LV resorts struggle to find, keep good housekeepers

Steve Humm

Monday, Aug. 10, 1998 | 10:12 a.m.

Las Vegas would pretty much shut down without its army of maids cleaning the city's 100,000-plus hotel rooms.

And hotel managers say finding and keeping the often-unappreciated housekeepers is about to get tougher with the opening of 20,000 more rooms at resorts like Bellagio, Aladdin, Venetian, Paris, Mandalay Bay and the Resort at Summerlin.

State statistics show 12,560 maids and housekeeping cleaners were employed in 1996 in Clark County. An additional 1,026 are expected every year until 2006.

The Culinary Workers Union Local 226 currently covers 6,983 housekeepers under its contract.

Darwin Stewart, uniform room manager at Palace Station hotel-casino, said there are so many hotels it is hard to find trained people. The hotel has responded by hiring and training inexperienced workers.

But a steady stream of people moving into Las Vegas has made it easy to find new hires, said Maridel Beckman, executive assistant housekeeper at the Tropicana hotel-casino. The difficulty is getting them to perform to expectations, she added.

Workers usually begin on a probationary basis, allowing companies to evaluate their performance, Beckman said.

But even if employees' work is poor, firing them may be painful and boost turnover, Beckman added.

The cost of turnover is often felt by existing staff, who must train new workers. Overtime puts stress on the payroll and takes a physical toll on labor, Beckman said.

She expects a large turnover among local housekeeping staff with opening of the new resorts.

Stewart said great incentive programs and good benefits are Palace Station's means of limiting turnover.

The Tropicana employs monetary awards and special activities, like staff picnics, to keep morale high.

The 1996 Occupational Employment and Wage Survey by the Research Analysis Bureau found the statewide mean wage of housekeepers was $7.81 per hour, while the most recent Culinary Union contract established "guest room attendant" compensation at around $9.50 per hour in Las Vegas.

Beckman also emphasized the need to stay involved with the staff on a daily basis.

"I believe in coaching very much and having a one on one conference with (the workers) all the time," she said.

Personal attention can be a major form of motivation for workers, she added.

Her focus on coaching echoed the advice of Joe Gaccione, a former executive for Walt Disney Corp. and the president of Gaccione & Associates Inc., who spoke at the recent International Executive Housekeeping Association Convention in Las Vegas.

The convention brought together facility managers in cleaning, maintenance, grounds, recycling, interiors and other fields for facilities like hospitals, nursing homes, schools and hotels-motels.

"I defy you to have a hotel-motel without a housekeeper," Gaccione said, emphasizing his belief that housekeeping can be a profit center by attracting and keeping guests.

Beckman, the secretary for the Las Vegas chapter of the IEHA, agreed. She said when a room is not clean guests will complain and choose to go elsewhere.

Gaccione also addressed the high level of cultural diversity in the housekeeping field. He advised managers to become as familiar as possible with their employees' backgrounds and to learn foreign languages.

He suggested companies invest in English language training to help the housekeeping staff deal with guests. He predicted the investment would yield returns in efficiency, guest contact and safety situations.

Beckman is already a fluent Spanish-speaker, allowing her to communicate with a staff that is primarily Hispanic.

While the Tropicana displays a poster about English classes, it does not provide in-house programs, she explained.

Stewart, another IEHA member, found a low-cost way of dealing with the language barrier at the association's regional conference last year.

By purchasing and distributing a series of tapes providing common housekeeping terms in both English and Spanish, he helped to improve basic communication.

Other conference topics included linen management, waste management, OSHA compliance and violence in the workplace.

A panel discussed a variety of housekeeping topics:

--Workloading, which is determining the number of staff members necessary to complete the work in a given facility based on its dimensions and other characteristics.

--Time-to-task guidelines for determining the appropriate amount of time required for a specific task. Panelist Steve Thomas, assistant director of housekeeping services for Bally's, pointed out the importance of considering geography, travel time and other complications in considering the time allotted for tasks.

--The importance of training workers to complete tasks in accordance with the time allotted.

--The value of hiring and training employees without experience vs. hiring experienced workers who may have established bad habits.

--The potential of new cleaning systems like team cleaning, which involves teams of specialists working together on a task. The panel revealed that although team cleaning may raise productivity and cut equipment costs, the hospitality and health care industries have been slow to warm to the practice due to concerns about staff traffic in guest rooms.

--The skills necessary for accurately bidding for cleaning contracts. Panelists highlighted paying attention to site maps, reading requests for proposals and establishing good relationships with vendors.

The convention's roughly 750 attendees also had access to a trade show featuring the latest in more than 100 exhibitors' housekeeping products.