Housekeeping Hell Month: Part Three

How the Game is Played

Over the course of Housekeeping Hell Month, you will be inspecting a total of 12 rooms per housekeeper, 3 per week.

Each inspection is conducted QA style and must include the housekeeper who’s room is being inspected. The goal is that your housekeepers will gain an exact understanding of what your QA inspector is looking for in each room and the process of inspection during your yearly audits. In addition, you must choose one focus area for each of the 4 weeks of competition. Each focus area should be something that your team struggles with or that your guests have told you needs improvement.

You must break each room down into at least 5 sections, each worth one point. Your team starts with the maximum possible points in each room that you inspect and each time you find an infraction in a particular section, you deduct one point from their score.

For example, if my housekeeping team struggles with finding and eliminating hair in the rooms, I might structure one week like this:

WEEK 1: HAIR (5 POINTS)

• Desk area/Drawers/TV (1 point)
• Coffee station/Microwave/Fridge/AC/Windowsill (1 point)
• Bed/Bedside tables/Carpet-entry area & around bed (1 point)
• Countertop/Sink/Floor/Toilet (1 point)
• Tub or Shower (1 point)

In this example, each housekeeper starts with 5 points in each room that is inspected. If I were to find a single hair in the drawers, I would deduct that point from the room. Further hairs found in the same area do not result in additional deductions, but should still be pointed out.

In this example, each housekeeper has the potential to earn a total of 15 points over the course of the week and on Friday, following your final inspections of the week, you will total each housekeeper’s points to find your winner.

You should have a score board with each housekeepers name and running point total posted somewhere conspicuous so that your team can see and review it on a daily basis. You should also have a section of your score board dedicated to the winner of each weeks competition.

Each weeks winner should receive a prize the following Monday when the winner is announced. I like to use gift cards. Everyone loves gift cards! At the end of the month you will announce a grand prize winner, which should come with an appropriately grand prize as well.

Up Next

Need to go back to Part 2?

Ready to learn about Your Role in your Teams Success! Check out Part 4!