This wonderful recognition by the National Safety Council of Australia (NSCA) Foundation not only highlights the high calibre we have set in terms of putting the safety of our employees first – but recognises on a national level that as a one of Australia’s leading outsourced housekeeping providers, we know how to develop safe work practices and procedures within the hotel housekeeping space.
Working as a housekeeper is physically demanding on the body. As part of their daily tasks they are often doing repetitive motions like making beds or wiping surfaces. It is important for all hotel housekeepers to work safely and follow safe work practices to prevent themselves from getting injured. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPS) are in place to minimise chance of housekeepers sustaining an injury while at work.
As most of the Australian Hotel Industry would have experienced post pandemic, we also faced the challenge of finding workers to fill in the housekeeping roles we had available as well as experienced high staff turnover. As part of the nomination, we shared this journey and the improvements and initiatives we made in the 12 months since to get the positive changes we needed which also improved our safety performance.
We identified that the improvements that needed to be made were to our new starter onboarding processes – one of the first points of engagement the new stater has when learning their role and the importance of safe work practices. To ensure that our training and SOP modules are easily understood by our new housekeepers where English was not always their native language, we created engaging video modules which could be easily viewed on a mobile device.
We also worked with our Housekeeping Managers across our client hotel sites around Australia and New Zealand, who were achieving favourable performance metrics, to get a better insight into how they were supporting their new starters, By collaborating with our high performing teams, we learned how they were supporting their new starters, so they felt more prepared for their first day of work and get into the mindset of committing to safe work practices. Their knowledge and experience formed the basis of our updated ‘Onboarding & Retention Guide’ which was then shared with all our Housekeeping Managers across both our Australian and New Zealand hotel sites.
By creating a strong education piece through our engaging video modules that our housekeepers can refer to whilst being trained in their new role, in addition to Housekeeping Managers following our updated ‘Onboarding and Retention Guide’, we saw a strong improvement to the safety performance of our housekeeping teams. This was because our new starters now felt better equipped and supported knowing how to work safely in their new role which made them less likely to leave their jobs. As a result, our existing team members felt less time-pressured to complete their tasks and in effect minimising their chance of sustaining an injury.
As a finalist we stand alongside some major Australian organisations from construction, facilities maintenance and media services who all have a track record of safety innovation. We are very proud of the safe work practices and procedures we have in place at ahs hospitality and our housekeepers’ commitments to staying safe at work.
The winners of the National Safety Awards of Excellence are schedule to be announced on 31st October 2024 at a Gala Dinner to be held at Sydney Town Hall.
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ahs hospitality acknowledges the Traditional Owners of Country. We pay our respects to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, and to elders past and present, whose land we stand upon today.
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