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Staff Communication: How do you do it?

General Hostel Operations

Josh started this discussion 16 years 1 week ago

I think an important aspect of keeping a front desk (and entire hostel) running smoothly is to have a system for employees to communicate with each other.

The Note Method:
At the first hostel I worked at (~60 beds), we had a notepad to write notes to each other. If I wanted to leave a message for the next person I would just write a note and leave it on the desk and hopefully the next person would remember to look at it. The hostel only had 3 people who worked the desk and there were no advance reservations so it worked fine.

The PMS Method:
Another hostel I worked at was using roomMaster2000 PMS which has an internal messaging system that works well enough. Each front desk employee can enter notes into maintenance and cleaning logs and then print up reports to hand to maintenance and cleaning staff in the morning.

The Email Method:
Communication by regular email.

The Intranet Forum Method:
Santa Klaus mentioned an internal forum for staff communication.

Are there other methods?
Do you like your current method?
What method do you think works best?
Are there special considerations for staff communication in large hostels and/or multiple properties?

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Rucksack Brian

16 years

My hostel (43 beds) has few enough staff that leaving Post-It notes works well.

In a hotel that I worked in previously we used a notebook to pass along important information about complaints, special requests, maintenence problems, promises that we had made, answers to guests' questions, special events, and which guests were particularly difficult to deal with. The first duty of every receptionist was to read the book before we started our shift. It kept us all informed and frequently highly entertained.

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santa klaus

16 years

I agree that an internal forum is maybe not really needed for small hostels with a very small number of staffers.

A forum has a few very obvious advantages though:
- it costs absolutely nothing.
- everybody knows how to use a forum.
- it has a search function. That really pays off in the long run: some things happen again and again once in a while. Somebody posts up how to get the heating system running again ONCE and the next time that happens, you can tell the staffer who calls you at midnight "isn´t there nothing about that in the forum?". Next time, he won´t call you in the middle of the night without checking that. A forum is not only good for day-to-day communication, it can also be a very good archive. Once you start to post up all your instructions and memos, you will eventually have a pretty good archive. I work in this hostel since ten years - most of the staff not more than two. They always ask me the same questions, like "where the hell is the fusebox for the basement?".
- it gives you, the manager, some invaluable reality-check without even leaving your office, because you can read the entire internal communication of your staff, hence you´ll know much better what sort of stuff doesn´t quite work and where they need more training. Maybe no problem in small hostels where the owners do the reception themselves but I know that in many large hostels the managers simply don´t know what´s going on outside their office.
- Your staff can read the forum at home - and they do! In our case, they even log in when they have a few weeks off and are travelling somewhere, just to check what´s the gossip. You can post up the duty schedules to the forum and when people swap shifts, they post that up, too. No more confusion on that front.
- did I mention it costs absolutely nothing?

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