3 words can make or break your hotel...

Having a Standard of Operation or SOPs as they are commonly referred to is never going to guarantee perfection. However a large number of hotels operate without any documented SOPs and that is alarming.  When it is suggested that SOPs are essential to the successful operation of the hotel, some will tell you, “I’ve told my people what to do,” or “they’ve already been trained and I simply cannot understand why it went wrong.” when asked why things are still not working smoothly, the answer is usually some version of, “I’ll talk to them,” and the assumption is that the problem is resolved. However, when you have to repeatedly remind people what to do, or you think your employees are trained, but are still failing to do things correctly, there definitely is a problem.

Others will reluctantly admit that they have not established SOPs because they are still perfecting their processes and procedures. Perfection however is never a requirement for the well – written SOP. What these hoteliers fail to understand is that there is no way of planning, aiming for and implementing improvements without the baseline that well-documented SOPs provide. What exactly constitutes a baseline? In athletics, and especially in any sprint event, running outside one’s lane, i.e. overstepping the baseline, leads to automatic disqualification – doesn’t matter that you were the fittest and fastest in the pack. Without SOPs, your hotel staff is running all over the baseline – tripping over each other and stepping over guests. 

Similar to how children need structure and guidance in their daily lives in order to mature into well brought up, stable adults, hotels require structure in order to perform at maximum efficiency. The absence of SOPs affects not only the day-to-day operations but also the staff. A lack of structure invites inconsistency and chaos, which then results in burnt out of team members who are perpetually unhappy or disengaged at work. They thus perform at below average levels and managers’ wonder why things are going wrong. So, how does one change the situation for better? The first step is to create SOPs. Here’s why:

Its trainee receptionist Ravi’s first day on-the-job. He is instructed by the senior receptionist Dilip to merely observe how Dilip and another colleague Rohan carry out the reception tasks including dealing with guests. He hears Dilip say ‘Morning’ to a guest who arrives at the counter to check-in. A short while later, Ravi observes Rohan greet a couple ‘Hi, what can I do for you?’ Another family who came to the counter was abruptly greeted with a ‘Yes?  Whenever the telephone rang it was allowed to ring several times and unhurriedly answered with a curt ‘Reception’. As the days went by Ravi learnt on-the-job and was soon familiar or so he thought, with reception duties. The hotel in the meantime, was receiving negative comments particularly on how guests were handled at the reception. To address this, a new Front Office Manager (FOM) was recruited. Observing among other things, the erratic manner Ravi was greeting   guests, the new FOM realised that to change the situation for better, he needed to immediately create SOPs.

SOPs are what smart organizations use to create consistency in how processes and tasks are performed. They consist of clearly documented, step-by-step procedures and checklists that are easy for employees to follow and greatly reduce the chances of mistakes. When mistakes occur, they give managers a real basis for redirecting or disciplining an employee because there’s little room for an employee like Ravi to say, “That’s not how Dilip told me to do it,” or “I didn’t know I was supposed to do that.”

In today’s business environment, SOPs must make bottom-line economic sense, especially if you invest the time and energy to develop and implement effective SOPs. Below are some of the ways they can have a direct or indirect positive impact on business performance:

1. To achieve high performance there has to be consistency. Doing routine jobs the identical way every time rather than wondering ‘How does the boss want it done today?’ boosts productivity.
2. The enemy of production efficiency and quality control is systems variation. By definition, an organization (system) is a set of interdependent individuals and activities that work together to achieve a well-defined goal. Each of the activities that make up the organization and every individual are affected by variation, and this variation influences the possibility of achieving the goal. SOPs will reduce system variations
3. Well-written SOPs facilitate training. When new hires are ‘on-boarding’, that knowledge transfer is especially critical. Every step must be clearly stated, with a how-to instruction to execute it. This removes the confusion that employees may experience in the absence of a point of reference.
4. SOPs facilitate cross training. A SOP can be an educative reference document on how a task is done - especially for temporary employees filling in on jobs they do not perform on a regular basis.
5. SOPs are useful to conduct employee performance evaluations and detect shortcomings in operations. With SOPs that have been tested, you can easily measure performance. When KPIs or other metrics are not being hit, you can dig deeper to determine what needs to be addressed.
6. Employees can coach and support each other if there is documentation clearly spelling out exactly how various tasks must be done and everyone knows what their co-workers are supposed to be doing. This can also encourage a more cooperative team approach to getting all the daily tasks done correctly, everyday.
7. Insisting upon following well-defined SOPs can ensure safety-at-work and may provide some legal cover in case of workplace injuries.
8. Developing and following SOPs for tasks where there is environmental risk, such as detergent, chemical or waste handling, help to protect the environment and may provide some legal protection if an environmental mishap occurs.

Once a hotel or restaurant has established a baseline of what it is doing via the draft SOP, the SOP is then examined for any gaps in policies, procedures, steps, equipment, or understanding. The SOP is then tweaked and refined into something that is finally approved for use. Periodically, auditors use the SOP to determine if employees are performing the tasks as stated previously. If not, then investigation is done to determine why. Audit findings may uncover redundancy or obsolete methods. Audits may highlight risk areas that need to be addressed. Sometimes the SOP is still current and valid, but retraining is needed, or over the course of the year, changes have been made somewhere and now the SOP needs to be updated, revised, or replaced.

SOPs are snapshots of a company’s life force, which is always in a state of flux and change. When they are well-written, they become one of the best tools for making improvement decisions. It is the foundation on which decisions can be made with confidence. Its objective is, “Do we know what we are doing and why?”

Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex- Hotelier.

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