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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
improving our levels of customer service through our one and only way system and Audit process for room cleaning.
AUDITORS HANDBOOK
AUDITORS HANDBOOK
Welcome!
Congratulations on being selected as an Auditor for the programme. It is a very important role, and your enthusiasm and commitment are key factors to the success of this programme within your hotel. You may well be reading this before attending the launch and introduction workshop with your Housekeeping Manager or Head Housekeeper. Please read through it before you attend. Within this handbook, you will find all the general information about the programme and your role within it. Once you are familiar with the programme and your responsibilities, you will find all the specific information you need to take you on to the next stage of your implementation in the Room Audit Toolkit.
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Introduction and Background to the Aims of the Benefits of the Programme Programme
Programme
Your role and responsibilities as an Auditor Our One and Only Way System for guestroom cleaning Training the One and Only Way System Your The Support Materials Audit process
Acting on results Celebrating Success Ideas from Other Hotels Getting Started
AUDITORS HANDBOOK
One of the aspects I value most as a guest is feeling that the room is totally clean.
! Our One and Only Way System, with specified sequence, methods, tools and chemicals for cleaning guestrooms. ! The Audit / retraining process with Room Audit Toolkit to assist in Auditing the rooms and producing detailed reports on the quality of room cleanliness and application of our One and Only Way System.
Our very own personality - Dusty Springclean, will appear throughout each step of the One and Only Way, to guide you and your team along the way.
You will become more familiar with her in the comprehensive One and Only Way training materials.
AUDITORS HANDBOOK
Aims of the
programme
The broad aim is to increase our service levels and guest satisfaction in the area of guest room cleanliness, and through to: ! Define optimum inputs (sequence of cleaning, methods, chemicals & tools) in to the guestroom cleaning process. ! Produce consistently high levels of guestroom cleanliness. ! Audit cleaned guest rooms on a random basis to ensure the process is being followed correctly & guest rooms are of a high standard of cleanliness. ! Provide a factual basis for effective training & retraining of Room Attendants (RAs).
There are clearly many benefits of the programme to your guests and your hotel as outlined above. It is important to also consider the benefits to you and your team
Benefits of the
programme
! An efficient sequence to clean a guestroom, i.e. minimise walking time & maximise cleaning time, which is COSHH compliant. The right methods established for cleaning each part of the guestroom and the effective use of the most appropriate chemicals with the right tools. The removal of inspections as the means to release guestrooms, thus freeing up Housekeeping time.
AUDITORS HANDBOOK
! Ability to pinpoint and address areas that require further development, so that retraining based on personalised data from a central system is simple and straightforward to plan, implement and follow up. ! A comprehensive training pack for each hotel providing the tools necessary to Audit and train in all aspects of the process. ! Sustainable, high quality cleanliness of guestrooms both during the stay and on departure. ! Significant improvement in guest satisfaction resulting in higher GSTS scores on areas regarding the cleanliness of the guestroom.
AUDITORS HANDBOOK
Auditor
The approach outlined above has already been trialled in other parts of the organisation leading to significant improvements in the GSTS score for cleanliness of guest room. Such improvements have been around 30 points, even ranging up to 80 points
This Auditors Handbook has been designed to help you understand your important role as an Auditor. It contains information on the background to the project and its main aims and targets. It is designed to provide you with a strategic overview of the programme. Once you have read it and have a general understanding, then the Room Audit Toolkit will help you with the specific information and steps that you will need to succesfully implement this progamme and gain job satisfaction from your responsibilities as an Auditor. Your role as an Auditor is a very important one, and your commitment and enthusiasm are key factors in the success of this programme for your hotel. Becoming an Auditor will mean learning some new skills and adopting new habits, to enable you to train and retrain your Room Attendants and answer any questions about the Room Cleaning and Audit process. There is plenty of support material to help you, and you have been selected because your Head Housekeeper knows that you will continue to do a great job. By reading this far, you may be forming an idea about how your role will develop, what will remain the same and how it will be slightly different. The main change for you is that instead of performing room inspections every day, you will be required to Audit rooms using a specific process. Because Auditing is a thorough process, it takes a little longer than a normal room inspection. Also, because you will act on the information you obtained during the audits, it is important that you have enough to give a representative sample, so you will be asked to conduct a minimum number of Audits each month for each Room Attendant. These Audits will replace the need to do room inspections.
