Question: Christine Woods has been hired as executive housekeeper of a 500-room hotel located near Atlanta's Hartsfield International Airport. Christine holds a degree in hotel and restaurant management from a leading university in the discipline and has 4 years of experience in front office operations with a nationwide hotel chain. Christine's employer selected her from 43 other candidates because her academic record showed that she had done very well in a housekeeping management course in college. The recruiter thought that this qualified her for reorganizing the housekeeping department of the hotel.

Christine spent her first 2 weeks on the job looking into the department's records and having one-on-one meetings with supervisors and hourly employees, one of the major problems, she soon found out, was the high turnover and absentee rates of the department. According to human resources, the estimated average cost for replacing a room attendant at the hotel was $2,100. This cost included advertising for the position, hiring and training the worker, and providing additional supervision during the induction period.

The exit interviews conducted had identified some of the reasons for leaving. Room attendants claim great frustration on the job as the main cause. An employee who quit recently tried to explain the problem: "Each one of us had to fend for herself. Every morning, I had to scramble for linen to stock my cart. Some other housekeepers hid washcloths in their lockers to have them available when needed." Housemen complained that often they had to fight over a vacuum cleaner to have the hallways cleaned. A section housekeeper said, "I take pride in cleaning my rooms but never got a bonus while others are sloppy workers and get the same wage that I get." A room attendant with more than 5 year's work in the hotel offered a comment: "The workload of 13 rooms per one-hour shift is ridiculous. I could easily finish 16 rooms a day if they paid me more money. I already get 10 rooms done by lunchtime and slow down for the remaining three until it is time to clock out."

Overall morale is low among the housekeeping workers. "They treat us like dirt," said one of the housekeepers. "The front desk and maintenance people think that they can boss us around." The front desk and engineering departments in turn accused housekeeping of not being able to communicate professionally.

Christine is now faced with high absentee and turnover rates, lack of sprit de corps among workers, poor interdepartmental communication, and numerous guest complaints.