Hotel Operations Success: Save Time & Money with Housekeeping SOPs

Housekeeping SOPs ⁠(standard operating procedures⁠) and digital checklists are not there to help managers guarantee consistency, accuracy, and quality. Their value lies in saving you time and money by ensuring your housekeeping team is full of hardworking, detail-oriented members. Learn how to unlock the true potential of housekeeping SOPs and download the essential checklists to launch your hotel to success.

Why are Housekeeping SOPs & Checklists necessary?

Cleanliness is everyone’s #1 priority when staying in a hotel. Most of your guests value the housekeeping department, which greatly impacts their satisfaction.
Implementing SOPs promotes synergy between business goals, staff motivation, and customer satisfaction. They reflect your company’s values and culture while serving as an asset to enhance your hotel’s online reputation.

Multiple scientific studies have proven checklists directly impact productivity, time management, focus, and memory. That’s why housekeeping SOPs are a must-have tool for improving staff performance and enhancing your hotel operations. Think of them as SMART goals for your hotel – it’s all about organizing tasks in a way that leads your team to achieve big goals through small, manageable steps.

But isn’t Giving my Staff a List of Tasks Enough?

If you don’t get specific, each housekeeper can interpret task requirements differently. A “clean the room” task might mean a basic wipe-down for one housekeeper and a thorough scrub for another. It would be best if you didn’t take that risk since each task directly impacts customer satisfaction.

Unlike paper checklists, digital ones are more sustainable, transparent, and efficient and can be customized for various teams around the hotel property. Housekeeping software like Flexkeeping helps you transform chaotic hotel operations into clear, accountable & automated team collaboration. Click here to find housekeeping checklists.

3 Key Benefits of Using SOPs in Your Housekeeping Department

There are many approaches to improving your hotel operations management and your hotel’s success. However, the implementation of Housekpeeing SOPs is the only one with an immediate effect. Here are the three main reasons you need to start using them today.

1. Take Control of Performance Management and Personal Accountability

How can you manage what you can’t measure? Without standards, you might as well call Tom Cruise because tracking and managing your housekeeping department’s performance becomes Mission Impossible.

Housekeeping standards and procedures encourage compliance – housekeepers, maintenance & front desk teams know they are responsible for following each practice and reporting once they’ve completed it.

If your housekeeper says they’ve changed the sheets, but a guest complains about a dirty bed, you know there’s a disconnect. Using housekeeping SOPs makes each staff member accountable for respecting processes. All those times you told your staff about the intricacies of the task, and then it was all forgotten? Completing housekeeping checklists that adhere to your hotel SOPs prevents that.

Personal accountability also matters when it comes to changes. You can update the housekeeping SOPs and notify staff of the changes whenever you implement a new process. If you update paper checklists and print new ones, your housekeeping staff probably won’t bother implementing the changes. Furthermore, you won’t have a reliable or efficient way to track if they do.

Using housekeeping standard operating procedures will improve your staff’s confidence, too. Whenever unsure how to complete a specific task, housekeepers can reference the SOPs, saving time and effort for other tasks.

2. Quality Control and Consistency

Every housekeeping mistake could turn into a 1-star review of your hotel. It only takes a few complaints about cleanliness to drive your future guests away for good.

Housekeeping standards and procedures connect the photos your guests fawn over when booking accommodation with what they see once they’ve opened the hotel room door. They set standards for your staff to ensure consistency and quality by guaranteeing tasks are done consistently across all rooms.

It can be as simple as how your staff puts on bed linen, lays out the toiletries, and folds the towels. All these small details don’t just happen – flawless execution of each task takes strategy, planning, and excellent communication. Checklists and SOPs are your shortcuts to quality assurance, as no room will ever again be ready in time, be under-prepared, or be overlooked by mistake.

3. Training Your Staff and Minimizing Turnover

Housekeeping SOPs open the doors to implementing performance management, identifying where your staff excels and where they could use additional training sessions. Experienced managers take it a step further by using them both as a part of new staff onboarding and for continuous training of the existing staff.

For new trainees, housekeeping can seem like an overwhelming list of things to do. Save precious time and money by introducing digital checklists that will guide them in completing their tasks fully and correctly. New housekeepers will know precisely what to do in each room and be able to tick off tasks as they go, raising their chances of passing inspection.

As a manager, you should use digital checklists to evaluate new housekeeping hires effectively. A great way to do it is to quantify cleaning mistakes by customizing the degree of cleaning to correlate with percentages or points. For example, a perfectly made bed is worth 5 points, whereas a poorly made bed is worth 2 points.

Once you’ve established an average, you will see how well each trainee housekeeper is doing at the end of the inspection. Word of advice: if one doesn’t reach the average but is just shy of the target point count, they can fix their mistakes. In that case, managers should include their comments with the results to allow that housekeeper to pass inspection.