There are moments within the hospitality industry when businesses are required to adjust their strategy to prevent the incurring of fines or other repercussions. LA’s new hotel ordinance set to go into effect on August 12th, is precisely one of those times where trying to run business as usual may ultimately lead non-compliant hoteliers to paying a hefty price.
So what is it about LA’s new hotel employee ordinance that’s seemingly set to upend hotel operations and place businesses at an increased risk of legal penalties? Like a growing number of regions across the US, LA is aiming to reduce workplace stress and unrealistic expectations for housekeeping staff by enacting limitations on the total amount of square footage that can be cleaned by an employee each day. After August 12th, employees are required to be paid twice their regular hourly rate if the total amount of square footage to be cleaned during their shift exceeds the limitations.
While passing of the ordinance is a step in the right direction for an industry struggling with high burnout and turnover rates, that doesn’t mean that the task of ensuring compliance isn’t without its challenges and potential headaches for a hotel’s management team. Key to managing new scheduling and task assignment processes will be newer and more robust labor management technologies that can bypass time-consuming and error-prone guesswork.
Schedule Hotel Staff With Confidence Using Unifocus Labor Management
Faced with ongoing worker shortages and rising guest expectations, the last thing many industry professionals feel they need is additional restrictions that place obstacles in the way of staffing according to service demand. Yet from automatically implementing rules for the scheduling of minors to adhering to fair work week laws and now, cleaning square footage limitations, Unifocus’ built-in flexibility can effortlessly adapt to fully address new requirements without risking service quality or adding to the workloads of managers.
Whether for a 5-star resort or a 45-room boutique hotel, Unifocus technology can create rule standards focusing on the exact amount of square footage per room. Using a combination of advanced AI and intelligent algorithms, the system can then automatically structure schedules and task assignments to minimize the chances of any housekeeping staff from going over their daily square footage limit. UniFocus achieves compliance with the new ordinance while still creating schedules that take forecasted service demand volumes into account. By automatically identifying which employees are available for a specific shift and which have yet to exceed their assigned square footage limit, hotel managers can maintain sufficiently staffed operations, ensuring consistent high service quality without continuous exposure to staff pay penalties or fines.
Where Effective Workflow Management Fits in to Ensuring Compliance
Receiving the support of an advanced labor management system able to adapt to changing industry labor requirements does go a long way in achieving compliance. The unpredictable nature of hotel housekeeping tasks can easily unravel a well-prepared strategy as new assignments come through that place an extra squeeze on square footage limits.
Today’s operating environment has become crucial to implement end-to-end workforce technology solutions. From scheduling automation to ensuring that the assigning of tasks throughout a day doesn’t breach any mandates or laws, a comprehensive workforce solutions provider is frequently the best resource a hotel business has to prevent suddenly arising tasks from resulting in non-compliance.
Unifocus's workflow management systems can correctly assign room cleaning assignments by calculating square footage per staff member and also maximize productivity and maintain legal compliance throughout the course of individual employee shifts. Managers can instantly receive a notification informing them that assigning a specific room or floor to a particular employee will violate square footage regulations. From a dashboard on a desktop or mobile device, managers can also review a list of eligible employees who can be assigned the task- ensuring the work always gets done without additional fees or adding complexity.
When in Doubt- Let the Industry’s Leading Workforce Experts Serve as Your Guide!
Trying to keep track of the ever-growing list of labor rules and requirements is hard enough for just one property. But for hospitality businesses operating within several regions, ensuring compliance with the many variances in regional regulations is practically impossible without the support of technology.
Don’t let labor ordinances such as LA’s square footage limitations catch your business off-guard and unprepared. Contact Unifocus today and discover why our comprehensive workforce management technologies are the hospitality industry’s first choice when it comes to ensuring easy compliance and uninterrupted hotel operations.
