Health and Safety in the Hotel Industry: An Essential Guide

Health and Safety in the Hotel Industry

Did you know that the total costs of accidents in the workplace are close to 4% of the Global Domestic Product (GDP)? Because of ineffective Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) protocols, the global economy spends more than $3 trillion to cover workplace hazards and injuries. The hospitality industry has the potential for multiple hazards, and hoteliers are constantly looking for ways to mitigate risks from various sources. Hoteliers are ethically and legally obliged to protect the health and safety of their guests and staff by creating effective protocols to protect their welfare.

Your hotel's success is closely interlinked with the safety and health protocols you have put in place to protect your staff and guests. A reputation of recurring multiple accidents can affect your employees' turnover and reduce your guests' bookings.

As a hotelier, coming up with sustainable health and safety protocols to mitigate health and safety risks can mitigate your losses and protect people in the event of an accident.

Health and safety protocols are actionable steps hoteliers can use to protect staff and guests in the hotel. Health and safety protocols involve:

• Documenting hazards in the hotel environment.
• Communicating the potential hazards to all stakeholders.
• Implementing training procedures to mitigate the risks.
• Adapting an actionable plan for emergencies.

Common Health and Safety Hazards in Hospitality

While the hospitality industry is a highly lucrative enterprise for hoteliers, it comes with a myriad of challenges in terms of protecting the health and safety of guests and staff. Standard health and safety hazards in the hospitality industry include:

• Fire and electrical shock hazards
• Slip and falls
• Food safety

Importance of Health and Safety in Hotels

1. It helps to reduce staff turnover

The hospitality industry has a high turnover rate mainly because jobs are seasonal and attract a younger demographic that later moves on to other industries as they gain experience. Another reason for the highturnover may be the daily health and safety hazards employees are exposed to. As a hotelier, you can reduce the high turnover rate by minimising job risks by conducting regular safety training.

1. Develop a reputation for quality customer service

If your hotel develops a reputation for providing quality customer service, safety, and sanitation, you can easily attract new customers while maintaining the existing ones. Hotels are operating in a digital era where a bad review on your company site or social media about your food, bad sanitation, or inadequate safety measures for the guests can significantly reduce your hotel's bookings.

1. Increase profits

Incorporating effective health and safety protocols can help attract new customers, which increases your revenues.

In addition to implementing robust health and safety measures, it is vital to understand and optimise your hotel's financial performance.

1. Minimise loss

Health and safety protocols can help your hotel minimise risky events that may result in lawsuits. Hazards such as fire, slips, falls, and exposure to excessive heat or cold can cause loss of valuable property, mental and physical trauma, and death of your staff and guests. Incorporating safety protocols such as fire drills and first aid as part of your operations can significantly reduce the impact of risky events.

Providing Guest Safety in Hotels

Train Staff on Health and Safety Protocols

With proper planning, you can provide adequate safety measures for guests to experience a frictionless time while in your hotel. As a hotelier, you can provide adequate safety measures by educating your staff. To prevent injuries caused by spillages, fire, food contamination, chemicals, and unattended objects, you can conduct departmental training to address various hazards in each hotel area.

Communicate Emergency Plans to Guests

Have a medium to constantly update your guests about potential hazards, operations changes, and emergency plans updates.

Create a Guest Occupational Safety Committee

You can create a safety committee that regularly addresses deficiencies in the hotel's safety protocols.

Responsibility for Health and Safety in Hotels

Every stakeholder in the hotel industry has a role to play in protecting the health and safety of staff and guests at the hotel. Key stakeholders may include:

1. Hotel managers

As a hotel manager, you can protect the welfare of your staff and employees by:

• Conduct regular employee training focussing on hazards in the hotel environment.
• You can communicate to your guests and staff about the potential hazards in the hotel. You can put hazard posters, signs, or labels to warn people about potential risks they may be exposed to in different areas of the hotel.
• Regulation and insurance compliance. Ensure that your hotel meets your country's food, sanitation, and safety standards to minimise accidents.
• Hire qualified personnel. Working with a trained staff significantly reduces human errors, which reduces accidents.

1. Employees

Hire employees that can cooperate with you to maintain health and safety protocols in the hotel. As a hotelier, communicate to your employees about their safety responsibilities, which may include:

• Reporting hazards to management
• Protecting the health and safety of guests and co-workers.
• Ensuring they maintain good personal hygiene.

