Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park needed an advanced system for greater visibility and control on working practices and more accurate payroll information on their 454 staff.Manual processing was leading to inaccurate work-time data, which offered hotel management little or no knowledge of the hours employees were working around the standard 9-5.30 framework.

With its people costing the hotel up to 30% of its revenue, the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park needed to address these issues by gaining a better understanding of the operation - and ensure the best possible working environment for its people.

Smart Human Logistics was chosen as the provider of the most flexible, true web-based solution with excellent potential to improve labour management reporting.

In the hotel industry, customer service means everything and it is the mission of the Mandarin Oriental to completely delight and satisfy guests. Now fully implemented, the total knowledge management provided by the Smart HL system, has meant that a happier, more satisfied workforce are better able to provide this level of service at Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park.

Richard Dodds, Finance Director, Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park said “Our Human Logistics solution gives us a new level of management visibility over our operation, and the flexible reports provided by the system enable us to get to the accurate information we need in real time. This knowledge of our staff’s working hours will also help us to forecast our labour requirements and costs in the future. But even more importantly, it will help us to ensure that we are fairer in the deployment of our people and improve their work-life balance.”

Richard continued “Our staff are delighted with the new process as it is driven by our desire to help reduce excessive hours worked and enhance their work-life balance. We now ensure that people do not have to work every weekend and that they get the time off they deserve. In addition, staff are able to use the self-service facilities now available to check holiday balances, shifts and clockings, thus reducing the time it takes to query managers.”

Richard added “Our people and the service they provide are the bedrock of our company and we are immensely proud of them. Taking action to monitor working hours and plan fairer rosters, will hopefully make them more aware of this and help us to retain them.”

Inaccurate, time-consuming and manually-processed timesheets were central to the lack of visibility in working practices within the hotel. By implementing a Smart HL programme, Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park now run an automated payroll process which has eliminated the need for timesheets. Managers are also effortlessly able to proactively validate individual employee hours against the EU Working Time Directive.

Security has also been improved as a result of implementing biometric hand readers and eTouchKiosks for staff clocking on and off. These data gathering devices enable time and attendance information to be generated securely while biometrics provide managers with vital accurate information as to who is in the building and when, at all times.

The system, has resulted in effortless customised reporting for management - in particular, the detailed holiday and absence report that shows when a member of staff is not in attendance, why, and the cost to the business.

The transparency of its work practices has also allowed the hotel to standardise the way in which it operates, ensuring that a structure is in place for the regulation of the 454 existing employees and an existing format for any new staff.

For hotel management, the standardising of working practices has meant the accurate alignment of resources with the needs of the business - a major factor in the ever-changing luxury hotel industry.

As change is so constant, one of the main objectives of the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park was to dramatically improve forecasting on labour. In the future the tailored Smart HL system will help them to produce figures on productivity, to forecast staff roster requirements more accurately in line with business demands - and see how much labour is going to cost them.

Richard Dodds said, “What we liked most about Smart HL was the flexibility of the system. To that end, we continually refine our reports to improve the level of mission-critical information we receive on a daily basis.”
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