Sauna included!

Photo by HUUM on Unsplash

Series: Recruitment, AI & HR in the hospitality industry · Post #9 of 90

#HospitalityLeadership #HospitalityIndustry #EmployerBranding # Recruiting #EmployeeSatisfaction #Leadership #Hospitality #SkillsShortage #HospitalityQuergedacht #BreakRoom #Leadership #HospitalityLife #WorkplaceWellbeing #EmployerBranding #SkillsShortage #TeamCulture #HospitalityQuergedacht #FrauZsPerspektiven #CandidateExperience #EmployeeExperience

Sauna included!
What does the sauna in the basement have to do with candidate experience?

No, today's blog post is not – as the title might suggest – about financial benefits, added value, or even perks for team members. It's about employee well-being. If you're now thinking of wellness – not least because of the word 'sauna' – you're wrong again.

Every working person, regardless of the nature of their job and the resulting physical or mental strain, needs breaks. Breaks that serve to recharge their batteries, to clear their heads. Brief breaks during which you can withdraw, perhaps have a good chat or leaf through a book, enjoy something tasty – ideally also healthy – to eat, drink a cup of coffee, and maybe even get a breath of fresh air, before returning to your tasks with renewed energy and a strong sense of purpose. Some people may also choose to include nicotine in such a situation. Can you now also picture a person sitting on a comfortable piece of furniture in a pleasant, contemporary, tidy, bright and clean room – perhaps even on a small balcony or in a conservatory – with a delicious snack on a table adorned with fresh flowers in front of them, coffee cup in hand, looking out at an idyllic landscape with a calm and contented air? In your mind, are you listening to your favourite music and feeling warmth coursing through your body, your mind clearing, and a sense of relaxation and comfort washing over you? Can you taste the aroma of the freshly brewed coffee on your tongue? Can you smell the aroma of the mouth-watering sandwich? Can you see yourself walking along a short path, breathing in the fresh air, enjoying nature? That is a break, no matter how short it may be!

But would you have experienced any of this if I had described the following break situation to you?

After six hours on duty without a break like this, having served 250 breakfast guests (most of them between 7:30 am and 8:15 am, and more than half from Asia – as any hospitality staff member will know, this presents significant challenges), and working together with two other team members on service and in the kitchen in the hotel's 55-seat breakfast restaurant, you have a 15–20-minute window for a break. On the way to the staff break room, located in the hotel's basement, you quickly take the empty crates – which the barkeeper failed to put away properly the previous evening and which you tripped over what felt like a hundred times that morning, sometimes painfully – to the storeroom. Finally, 15 minutes to sit down, have a coffee, think about nothing, and relax. You open the door to the break room and see…

… a basement room with a floor area of 12.5 m², whose sole window, measuring 80 cm x 50 cm, is obscured by a perforated metal sheet and cannot be opened due to a faulty locking mechanism;

… five extremely talkative members of the housekeeping team, who are also taking their break here and occupying the five available chairs, all of which have been removed from the rooms and the restaurant (because they are broken);

… a heating pipe of considerable size, which is installed under the ceiling, thereby reducing the ceiling height by a good 50 cm, and which runs through the entire room – the result: an actual room temperature of 25°C and a perceived temperature of 45°C (this is where the aforementioned sauna effect comes into play);

… clouds of smoke, as the building services technician and the senior housekeeper – both chain smokers and also present at the moment – share the room with the team members; consequently, this is not only a staff break room, but also the workspace for two department managers (sorry, lack of space!);

… an oilcloth tablecloth on the 80 cm × 80 cm table, which has already seen its best days; through the holes in the tablecloth, which was probably once yellow with a floral pattern, peeks an equally greasy wooden tabletop; the oilcloth and the tabletop give an idea of what has been eaten and drunk here over the past days, weeks, even months. The overflowing ashtrays have not been emptied for days.

