Historically, many sustainability measures followed by the hospitality sector have been justified based on cost savings and environmental protection. These include food waste reduction, resource conservation, or elimination of single-use plastics.
As the industry deals with the pandemic, some short-term reductions in resources supporting sustainability activities are likely to persist. However, sustainability will remain the foundation in the plans for all hospitality sector owners, brands, operators, and customers.
BACK TO BASICS
Quality and safety are two words that come to mind when we think about sustainability. While these must be ingrained in the company’s culture, it cannot be mandated.
To begin with, companies must first comprehend their employees’ attitudes, ideas, and perspectives on sustainability. Appointing a champion is Staywell’s approach to accomplish bottom-up sustainability structure and processes. This is ideally a staff member who does not have a managerial role, but has demonstrated initiative in other areas, and would welcome the opportunity to launch a basic programme.
Depending on the scale and diversity of the unit specific products, the employee could form a small work group or go it alone. We also have a method to track and spread this within multiple stakeholders on a frequent basis. We do it by establishing an annual review meeting to ensure better compliance.
We also discuss this with our global executives team on a monthly basis to ensure regular follow up.
BREAKING THE SILOS
The industry continues to suffer with diversity and inclusion (D&I) issues, failing to attract diverse talent owing to workplace inequity. Executive teams committed to the culture of inclusion can encourage continual professional development. This can be observed in an evaluation of how new recruits are sourced, recruited, onboarded, and promoted.
Staywell, for example, removes identifiers from resumes so sundry candidates can apply to empty positions. Performing communications audits ensure that their D&I ideals are consistently expressed. Bringing together diverse in-house experts can break through silos and lead to unique solutions that can be implemented across the organisation.
To encourage continuous communication and collaboration, we build teams to break through silos that lead to unique solutions that can be implemented across the organisation. This allows multi-functional teams to communicate instantly regardless of where they are in the unit. It also helps in maintaining transparency that could be lost via email.
In addition to tightening processes, protecting people, left vulnerable because of the pandemic, will
be a key part of recovery plans. By offering opportunities to them, hotels can provide a solid foundation
of loyal workforce while giving back to society.Â
