking orders directly on a rugged device saves waiting staff from having to remember what shorthand they used for a dish (and putting the wrong order through to the kitchen) and time, as the order is not only accurate, but delivered to the kitchen in an instant. The hospitality environment can be demanding with spills and devices being dopped – regular devices will struggle to perform over a prolonged period. To get the best value from investing in IT hardware look for fit-for-purpose devices that are rugged.
Going rugged
Devices that are “just tough” no longer meet the needs of many fast-paced hard-working environments. Buyers expect rugged device manufacturers to have considered operating systems, types of viewing screens, battery life, data security devices’ communications capabilities and ease of use.
But how do you know how tough, tough is? Rugged devices are a type of hardware designed specifically to tolerate hard-working environments. From fluctuating temperatures to wet countertops then back into the restaurant. They can tolerate a range of hazards including exposure to fluids and drops. Touch screens can be operated inside and out in bright light and the battery life is designed to last an entire shift - rugged devices are built to last. These attributes can positively impact costs in downtime and time and cost to replace devices that are not durable enough. All Conker devices are drop tested typically to 1.2m and for peace of mind have the durability rating of IP65.
The new era of smarter hospitality providers
James Summers, CEO at Conker, added: “The products surfacing during this new era of hospitality are further supported by automation and real-time connectivity with other service areas. The results include increased productivity, supported resources, and speed and accuracy to fulfil customers’ orders resulting in improved bottom lines.
“It is vital that hospitality managers ensure good usability testing on all tablets, handheld and wearable devices, because good usability will help to support a happy workforce. They also shouldn’t be afraid to demand upfront user testing before committing to new devices in the IT stack. And many should be addressing the advantages of rugged devices to support their needs.”
1 https://www.marshcommercial.co.uk/articles/top-tips-for-retaining-hospitality-staff/