As you enter this cosy break room, you stumble over the worn-out ballet flats, flip-flops and trainers of the cleaning staff, which are scattered around the floor. An appetising smell wafts from the shoes – thankfully somewhat masked by the cold cigarette smoke of the aforementioned department managers. 'But don't we have protection for non-smokers and a ban on smoking in public areas these days?' you might be wondering. Let's put it this way: the housekeeper and the building services technician have each been with the company for over 20 years, both are chain smokers, both have dominant personalities, and neither can be told off that easily. Moreover, the (young) hotel management sees no reason to take action in this regard. No plaintiff, no judge! The carpet – made from the remnants of various floor coverings previously used in the hotel – also reeks, and its original pattern is as unrecognisable as its original colour, given the countless stains. Do you strongly suspect that this floor covering is a veritable wetland habitat, home to rare forms of life? You might be right.

What may seem to you here like the product of a vivid imagination, or even comedy, is a reality in a not inconsiderable number of hotel establishments. While conducting anonymous hotel tests and subsequent audits, I have encountered rooms 'designed' in this way and in similar styles on more than one occasion – including in Germany.

Does it surprise you that, after a strenuous shift, a member of staff who is seeking a brief period of rest voluntarily forgoes her disproportionately short break and returns straight to the breakfast restaurant? That she looks forward to the end of her shift with anticipation?

Hopefully not.

And hopefully, your thoughts are not now veering in a direction that whispers to you: 'That's just as well! There aren't enough staff anyway.” Or: 'The staff are responsible for keeping the staff rooms clean.'

In fact, you are technically correct with the second sentence. However, it is no secret that staff are significantly more motivated to keep a room clean and tidy if it is treated as such (in this case, as a break room and staff lounge) – and not as a storage room with chairs. Incidentally, the same applies to sterile, tiled operating theatres with four hard plastic chairs, which also serve as a passageway to storage areas or staff toilets. Relaxation is not created by the mere existence of a room. It is created by what that space says about the company.

And now we come to the main topic.

In my articles, I regularly write about recruitment. About candidates' experiences, about processes, about systems. About the question of why unsolicited applications are disappearing and how the matching of people and jobs is increasingly being controlled by algorithms.

However, this story raises a different question – and it is a more uncomfortable one:

What good is the best application process if the reality behind it fails to deliver on its promise?

In my last post, I mentioned a figure: 85 per cent of "my" students specialising in hotel and tourism management left the industry. Not all of them because of a bad staff break room. But all of them do so because of the same basic pattern: because there is a gap between what was promised and what was experienced that cannot be bridged.

Employer branding on the outside. Oilcloth tablecloth on the inside.

This is not a communication problem. It's a credibility problem.

And, above all, it is a leadership problem. Not because managers are bad. It is because they have become accustomed to overlooking spaces like these. Because they have become part of a system that has forgotten how to look at the reality of its own workplace through the eyes of someone who works there for eight hours a day.

Here is the litmus test – and it is incredibly simple:

Would you yourself take a break there?

Not just pop in for a quick look. Not in passing. But to sit down and have a coffee for fifteen minutes. Or: Would you invite a supplier, a business partner or a potential customer to go there?

If the answer is no – and it is in an alarmingly high number of workplaces – then the next question immediately arises:

Then why do you expect your employees to?

We invest in optimised job advertisements. In recruiting tools. In social media campaigns. And we lose people in areas that are barely visible in day-to-day operations – but which are extremely impactful.

The candidate experience does not end when the contract is signed. It continues as the employee experience. And, day after day, this becomes the company's reputation.

Not in press releases. Not on LinkedIn.

But in conversations between friends. In reviews on Kununu. In what former employees say – and what they no longer need to say, because the industry's reputation is long established.

The staff break room in the basement is not a mere detail. It is a mirror.

It reveals what a company truly considers important – beyond all the glossy brochures. And that is precisely why it is not an operational issue. It is a management decision.

When was the last time you deliberately considered where and how your employees actually take their breaks?

And if you do know – did it worry you?

If not, then perhaps that is the real 'finding'.