Hotel & Motel Management - September 3, 2007 - (Page 8)

8 At Your Risk In memory of Anthony Marshall, we will run some of our favorite past “At Your Risk” columns throughout 2007. This column originally ran in the Sept. 4, 2006 issue. By Anthony Marshall 1939-2006 H&MM September 3, 2007 | HotelMotel.com www.HotelMotel.com/digital_edition Shortcuts when hiring can lead down path to liability possible demands. Should management order human resources to make exceptions for the sake of revenue maintenance? Follow up on reference checks and criminal background checks later? Here’s what can happen, from an actual reported incident, when you skip reference or criminal background checks: “Can you come and get me?” the new employee pleaded to his boss by phone. “Where are you, and why aren’t you at work?” the boss demanded. Turns out he had just escaped from the local mental institution, where he had been incarcerated by the police. He wouldn’t have bothered escaping if he was still at the previous mental institution in another part of the county, the employee explained because, “It was much nicer.” Somehow that didn’t make the boss feel any better. When companies hire with urgency rather than by established, valid and reliable human resources procedures, strange things can happen. While writing this column, I asked several hotelier friends to share their worst hire stories, and whether any people or property had been placed in jeopardy. Every one had a whopper and, at one time or another, made urgency hires where, “We needed someone right away, so we didn’t go through the normal checks.” My favorite story had to be the nice lady hired to be in charge of the hotel’s youth daycare program. It was later revealed she was once a convicted madame and forger with arrest warrants throughout the country. Hoteliers often forget the unique circumstances of trust and privacy in which we place our employees; serving guests from ballroom receptions to the intimacy of their bedrooms. The common law responsibility of exercising reasonable care in hiring hotel employees extends to all categories. No convicted sexual predators watching the kiddy pool, please. Each person interviewing the candidate should have different goals and different interests to explore. One manager said, “I focus on looking for people who will be trouble. Trouble costs time and money.” Another actual incident from Philadelphia featured an angry restaurant worker throwing hot grease at a customer: “My skin was cooking,” the victim, Vouncile Lambert, recalled. She suffered secondand third-degree burns on her arms and chest. The worker, a 17-year-old female who had been hired only two months before, claimed Lambert spit on her. The restaurant manager accepted no excuses and said the employee would be ﬁred. Lambert sued the restaurant anyway. Was the restaurant liable? By law, hotels and restaurants are liable for injuries to their customers only when they are at fault and are not liable for the criminal acts of employees. Criminal acts by employees fall outside the scope of reasonable care foreseeable and preventable by the employer. And if there is no fault on the part of the employer, there is no negligence, and therefore, no legal liability. But here’s the catch: If the employer knew or should have known of an employee’s violent propensities from either a personnel ﬁle, a reference check of previous employers or a criminal background report they failed to check on, or had on ﬁle but failed to consult, it’s a whole new ball game. In another reported case, a hotel bartender got into an argument with a customer and smashed a bottle into the customer’s face. The hotel had not done a criminal background check and was held negligent H uman resource managers were sent to Earth to personally annoy me and make my life miserable. I often believed that. But on other days, I believed they kept me out of trouble and paved the way for smooth and successful business operations. “Every minute I’m short an employee, it costs revenue,” the frustrated fast-food outlet manager tells his human resources director. “Just get me two living, breathing bodies looking for work, and hire them. I’ll skill train them at the restaurant. I can’t wait weeks while you post the jobs, do the reference checks and complete the paperwork. I’ve got a department to run here with revenue targets to meet.” Does this sound familiar? The hotel industry is a highturnover business with often im- and at fault for hiring him. A background check would have demonstrated reasonable care and produced information that might have prevented his hiring. The hotel was held legally liable. The bartender was found criminally guilty. Hoteliers might offer angermanagement training. Such a practice would provide evidence of a hotel’s exercise of reasonable care for the safety of its guests. Roy Kennington, senior v.p. of the American Hotel & Lodging Assn.’s Educational Institute, suggested EI’s ready-to-lead seminar, “Workplace Violence.” Waiting for the full hiring procedures for each new employee costs time and money. But hiring a forger and a hooker to be the mother superior of your hotel’s child day-care center is probably worse. hmm@questex.com Help guests go green with energy-management systems IN THE details Make it easy for guests Use efﬁcient products Maintenance is important Evaluate hotel’s needs By Stuart Brodsky H&MM Columnist Energy Star Update than half of all frequent travelers leave their green practices at home, using more water and energy at hotels than they would at their own residences “because [they] don’t have to pay for it.” This ﬁnding makes a strong argument for the management strategies and product procurement practices that often have been discussed in this column. In particular, the speciﬁcation and use of Energy Star-qualiﬁed products throughout a hotel can save signiﬁcant amounts of energy compared with products of the same functionality that have not earned the Energy n a recent study commissioned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, it was observed that more I Star. Use of these products takes the question of energy efﬁciency out of the hands of the guest, and when combined with a robust program of preventive maintenance and strategic communications, can help you to achieve signiﬁcant energy savings while increasing guest comfort and convenience. In-room energy management systems provide another option for taking the guesswork out of energy efﬁciency. Using occupancy-based controls to ensure that energy gets used only to the extent necessary can allow hotel owners and operators to realize signiﬁcant savings during the majority of the day when guests are not in their rooms. Given Starwood’s survey ﬁndings, we see that when it comes to saving energy, hotel guests might need the extra help. There are two basic types of in-room systems to consider: keycard systems and thermal/motion detection systems. Within these two categories, there are a number of options that you can customize to ﬁt your hotel, including networking, control of multiple systems (e.g., lighting and heating, ventilation and air conditioning), and integration with existing property-management systems. Payback and return on investment will vary based on a number of factors, including your hotel’s layout, the complexity of the EMS system you install and the presence of incentives or rebate programs in your particular state or utility coverage area. But as reported by Gary Markowitz of Kilojolts Consulting See Energy systems | page 12 http://HotelMotel.com http://www.HotelMotel.com/digital_edition

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Hotel & Motel Management - September 3, 2007

Cover Contents Convention Centers Add Bells and Whistles Questex Media acquires Five Star Alliance Perspective At Your Risk Energy Star Update Sales Clinic Transactions Awards Trends & Stats Wireless Networking Northwest Pipeline Coffee Services Ad/Editorial Index Marketplace Classifieds Checking Out

Hotel & Motel Management - September 3, 2007

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