Be it a birthday, work anniversary or a special occasion like customer service week, The Guild Hotel in downtown San Diego doesn’t miss an opportunity to acknowledge its employees with catered lunches, gift cards, the occasional whimsical game, or a good old-fashioned shout-out for a job well done.
Just 2 years old, the 162-room boutique hotel on Broadway is unique in its own right, occupying a nearly century-old Army Navy YMCA building that once welcomed millions of service men and women passing through the city.
The last 1 1/2 years have been an extraordinarily challenging time for the hospitality industry, which in the early months of the pandemic, saw business plummet. While leisure travel has bounced back significantly since then, hotels — including The Guild — are now struggling to hire enough workers to adequately staff their labor-intensive operations.
Still, where the Guild at one time had fewer than a dozen employees at the height of the pandemic, it now has rebuilt its staffing to 60 and is continuing to fill vacancies. Not only is it offering signing bonuses of harder-to-fill positions like housekeepers and line cooks, but it also has raised its hourly rates for both existing staff and new hires, said General Manager Onal Kucuk.
Tipped workers earn $16 an hour, which is $2 above the current minimum wage, Kucuk said, although the local and state minimum wage will jump to $15 an hour beginning Jan. 1. For all other workers, hourly pay at The Guild starts at $18 and goes up to $22, Kucuk said. The hotel also offers a health and benefits package that includes coverage for medical, dental and vision care, and workers are entitled to participate in a 401(k) retirement plan that includes a company match.
As important as the pay and benefits are, though, the Guild seeks to go above and beyond by regularly promoting a collegial atmosphere in myriad ways, says Connor Haigh, people and culture manager for the hotel.
“We love to over celebrate our team members,” he said. “When someone has a ‘workaversary,’ everyone gets a notification, which lists who is being celebrated, and because we do have a smaller team, it encourages organic celebrations on the property, like taking them out for lunch, saying happy birthday. We will also provide a Starbucks gift card because everyone loves coffee in the hospitality industry.”
It’s that sort of company culture that likely contributed to the Guild landing the Union-Tribune’s Top Workplace award for small companies this year.
“If you’re looking for the core reason for this (recognition), it’s beyond the monetary values,” Kucuk said. “It starts with a culture we decided to create, from recruitment to onboarding. During the pandemic, what kept us going was really finding a purpose and working toward that purpose.”
Comments by workers, compiled in a survey by Energage for the Top Workplaces initiative, suggest that the hotel’s focus on its employees is paying dividends.
“I love what I do and to be at a location that feels that they appreciate all of their workers and work hard to keep their guests and employees happy is what I look for in a company and The Guild exceeds that, and all the managers and head staff help us feel equal,” wrote one individual.
Said another, “I feel I belong literally to the Guild family. There is genuine care and kindness amongst everyone here. We come together when times are at their toughest and that’s what makes me feel that everyone will be (is ready) to support each other whenever the need arises without hesitation.”
Haigh ticked off a number of initiatives the hotel launched over the last several months to show its gratitude for the employees. Among them:
- During customer service appreciation week several weeks ago, The Guild catered lunch each day of the week, tailored to the staff’s varying culinary tastes, from Greek and Chinese cuisine to Italian.
- For housekeeping appreciation week in September, lunch was also provided each day, but as a bonus there was a Bingo game that included a major prize for the winner — 16 hours of vacation time added to the employee’s bank of paid time off (PTO). Everyone else, including those who did not show up for the game, received four hours of additional PTO.
- As a reward for especially hard work in May when the staff was smaller than it is now, Haigh turned to gift cards yet again. “The hotel had really killed it in May. We were smaller then, maybe 40 people, and I went out and bought $100 gift cards for everyone — from Target, Ralphs, Amazon, and had my GM write a little note on a Guild-branded card,” Haigh said. “I told people to come meet me in the board room, they’d come in, we’d have snacks and beverages and I’d hand them the card personally and said thanks for all of your hard work.”
- Yet another initiative, which will be starting soon, is what Haigh calls a “shout-out card” that will give employees an opportunity to single out other workers they believe deserve special recognition. Those cards, Haigh said, will then be used to select an employee of the quarter and one for the entire year. There will be a plaque honoring the workers as well as some sort of financial reward, he said.
It makes perfect sense, Haigh said, to promote fun and camaraderie in the workplace given the long hours employees are spending away from home.
“Why not do it?” he said. “We’re all at work more time than we’re not and making sure you’re having fun with your team members is important. We focus a lot on respecting each other and trying to celebrate as much as possible.”
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November 21, 2021 at 07:30PM
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Top-ranked small company: The Guild Hotel with its raises, catered lunches, Starbucks gift cards - The San Diego Union-Tribune
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