[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po6V_h7w4Nc&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL]
There are various types of sexual harassment including “hostile work environments”. This video presents employees with scenarios that define sexual harassment and how to effectively recognize and deal with it.
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Filed under Insurance, Labor Issues, Liability, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Training
Make reputation management a priority. Whether your property is a five-star resort or a one-star motel, your guests are evaluating you on how well you communicate and deliver on your brand 
promise. Subscribe to a social media monitoring tool and start tracking your Market Share of Guest Satisfaction; in the age of social networking, it’s as important as your revPAR index. Formulate a strategy for optimizing your online reputation, set goals, and meet regularly with your social media team to review progress.
Speak up. We would never ignore a guest ranting in our lobby, so why do so few negative reviews receive a response? (7%, according to TripAdvisor). It’s our chance to show the world we care, to thank the guest for feedback, to apologize and explain, and to clear up any misconceptions. On TripAdvisor reviewers can’t reply to hotel responses, so effectively we get the last word. Use it.
Engage. Hotels used to hire mystery shoppers to tell us what we were doing wrong; now our guests do it and pay us for the privilege. User reviews keep us in touch with guests and allow us to reach a mass market we could never hope to reach through our own marketing efforts. Be grateful. Wherever possible, engage writers of negative reviews and try to make amends. With expert handling, our harshest critics can become our most powerful advocates.
Take the high road. If the review is petty or vindictive, there’s no need to stoop to that level; travelers are smart enough to read between the lines. If allegations are false and defamatory, dispute the review with the host site, post a diplomatic response to set the record straight, and let it go. If your property’s reputation is so fragile that one or two bad reviews will devastate your business, you’ve got more issues than bad reviews. Read on.
Create a cycle of positivity. Use guest feedback to justify investments in training, labor, capital upgrades and communications. Improvements will generate positive reviews, which will attract more travelers and in turn will generate incremental revenue, thereby funding more improvements, and so on. The alternative? Ignore feedback and create a cycle of negativity, with the opposite results.
Prevent escalation. If you listen closely, bad reviews are often less about the issue itself than how staff responded when it was brought to their attention. Train employees to prevent on-property issues from escalating to online complaints by listening, empathizing, offering solutions and following up to ensure guests are satisfied. Some issues take time and money to fix; in the meantime, ensure staff are minimizing fallout by expertly managing complaints.
For more:Â http://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article50511.html
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Filed under Guest Issues, Labor Issues, Management And Ownership, Training
E-Verify is an Internet-based system that compares information from an employee's Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, to data from U.S Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration records to confirm employment eligibility.
Why E-Verify?
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Filed under Labor Issues, Legislation, Liability, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Technology, Training
The scene looks much the same among union hotel workers: bold employers, drawn-out bargaining, and unions launching intermittent short strikes to keep up pressure. Hilton 
is now UNITE HERE’s target because the union judges that company most likely to move—a shift in strategy after months of rolling strikes and pickets against the Hyatt chain.
The union hopes to establish a pattern at the bargaining table with Hilton that other hotels will follow.
Chicago hotel workers authorized strikes at four Hilton-owned or -operated properties. They struck the Hilton Chicago for three days in October, coordinating with Hilton workers in Honolulu and San Francisco. Those strikes ended October 19, but more may be on the way.
Workers in Toronto took advantage of the Toronto International Film Festival in September to gain visibility for their struggle. Rolling one-day strikes at three hotels, including festival headquarters, caused actors Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez to join the boisterous picket line. The blare of vuvuzelas added to picket-line noise.
Workers rolled out a red carpet and offered passersby the opportunity to have their photo taken with a hotel worker. Inside, workers spotted the housekeeping manager doing bell work.
Six additional one-day strikes have cascaded through Toronto hotels since the film festival. And 500 workers walked out of the Delta Chelsea, a large downtown conference hotel, on October 28. Delta Chelsea workers say they’ll stay out for two weeks.
Cristal Cruz-Haicken of UNITE HERE Local 75 said the two-week strike was necessary because “they weren’t even taking us seriously†at the bargaining table.