AUDITORS HANDBOOK
The Audit process is thoroughly explained later in this Handbook, so just for now it is enough to gain a general idea Overall the Audits will take up less of your time than your previous room inspections, so you will find that you will have MORE time to spend on more productive and satisfying tasks such as doing more training and retraining, taking action on the Audit results, and helping with other Housekeeping duties. Of course, these will vary according to the size and nature of your hotel, but some general descriptions are included on the next page. You can use the table to highlight what will be different and what will remain the same for your role, and to make a note of any questions that you might have at this stage. You will find the answers within this material, or by asking your Head Housekeeper / Housekeeping Manager.
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Retrain all Room Attendants as and when required, and particularly when any individual falls below their set *Trigger Value (*this will be explained later in your Room Audit Toolkit training).
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To ensure all public and staff service areas are cleaned and stocked to the Company standard.
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
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To ensure all Maintenance requests are reported to the Maintenance Department promptly and, where necessary followed up.
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Auditors are responsible for ensuring new team members are fully trained in the sequence, methods, tools and chemicals prior to cleaning any guestrooms, with all training recorded in the documents provided. To assist the Head Housekeeper or Housekeeping Manager with any cleaning schedules and record keeping, including Mattress Turning and Holicare.
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To assist the Head Housekeeper or Housekeeping Manager to control costs, ensuring that the department hits its budget targets.
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To have a thorough knowledge of and adherence to the law with regard to the following Company regulations: Fire regulations and procedures, Health and Safety regulations, First Aid procedures, Disability Discrimination Act, Key Security, Lost Property and COSHH.
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
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To undertake special duties or work outside the normal daily / weekly routine but within the overall scope of the position at the request of your Line Manager / General Manager.
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way. A key part of your responsibilities as an Auditor will be the initial training and subsequent retraining of the One and Only Way system. Therefore, you will need to get to know it very well indeed. There is a lot of training and support material available to help you that you will be introduced to shortly. Whenever you are training the One and Only Way, or talking to your team about it, you must continually stress the point that this must not be changed in any way. It will seriously affect the results of your Audit, as well as the results in your guestrooms, if the One and Only Way sequence, methods, tools and chemicals are not adhered to.
AUDITORS HANDBOOK
You will notice that Step 5 involves reporting on Maintenance issues. This now becomes the responsibility of the Room Attendant as part of the One and Only Way, and you will be checking that it has been done as part of your Audit process.
We Know What It Takes To Make It Clean
InterContinental Hotels Group 2004
AUDITORS HANDBOOK
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
You will find these in TRAINING MATERIALS (Section 5) on your CD-ROM, together with some guidelines for their use. There is also a video showing details of the One and Only Way. The notes for training are carefully matched to the film sequences and the steps of the One and Only Way system to make them easy to use. It is important that you are clear about your training responsibilities and have thoroughly planned for your implementation period. Every Room Attendant must be trained in the One and Only Way, and you must include in your plans ALL members of the Room Attendant team including Agency employees and part time employees. To help you plan your training, a sample Training Plan is included in the TRAINING MATERIALS section of your CD-ROM (Section 5). There is also a detailed description of the training materials, what they cover, and how to use them within that section. You must include a mixture of classroom and on-job training and the notes have been designed to enable you to do both effectively.