1. Guests

Hotel guests are responsible for following health and safety instructions, using equipment responsibly, and reporting any hazards to the staff.

The hospitality industry, while lucrative, has the potential for many health and safety hazards that can affect a hotel's performance by increasing employee turnover, reducing bookings, and resulting in costly litigations. One way to get it all under control is to use a PMS that will allow you to manage all daily operations in one place, and by adopting proper risk management protocols, hotel managers can protect the welfare of their guests and employees by reducing their exposure to potential hazards.

Most Important Safety Procedures in a Hotel

This being such a broad question and heavily dependant on the individual environment I'll try my best to answer it in a broad manner. Here are the three most important procedures that could readily apply to any establishment under the sun if the goal is to reduce risks of the most common type.

1. Regular fire drills and staff safety training.

In the event of a fire do you want your staff struggling to remember the motions they'd gone through before Christmas two years ago? You do not. In your role as a hotel manager it is important to regularly take your staff through the motions of what to do in the event of a fire or another such risk.

Why regularly, you might ask, or indeed how regularly? To the latter I'd say five to six times a year across departments and to the former I'd remind you of the concept of muscle memory.

In much the same way you might have heard of the deathly calm with which pilots operate in times of duress you want your staff practically bored of the quickest and most efficient manner to empty your premises of all souls. Bored and reassuring and - consequently - safe.

It's not only the floor plans and evacuation actions you wish to make mundane for them. Regular staff training should include things like communication, correct lifting techniques when it comes to heavy loads and anything else you can think of that you'd like to be shorthand for your staff.

1. Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED)

What worked for Rudy Giuliani in New York can work for you in your premises. It should not be news to you that much of the dangers posed to a premises can happen at the hand of ones guests and there are a few reasonable steps one can take to make one's property the kind of place that discourages bad and dangerous behaviour.

As suggested by research, an alley covered in graffiti is about twice as likely to be the location of a crime than a clean one. So too with hotels. Good housekeeping and good lighting are two very basic steps one can take to encourage good behaviour in one's guests and employees.

The mere presence of a security guard at night is amongst the simplest ways make a potential miscreant think twice. Similarly, keeping the exterior of one's property well maintained is a statement all of it's own. It might seem rash to be outlining the danger of working with the public but the fact is the public untethered is as unpredictable as a wild animals.Designing your environment in such a way as to discourage bad and consequently dangerous behaviour can be as effective in preventing serious harm as the placing of a sign with a common hazard symbol in front of a wet floor.

1. Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP)

This final one is only technically applicable - and probably well known already - to properties that serve food to their guests. It is an internationally recognised set of protocols to make sure that not only any danger resulting from the consumption of food can be actively prevented but that in the unfortunate event that something does occur that the danger may be traced and eliminated.

I say this is only technically applicable to food serving premises because the principles are quite technical. A hotel that only offers coffee in the morning has no need to worry about the five types of chopping boards that ought to be stored and washed separately, for example. That said the idea of operating on a list of principles that allow one to track and eliminate risks are adaptable to fire plans - fire doors, for example - and a whole host of other potential hazards and are thus well worth reading up on.

Five Common Health and Safety Risks in Hospitality

A truck crashing into your lobby area is unfortunate, sure, but is there any need to prepare for such a scenario. No, realistically, but I can think of at least five that are worth keeping an eye on for the sake of guests and staff alike.

1. Slips, trips and falls

If the above bit of alliteration is alien to you then congratulations - you've made it x amount of years in the hospitality business without encountering the mother of all injury causes. Good housekeeping is a good preventative measure, as well as making it obligatory for staff to wear appropriate footwear and not to rush. Accidents of this nature simply will happen - it's up to you to negatively affect the frequency.

1. Injury due to poor manual handling

As I'm sure is detailed in any number of safety at work acts internationally it is a legal obligation to provide a manual handling course for workers who will need to lift objects from the ground regularly at work. Even if your establishment isn't obliged by a safety law or legislation it's a great way to be proactive about your staff's health, never mind prevent musculoskeletal injuries.

1. Hazardous Chemicals

Even those of you who do not operate a commercial kitchen on the premise are surely aware of a room in your hotel where it seems appropriate to cover one's mouth before entering for fear of intoxication by fumes. I am of course referring to one's cleaning store. If you do serve food you'll surely be aware of the ill