Unstable work schedules and job security are a serious problem. Feliz Serrano, a server, said he has worked there 30 years and still usually only gets 30 hours of work a week, but only if he works six days in a row.
Room attendant Jian Ying Liu said the hotel has tried to get rid of her three times because of injuries she received in her 18 years of work there.
Several conferences immediately moved because of the strike.
In the U.S., Hilton workers have been working without a new contract since August 2009. They charge their employer with trying to lock the recession into their wages and workloads even as the hotel industry recovers profitability.
Blackstone, the private equity group that controls Hilton, upped third-quarter profits by 23 percent, to $340 million. This April, the New York Federal Reserve wrote off $180 million of Blackstone’s debt, allegedly to create jobs.
But the hotel chain is trying to squeeze more work from the existing staff. Hilton is proposing that workers who currently clean 14 rooms a day clean 20, with the result that some workers will be laid off.
UNITE HERE members call Hilton’s push to increase their workload the “dirty rooms†program, pointing out that Hilton is reassuring workers they won’t have to meet the same high standards of cleanliness when they’re required to clean 40 percent more rooms.
The average Local 2 member in San Francisco makes $30,000 a year, and if Hilton gets its way workers will soon be paying $173 a month for family health care coverage.
According to Local 2 staffer Riddhi Mehta-Neugebauer in San Francisco, workers have foregone raises over the years, preferring to maintain affordable health coverage. The new $173 per month amounts to a huge takeaway.
Hilton is resisting the union’s proposal that the company put aside an extra 12 cents per hour for pensions, which, UNITE HERE calculates, would mean the difference between a $900 and a $1,200 monthly pension.
Meanwhile, management’s pay is up. According to a Wall Street Journal survey, Blackstone’s executive team got a 12 percent pay increase this year.
For more:Â http://labornotes.org/2010/11/unions-reach-short-strikes-stop-concessions
Filed under Labor Issues, Management And Ownership, Training
Only one-third reported that they could sustain their businesses without “severe operational problems†if the swine flu kept half their workforces out sick for two weeks, according to the survey.
Swine flu is a type of influenza caused by a virus which can cause serious health complications or even death in a small proportion of the population. Officially called Influenza A H1N1, the symptoms are similar to ordinary flu (e.g. fever, headache, sneezing) but can be more severe.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta estimates that the H1N1 virus has infected more than 22 million people in the U.S. since April, and more than 4,000 people nationwide have died of related complications. The proportion of deaths attributed to influenza already has exceeded what is normally expected at this time of year, with the young hit the hardest, the CDC says.
    At the same time, a survey published in September by the Harvard School of Public Health found that the pandemic and resulting absences could have devastating effects on U.S. businesses. Only one-third reported that they could sustain their businesses without “severe operational problems†if the swine flu kept half their workforces out sick for two weeks, according to the survey.
    Jennifer Benz, who runs Benz Communications, a San Francisco-based employee benefits communication firm, says many of her clients have begun health education campaigns but have stopped short of analyzing all the issues that could arise from a pandemic.
    “It’s very easy to post communications throughout your company, such as washing your hands when you sneeze, but to really look at changing policies is a much different thing,†she says. “It’s a tough business environment right now.â€
    Many companies may do more if they see absenteeism soar, she says, but by then, it may be too late. “I think a lot of companies have a plan in their back pocket. If their work site gets hit really hard, then they’ll look at ‘How do we respond?’ â€
    The flu pandemic highlights the importance of providing robust health benefits, such as more than one or two sick days a year, she says. But ad hoc solutions, such as allowing employees to work from home, will fail if a company hasn’t thought them through by, for instance, providing enough access to laptops and ensuring that computer networks can support large numbers of workers dialing in.
    Furthermore, just telling employees to stay home doesn’t help if the company has a weak sick-leave policy or doesn’t provide paid sick time for hourly or part-time workers. “For low-wage workers, missing some days off can mean the difference in paying your rent that month,†Benz says.
