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5 ways to work smarter and improve efficiency at your hotel

  Posted in How to  Last updated 28/12/2020

work efficiently

The ultimate goal of every hotel business is to produce more and consume less by optimising time and budget to achieve a greater level of efficiency.

Here are five quick tips to help tackle productivity at your hotel:

1. Have a clear goal to work towards

From the simplest to the most complex tasks, make sure you have set goals with realistic deadlines for each of them. This will be enable you to put every action and decision into perspective, focusing on the final objective.

From something as minor as the two hours needed to produce a report to five weeks needed to produce an event, organise your agenda and create a workflow to complete all your short, medium and long-term goals.

2. Prioritise your tasks carefully

If you are overwhelmed by your daily workload and under the impression that your plate is too full, a helpful technique to relieve the tension is to work on your prioritisation.

The first step to successfully scheduling your day is to understand at what times you perform certain tasks better. For example, you may be particularly creative early in the mornings. Knowing this will allow you to optimise your time. In this case you may not want to spend your creative time answering emails, when you could focus on creating content for your website.

When organising your day, understand that not everything is urgent. Focus on your predetermined goals and analyse which tasks are critical to achieve them. Some are important but not critical, and some may be optional on a given day – focus on what is necessary.

3. Learn how to say “no”

Overbooking is a dreaded word in the hospitality industry and should also be feared when it comes to time management – don’t overbook your daily schedule! Even though you may believe you can focus on multiple activities at the same time, the human brain was not designed to multitask efficiently, and you are simply shifting your focus rapidly without much result.

Dividing attention among different activities increases the time to complete each task and predisposition to errors.

Multitasking can ultimately be a setback on your productivity and efficiency levels, try to focus on one thing at the time.

4. Eliminate distractions

We live in a world surrounded by distractions competing for our attention. To work more efficiently and deliver greater results, make sure you remove every possible procrastination trigger, such as social media, news websites, phones, and other outside interruptions.

How many times have you been working productively and were interrupted by an email that took your attention away?

Instead of reactively responding to emails, try to allocate time in your day to your inbox management. If you are not able to totally disconnect from your email, check if your email system allows you to use the snooze option for a short period.

5. Give yourself a well-deserved break

Think of your brain as a muscle that you spend hours exercising. For athletes, training sessions are as important as the resting periods – in fact it is during these periods that the body and muscles recover, adapting to embrace the next challenge. The same applies to the brain.

Breaks from work are fundamental to keep you safe from fatigue. A strategic five-minute break will boost your productivity and help you to deal with creativity blockages.

Remember, breaks do not need to take long, but they must give you reprieve from what you were focusing on, so consider taking breaks away from your desk.

It is easy to fall in the habit of working more and more, harder and harder. Review your approach so you can work more efficiently by working smarter, using your own energy and abilities to your advantage.

Share these tips with your team and thrive together.

By Dean Elphick

Dean is the Senior Content Marketing Specialist of SiteMinder, the leading technology provider delivering hoteliers unbeatable revenue results. Dean has made writing and creating content his passion for the entirety of his professional life, which includes more than six years at SiteMinder. Through content, Dean aims to provide education, inspiration, assistance and value for accommodation businesses looking to improve the way they run their operations achieve their goals.

 

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