Your
support materials
In addition to the training materials above, your CD-ROM also contains some support materials for this programme in the form of: ! A poster showing Dusty Springclean and the 20-step One and Only Way system. A3 size for display on the wall. ! An aide memoir (memory reminder) pictorially showing Dusty Springclean performing all 20 steps of the One and Only Way. This is A5 in size and intended to be used to attach to each trolley, or given to your Room Attendants as an aide-memoir to help them remember the steps at all times whilst they go about their work. ! The artwork for both these items is included on your CD-ROM in Section 6: SUPPORT MATERIALS, so that you are able to print sufficient copies for your hotel locally.
We Know What It Takes To Make It Clean
InterContinental Hotels Group 2004
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
The CD-ROM provides a comprehensive pack of information to support you in training, monitoring and re-training your Room Attendants (RAs) and in using the Room Audit Toolkit for the variety of purposes that you will need to fulfill your role as an Auditor.
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
1. HEAD HOUSEKEEPERS MATERIALS ! Head Housekeepers Briefing Pack including Implementation Plan ! Preparing for your Presentation some hints and tips ! Presentation Session Notes ! Presentation Session Slideshow ! Benefits Exercise ! Q & A Game / Frequently Asked Questions ! Implementation Schedule 2. THE MANUAL* (*see following page) ! Detailed information on the One and Only Way sequence,
methods, tools and chemicals
! The Audit Form ! Recruiting new Auditors Job Description ! Recruiting new Auditors Employee Specification 4. ROOM AUDIT TOOLKIT ! The Room Audit Toolkit software for copying onto your PC ! The Room Audit Toolkit Training Document a step-by-step user
guide
5. TRAINING MATERIALS ! Introduction to the Training Materials ! Instructors Guide PowerPoint Show ! The One and Only Way Board Game & Quiz Questions ! The One and Only Way Training Plan ! The One and Only Way Training Records 6. SUPPORT MATERIALS Poster illustrating the 20 steps of the One and Only Way !
system
Aide Memoir double sided memory jogger illustrating the 20 steps of the One and Only Way
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
! *The Manual gives detailed information on the One and Only Way System. Please see THE MANUAL section (Section 2) of your CD-ROM. You should ensure that each Auditor has their own copy and uses it regularly for reference. !As an Auditor, you must ensure that you read and understand the manual in full before commencing your training or implementation. !There is also a video showing how to clean a guestroom using our One and Only Way System. You should watch it at least once as part of your training preparation.
Now that you have a general idea of your role and responsibilities as an Auditor, you are ready to find out the specific information that you will need to support the implementation of the programme for your hotel. Before continuing to read this Handbook please take the time to familiarise yourself with the resources on the CD-ROM so that you know what is available where all the information is when you need it. You will notice Section 4: ROOM AUDIT TOOLKIT as you go... Our advice to you is to have quick peek, but dont get too involved with the software or Room Audit Toolkit Training at this stage there is plenty of time for that later. Return to this page when you have done so and are ready to begin your Auditor Training and Implementation Plan
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
Welcome back to your handbook by now you will have achieved the following: !Gained an overview of the programme & your role within it.
! Defined the One and Only Way system for guestroom cleaning in your hotel. !Gained an idea of the training and support materials available. !Gained some understanding of the Room Audit Toolkit. !Begun to consider the Implementation Planning for your hotel.
As an Auditor, a significant part of your responsibility will be in conducting the Audits, entering the scores and acting on the results.
The
Audit Process
Conducting Audits, using the Audit Form, instead of checking rooms is probably the biggest change to your working habits and it may prove to be a challenge in the early days. Before you begin your Auditing duties, it is very important to understand that Auditing completely REPLACES room inspections. Therefore, from the time you implement the programme in your hotel, you will cease to carry out room inspections completely. It is worth bearing in mind that your Implementation Plan may well roll out in a section of rooms at a time, preferably after the rooms have been spring-cleaned, or you may decide to convert all in one go. However you and your Housekeeping Management Team plan your Implementation period, it is important to begin your Audit responsibilities as soon as possible after returning from your launch workshop.
