24. January 2023

The Future of Work in Hospitality Depends on our ‘Digital Body Language’

When you see a warm smile on a person’s face, you instantly feel comfortable. When you shake hands with someone, you are able to gauge their confidence. You can tell how attentive a person is by the amount of eye contact they make. And you can probably pick out the leader in a group simply by their walk. All of this is due to what we universally recognize as body language. 

The concept of body language is pretty simple to understand. Certain body movements, mannerisms and facial expressions are associated with certain established meanings and implications – thus sending out a message to the observer. Body language is how your body communicates. Most of this communication may be unintentional but it is definitely what is physically visible to the observer. As social animals, we are used to subconsciously interpreting all verbal communication in combination with physical body language to interpret the most accurate meaning of the message.

But the times have changed drastically - particularly in the last couple of years. Remote working has become the new normal and digital space is pretty much where the majority of our interpersonal communication is concentrated at. We no longer have the luxury to observe body language to accurately interpret communications. This is where Digital Body Language comes in.

What is digital body language and why is it relevant?

Digital body language is a concept that is increasingly relevant to the working class. It is what you may refer to as your personality’s ‘body’ language – a language that is reflected when you communicate in a digital space – be it an email, a comment or a quick chat. However, unlike physical body language, digital body language isn’t ‘seen’ by the observer but rather ‘felt’. The fact that it is virtually invisible makes digital body language an art that’s quite tricky to master - but especially crucial to master at the same time.

 This is precisely why the future of work in hospitality depends on our digital body language. The hospitality industry is all about delivering an experience – a feeling of satisfaction to the end customer. The agents of delivery here are the hospitality workers and the digital body language they receive might just be the key to improved productivity.

Digital Body Language for a Better Workforce

 As important as customer service and guest communications is within the hospitality industry, it is equally important to have an excellent system in place for internal communications within your teams. Cross-team collaboration can be a challenge, particularly in hotels where the deskless staff might not even have a company email to their name. The manager doesn’t have the luxury of time to pick up the phone and call up every single member of the housekeeping staff to update them about a change in process or protocol. Holding regular in-person staff meetings is also a thing of the past, and frankly just not feasible during busy periods of travel surge. A lack of regular communication often creates a stressful work environment for the staff, leaves them with a lack of direction and eventually results in a deteriorating quality of work. 

A strong and effective digital body language is the only way forward to build a better workforce with improved productivity. How does one implement effective digital body language? By embracing automation.

The Winning Formula of Digitalization and Automation

 Digitalization of your property’s day-to-day processes is the first step in building a strong digital body language. You want to have a platform that connects all the members of your staff and instils a sense of ‘belonging to a team’ and encourages them to work collectively toward a common goal. Having a digital space will you and your staff to organize, communicate and collaborate more efficiently. 

Along with digitalization, you also need to embrace automation. Automation isn’t about allowing robots to take over the human workforce of your organization. Automation is taking skilful advantage of technology to eliminate busy work and increase productivity. You can strategically reduce manual work by automating everyday tasks, assignments and communications. From your standard operating procedure to real-time monitoring of your property, you can pretty much automate every aspect of hotel management and customise it to suit your business needs. 

Benefits of a Well-Implemented Digital Body Language

Here are some of the primary benefits of having a well-implemented digital body language for workers in the hospitality industry: 

Increased Clarity Amongst Staff

When the standard operating procedure is easy to access, clearly communicated and easily understood, it eliminates confusion and minimized stress for the whole staff. This is also particularly beneficial when it comes to onboarding new hires.

Incredible Time Savings (and money too!)

Did you know housekeepers spend almost 15% of their time simply trying to find the next room to clean? More often than not housekeepers aren’t up-to-date on the status and occupancy of a room at any given time, which adds unnecessary strain on their job. Automation using an application like Sweeply can facilitate real-time monitoring of properties and live updates of room statuses. It can also auto-generate the task lists for every member, ensuring there is no double work happening and everyone’s time is respected as well as maximized. When you’re maximising your staff’s time, you’re actually saving your business’s time – and time saved is equivalent to money saved! 

Reduced Margin for Errors

When you’ve handed over your task management to an automation application like Sweeplyyou have automatically saved yourself from silly errors due to wrongful communication and incorrect digital body language. Having a uniform system of communication in place reduces margins for errors which in itself results in further time and money savings!

Improved Guest Experience

As we mentioned earlier in this article, the hospitality industry is all about delivering an experience to your customer - a feeling of satisfaction. A smooth functioning housekeeping staff has a direct impact on the guest experience. A happy guest is likely to leave a better tip which in turn is going to feed into employee satisfaction and further motivate them to continue meeting & exceeding expectations. A happy guest is also likely to leave your property a glowing review using their own digital body language which is a prominent tool to attract new and returning customers.