    In many cases, businesses are opting against more aggressive efforts because of cost and privacy concerns, says Russell Robbins, a principal and senior clinical consultant in the Connecticut office of HR consulting firm Mercer. Unfortunately, it’s easy to dismiss warnings over H1N1 as paranoid or an overreaction, but the truth is that the flu is likely to spread, Robbins says.
    “I just keep saying that the only way we’re going to weather through this is if we’re prepared for a crisis,†he says. “In other words, make plans now.â€
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Filed under Health, Insurance, Management And Ownership
“Limiting envy is crucial not just to the success of the employee in his or her career, but it’s crucial to the success of the hotel itself,” said O’Neill. “The success of a hotel lies in how it treats its guests.”
Guest relationships can become collateral damage when hotel employees envy the relationships co-workers have with their bosses, according to an international team of researchers.
In the study of front-line hotel employees — desk staff, food and beverage workers, housekeepers — workers who have poor relationships with their bosses were more likely to envy co-workers with better relationships with supervisors, said John O’Neill, associate professor, School of Hospitality Management, Penn State. The study showed that the envious workers also were less likely to help co-workers or to volunteer for additional duties. The researchers report their findings in the current issue of International Journal of Hospitality Management.
“People who are less envious often go above and beyond their normal job duties to do things like cover for an employee who has gone home to help a sick family member,” said O’Neill. “Conversely workers who are more envious are less willing to perform these additional duties.”
Front-line employees are typically hourly employees who interact directly with guests. Since these employees have personal contact with guests, people staying at hotels become the unintended victims of on-the-job envy, according to O’Neill, who worked with Soo Kim, assistant professor, management and information systems, Montclair State University, and Hyun-Min Cho, tourism policy research division, Culture Contents Center, Republic of Korea.
For more:Â http://live.psu.edu/story/48699
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Filed under Guest Issues, Labor Issues, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Training
As both Federal and State budgets become more strained, the IRS and state tax authorities sharpen their pencils further to extract as much in unpaid taxes possible. The next target: misclassification of employees as independent contractors.Â
Why all the fuss about misclassification?
When workers are classified as employees, employers must pay certain taxes and withhold certain taxes on behalf of taxing authorities from the workers’ pay. These include:
In the case of an independent contractor, none of these are due. The hiring company simply pays the agreed upon amount to the independent contractor and they are responsible for paying their own taxes. It is generally believed that employers are more likely to withhold taxes than independent contractors are to voluntarily pay them. So by misclassifying, the government is losing the difference between what the employer should have paid in taxes and withheld from the employee and the amount the independent contractor pays when it is due.Â
I say “generally believed†because the last comprehensive study undertaken by the IRS to estimate the “misclassification†problem was conducted in 1984. In 2009, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (“TIGTAâ€) issued a report asserting that misclassification is an important and growing problem, but failed to provide an actual estimate to how widespread the problem is currently. The Joint Committee on Taxation, however, estimates that between 2010 and 2020 addressing the misclassification problem will generate an additional $6.9 billion in tax revenues.
Why does misclassification happen?
Misclassification can occur for a variety of reasons. Many times it is ignorance of how to properly classify. In some cases, employers may seek to avoid many of the costs and regulations associated with having employees which are not required with independent contractors. Other times the employee and employer work together and split the difference on the savings from intentional misclassification. On the whole though, the employer benefits more than the employee, because the lost benefits of being classified as an employee are seldom made whole with any additional increase in pay.
Enforcement against misclassification
In order to address the problem of misclassification, the FY2011 Federal budget includes $25 million for the hiring of 100 new “enforcement personnel†focused on misclassification. Part of the money will be used for grants to state governments to address the issue. Earlier this year, the IRS began to conduct random audits of 6,000 businesses over the next three years to determine if they comply with five employment tax-related areas including misclassification. The businesses will be chosen at random.