We Know What It Takes To Make It Clean
InterContinental Hotels Group 2004
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
We recommend that you try and complete at least 5 10 Audits per Room Attendant before you carry out your training with them. This is relevant for three reasons: 1. It gives you the practice of Auditing guestrooms from the very beginning and so will make it more straightforward for Implementation. It helps your Room Attendants to become used to the Auditing process from the beginning. It means that you can collect data from before Implementation and then track your improvements and increasing scores as you move through the training and Implementation Plan.
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Audit Guidelines
Before you conduct your first to consider. Audit, there are a few guidelines
1) Number of Audits: The average number of Audits for each Room Attendant is 30 per month.The number of Audits will be pro-rated for part time team members your Room Audit Toolkit shows you how to do this. As a rough guide though, if your Room Attendant works 3 or more days per week, then they should remain at 30 Audits per month. If they work 2 or less days per week, then they should be Audited on 16 rooms per month. You are going to be reviewing the results of the audits very closely and acting on them, therefore you need to ensure that the results you are looking at are representative of how that Room Attendant is performing. If you have less than 30 for a full-time Room Attendant, then you are not going to be looking at representative data. 2) Selecting the Room Attendants: Your Room Audit Toolkit will automatically select the Room Attendants to be Audited each day. You will learn about this during your Room Audit Toolkit training.
We Know What It Takes To Make It Clean
InterContinental Hotels Group 2004
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
3) Using the Audit Forms: You must use a separate Audit Form for each Audit you conduct. Therefore a clipboard and pen will be essential items. It is important to keep your Audit Forms separate before and after training. 4) When to Audit: Each morning your Room Audit Toolkit will give you the list of rooms to be Audited for the day. You will need to wait until the room is complete and has been returned to the inventory to Audit it, and therefore, you may not be doing Audits from the beginning of the morning shift. 5) What to look for: The Audit Form is very clearly laid out, and essentially you are looking for two factors the cleanliness results in the room according to the headings on the form and importantly, Auditing that it was cleaned according to the One and Only Way sequence, methods, tools and chemicals. 6) Maintenance reporting: With the One and Only Way system, the reporting of maintenance becomes the responsibility of the Room Attendant possibly for the first time in your hotel. This may take a while to work perfectly, so for the first few weeks, when conducting your Audits, it is a good idea to take a *Maintenance Checklist into the room as well just to make sure that any issues have been reported (*you will find an example of a Maintenance Checklist in The Manual). 7) Who to Audit: Your Audit must include ALL Room Attendants whether employed directly by the hotel or an agency. You will need to contact your Agency to explain the changes and ask for their support in this process. If Agency Room Attendants fall consistently below an optimum score, then you must bring this to the attention of the Agency concerned.
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
If, when checking the sequencing room, the Auditor finds that the sequence hasnt been followed correctly (which means the room is not being cleaned as efficiently as possible) then the Room Attendant automatically loses 50 points. So, for example, if the Auditor walked in to the room and saw that the Room Attendant was vacuuming the bathroom floor but the bed was still unmade, then the Room Attendant would lose 50 points. The Auditor must also be checking that the Room Attendant is using the right tools with the right chemicals in the right way. Therefore if the Auditor saw the Room Attendant using the bathroom cleaner to damp dust in the bedroom then the Room Attendant would lose 50 points. As explained above, Q35 is only introduced after the Room Attendant has been trained. Therefore it is quite usual for the scores for a Room Attendant to drop significantly after s/he has been trained due to the loss of 50 points on Q35. However, provided the correct retraining is given, the Room Attendants scores should increase over time to be much improved on the pre-training audit scores. It is important to remember that the purpose of is to ensure that the guestrooms are cleaned as efficiently and effectively as possible, so this should be taken into account when deducting the 50 points. Q35 should not be used, for example, to deduct points from the Room Attendant for not wearing the correct uniform. This is a key item that the Head Housekeeper should be checking, i.e. to ensure that Q35 is being applied consistently and correctly by the Auditor.
