Five Common Hospitality Staffing Myths

Many hospitality businesses think they understand the realities of working with an industry-specific staffing partner, but the truth is, they don’t. This is due to a variety of reasons, including a lack of experience working with any, hearsay about external staffing gone wrong, and a litany of other bogus reasons.

Here are a few popular misconceptions about Hospitality staffing agencies:

MYTH 1

Staffing agencies are only a short-term staffing solution. 

While agencies can certainly support short-term staffing needs, this will only temporarily address any staffing issues. It’s also important to note that hiring and maintaining all staff internally costs more, offers less flexibility, and can erode guest experience. The best way to fix short-term staffing issues is to develop a long-term staffing relationship with a reputable agency. In fact, most of our clients have worked with HSS for more than two years, and many have at least 20% of their staff placed by us.

Get the lowdown on working with a staffing partner in HSS’s Best Practices Worksheet.

MYTH 2

Staffing agencies give hotels access to cheap labor. 

The reality is, hospitality staffing isn’t geared towards sourcing cheap labor, which doesn’t really exist anymore anyway. What staffing agencies can help with is reducing costs associated with recruiting staff and mitigating turnover. For example, with staffing outsourced to an agency partner, your hotel can then focus its Human Resources on other staffing needs on management and guest-facing roles like front desk, room service, and concierge.

MYTH 3

External staffing resources are too expensive.

Quite the opposite is true: Staffing partners frequently help increase a hotel’s revenue by opening up capacity and enabling it to offer other valuable (and often expected) services like food and beverage. If you’re reducing room capacity or cutting back on services due to a lack of staff, you may be losing revenue. Additionally, it’s important to consider the total cost of employing in-house staff, including taxes, benefits, insurance, recruiting and training expenses, and costs related to turnover and Human Resources.

MYTH 4

Staffing agencies reduce a hotel’s responsibility for being compliant.

Working with a staffing agency is not a shortcut to compliance, but it can set you on the right path. The first step a hotel can take in ensuring compliance is working with a vendor that has a long track record of being compliant. But while HSS vets the staff we hire to ensure they maintain the highest standards in Hotel Staffing Compliance, our hospitality clients are also responsible for effectively conveying safety and compliance expectations to staff.

MYTH 5

Hotels sacrifice quality and have to lower their standards when using staff from an agency.

Not if you choose the right staffing partner. At HSS, we work with some of the top hospitality brands in the country. Aligning our trained, vetted staff to their standards of quality is hugely important to us. We believe the ideal is to improve quality – not sacrifice it.

Want to avoid staffing mishaps? Learn how in our worksheet on Staffing Pitfalls.