Hotel Worker Safety Meeting Kit
What’s At Stake
As a hotel and motel service worker, you provide hospitality and service to travelers. Whether you are a room cleaner, maintenance worker, or desk clerk, you help to ensure that hotel operations run smoothly and meet customers’ expectations. But, in order to keep your hotel functioning at its best, you want to ensure that you stay safe and healthy on your job.
What’s the Danger
HOTEL SAFETY
Hotel safety is essentially a series of measures and protocols put in place by hoteliers and hotel management in order to protect hotel staff and guests. Hotel safety can involve anything from installing slip-resistant flooring, creating an effective evacuation plan to providing regular safety training, as well as issuing staff with wearable panic buttons.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, hotel safety has also included an increased emphasis on hygiene measures. Masks are now a standard part of the uniform for most front desk staff, housekeepers, and hotel security. Cleaners in particular have to take extra precautions to ensure that hotel rooms are fully sterilized, and that they’re protected.
Creating a safe work environment is crucial for all businesses, no matter what sector they operate in. Promoting safety in the hotel industry is critical as hotel staff are 40% more likely to be injured on the job than other service workers.
MAIN RISKS/HAZARDS
The biggest risk for hotel workers is ergonomic injury from sprains, strains, and repetitive work. Protect your back and limbs by practicing safe ergonomic principles when performing your job functions. Maintain neutral postures and rotate your tasks to give different muscles a rest.
Moving heavy, bulky, and/or wet room furnishings, doing maintenance work, or working the front desk can cause injury if the work is done improperly. Use good lifting techniques and work practices to protect your back. Keep your back straight and neutral while you work.
Read the label and/or safety data sheets (SDS) to know the hazards and safe work practices for the chemical products you use. Choose and use the mildest cleansers and chemicals possible that will still get the job done.
Cleaning and maintenance tools can cause injury if they are not used correctly. Get training and always inspect your tools before use. Wear the proper personal protective equipment (PPE) including work gloves, safety glasses, and hearing protection when the hazard requires it.
Ladders are commonly used to perform maintenance, wash windows, and change light bulbs. Practice ladder safety by climbing properly while holding on to the rails with both hands.
Rushing on the job can lead to accidents, especially on newly mopped or waxed floors. Slips on wet surfaces in bathrooms, kitchens, and lobby floors can cause serious injuries.
HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF
BEST HOTEL SAFETY PRACTICES FOR WORKERS
1. Prioritize Security
- Report suspicious behaviour.
- Don’t hand out room keys without someone providing ID.
- Don’t give out guest information.
- Make sure prohibited areas are well monitored so that guests don’t end up where they shouldn’t.
Keep side exits locked, be vigilant at all times and you’ll minimise the chance of a problem arising.
2. Get to Know Everyone. Get to know the staff you work with. Even if you don’t know their names, make sure you know their faces. If someone new starts, take time to introduce yourself.
It’ll be easier to spot anyone that shouldn’t be there, but you’ll also build strong relationships with other members of the team.
3. Check Visitor Credentials. Check the credentials of any people who come on site for work, which includes any builders, florists, temporary catering staff, wedding venues, and so forth. If you see a new face, check credentials.
4. Make Sure Doors are Locked. If you’re nipping out for a cigarette break or you’ve taken a delivery, always be aware of the doors you’ve left unlocked. It only takes one slip-up for someone to access the hotel who shouldn’t be.
5. dentify Hazards and Deal with Them. Health and safety are the responsibility of everyone that’s working in the hotel. To ensure all guests, visitors and staff are safe at all times, encourage everyone to spot hazards and to deal with them quickly and effectively.
6. Learn the Evacuation Plan. Evacuation plans are designed for each floor and for each scenario, so make sure that employees know the evacuation plans – stairways, elevators, escalators.
7. Take Regular Breaks. Shifts at a hotel can be long and exhausting, so encourage all employees and coworkers to take regular breaks. A little stretch break or a snack can make all the difference to that employee’s day.
8. Know How to Use Equipment. Whether it’s appliances in the kitchen or even something as simple as the vacuum cleaners, make sure all staff are correctly trained on all equipment they’ll be using.
9. Keep Spills Mopped, Glass Swept and Debris Cleaned Away. For the safety of everyone at the hotel, any spills, glass or debris need to be cleaned up in order to minimise hazards. Since slips, trips, and falls are the most common workplace accident, it’s important that spills are cleaned up immediately.
10. Wear the Appropriate Clothing, Especially Footwear. Slip-resistant, safe, and comfortable footwear is an absolute must for any hotel employee. Spending all day on your feet can take its toll if you aren’t wearing the appropriate footwear.
FINAL WORD
Hotel workers desire the same thing guests are looking for when making bookings these days: consistency, accountability, and a commitment to safety. In order to do so they need access to tools that can help them maintain consistency, track accountability and ensure safety.