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
What we need to do is raise the bar for all Room Attendants. By having a trigger value for each one the Head Housekeeper will easily be able to spot which individuals are falling below their usual standard of performance, i.e. when a Room Attendants average performance falls below their trigger value. From this information it is then possible to retrain those Room Attendants either on the whole One and Only Way system or on specific sections. By considering the performance of all the Room Attendants over a specified period of time the Room Audit Toolkit calculates a trigger value for the whole hotel. If the average performance of all the Room Attendants falls below the trigger value for the hotel then again the Head Housekeeper needs to act. This could either mean retraining for all Room Attendants, or retraining for specific Room Attendants, or potentially even performance discussions with Agency management. Your Head Housekeeper will need to compare all Auditor data on a monthly basis to ensure that the Audit process is being applied consistently and in a fair manner by all the Auditors. You must also discuss with your Head Housekeeper, how the Audit results wil be included in the Hotel Management reporting process.
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
Solution
A batch of Audit results show an increase in hairs on bath linen across several sections
A batch of Audit results show an increase in hairs on bed linen for one particular Room Attendant
One Agency Room Attendant shows consistently low scores because s/he is not keeping to the 20-step sequence
Despite retraining in the system, a member of your full time team is stil not using the right tools and chemicals
Despite using the methods tools and chemicals, a member of your team is not adhering to the sequence
Two Room Attendants do not speak very good English, and so are not communicating their maintenance requests
You find that despite knowing about the Audit process, you just cant break the habit of inspecting rooms
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
Whatever the situation, and there will be some that will challenge you, the key things to consider are: !Training one to one or in groups, using the materials provided. !Retraining one to one or in groups, using the materials provided. !Communication meetings, noticeboards, coaching, feedback, etc. ! Performance Management tools formal conversations and verbal warnings.
Celebrating Success
As an Auditor, an important part of your role will involve celebrating success. As part of your implementation plan, it is worth spending some time thinking about how you will do this in your hotel. Recognition and celebration will help to make your implementation enjoyable and rewarding. Remember that the more you celebrate success, the more people in your team will aspire to achieve it, and the more you recognise the behaviour and results that you want to see, then the more often you will see them. For example, how will you recognise and celebrate the following:
An exceptional Audit score by a Room Attendant A new member of the team who achieves a personal best score A successful GSTS result
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
A Room Attendant achieving their first 30 Audits A Room Attendant completing the One and Only Way system in the guideline times for the first time Any other ideas that you might have
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Ways that you might like to celebrate: ! Take the money previously earned by rewarding key maids and use the budget to reward the top performers ! Have an badge that can be worn above the name pin, presented by the GM at an In Touch meeting, or some other allstaff meeting ! Nominate for the Room Attendant of the Year award / Can-Do (for Holiday Inn Hotels) Award ! Top Room Attendant stays in another hotel overnight and completes a Room Audit Form
We Know What It Takes To Make It Clean
InterContinental Hotels Group 2004
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AUDITORS HANDBOOK
! Letter from the GM / DOO / COO maybe quarterly or annually depending on the seniority of the signatory ! Certificate from GM each month and each quarter to 5 top Room Attendants ! Craft Trainer for the top Auditor of the quarter or year ! Champagne and nibbles for a particularly good month (improved trigger values or Hotel Cleanliness Report) ! Team night out
Getting Started
Congratulations on reaching the end of your Auditors Handbook. You are now ready to attend the Launch Workshop in your area and begin the next level of your Implementation Plan. The implementation period will differ depending on the size of your hotel and operating requirements. For further details, please discuss with your Housekeeping Manager or Head Housekeeper.
We look forward to working with you at your area launch event. You might like to use the space below to note when and where your area launch event is being held
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