New laws with stiff penalties in the works
In the Senate, the Employee Misclassification Prevention Act was introduced this year by Senator Sherrod Brown from Ohio and it currently has 8 cosponsors. The law amends the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSAâ€) by requiring every company to keep records of non-employees who perform labor or services and inform all new employees and non-employees of their classification and rights. The proposed law would also make it unlawful to “fail to classify accurately an employee or non-employeeâ€. It also includes several punitive provisions, including fines of $1,100 for each violation going up to $5,000 per violation for repeat offenders.Â
The law also uses the “stick approach†to coerce state governments to assist in dealing with misclassification by amending their respective state’s unemployment compensation law. The laws must establish auditing programs for companies that act in such a way as to undercount the employees that should be covered under state unemployment compensation coverage and establish penalties for companies that misclassify. States that do not amend their laws will not be eligible for federal grants for state unemployment compensation funds. With the current condition of state budgets, it is truly an offer they can’t refuse.
In the House of Representatives a proposed law by the same name was introduced by Representative Lynn Woolsey of California’s 6th district. The bill has 16 cosponsors and is identical to the Senate version.
There are several other bills that address misclassification so it is likely that at least one will become law in the near future. If your business may be misclassifying it would be prudent to address the issue sooner rather than later.
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Filed under Labor Issues, Legislation, Liability, Risk Management, Training
"...Whenever (hotel employees) are hungry, angry, lonely or tired...(they) need to stop, HALT! In this state of being hungry, angry, lonely and tired (employees) are much more vulnerable to getting... buttons pushed...AND BAD THINGS ARE MORE LIKELY TO HAPPEN... "
Many hotel guests have all of these conditions going on upon arrival at the front desk. They have traveled a great distance, they are tired, and they may have not eaten in hours and as a result are angry or grumpy. Any delays or unpleasant encounters will send this guest into a full fledge melt down going off on employees who may also be vulnerable.Â
 In your hotel consider what investment goes into getting a guest to call and book a stay at your location? How much advertising was done? How many staff hired? How much time and energy in training with staff, operators and front-line?
How much patience and time was given to gain that guest trust? Your building preparations and maintenance of the property? What did it take to have them call and give you their credit card and put their money into your hotel or establishment?Â
Considering this investment is significant when in a moment that guest can be turned away by a negative encounter with one of your employees or managers.Â
What took months and perhaps thousands of dollars to build can be lost in a moment. Your hotel and its ultimate success is only as good as its weakest employee. That might be a scary thought! But even the best employee can be worn thin and not recognize their vulnerable condition.
For more:Â Â http://www.4hoteliers.com/4hots_fshw.php?mwi=5338
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Filed under Health, Injuries, Labor Issues, Liability, Risk Management, Training
Make sure that you have a valid reason for firing (or laying off)Â the employee. Some invalid reasons include: retaliation, complaining about OSHA violations, discrimination, alien status, and any violation of public policy.Although a majority of the American workforce is based on “at will” employment, essentially meaning that the employer-employee relationship can be severed at any time, there are still some viable concerns over a wrongful termination suit in any situation. Making sure you have a valid reason for firing an employee, and planning the conversation ahead of time will help with the actual firing and protect your company from many of the legal issues that follow.
In the end, honesty is almost always the best policy, and usually appreciated as the employee can take your reasons with them as they job hunt.
For more:Â http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS348304971720100817
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Filed under Insurance, Labor Issues, Liability, Uncategorized
A “willful†violation can occur if the employer knew that he was violating a standard or if he was reckless. A good way to convince an OSHA inspector of recklessness (and thus willfulness) is to ignore employee complaints of danger, or worse, accident reports.
A lawyer knowledgeable on OSHA issues will serve as a buffer between the agency and the company’s management. He can make sure that responses to document requests are neither too broad nor too narrow.
A careful employer will review employee complaints, accident reports and minutes of safety meetings, and make sure that every item properly is evaluated and if found to be a problem, either fixed or scheduled for fixing with alternative protective measures implemented in the interim. Employers should not allow unaddressed items in such documents to smolder in their files, ready to be fanned into willfulness by an OSHA inspector.
For more:Â Â http://ehstoday.com/standards/target-new-osha-sheriff-1339/index1.html
