Seth, you have a good perspective here…

At the end of the day I believe you are right, regardless of whether what they did is right or wrong, Hyatt’s brand perception has been damaged and they have created some trust issues with employees and customers alike.

I do hope this incident can be resolved in a reasonable manner so we can all go back to focusing on recovery from the tough economy.

Thanks for your contributions… much appreciated!

@michaelmccurry

Dale, thanks for providing the link to this article… this came out after I had published this article.

I personally believe there are other motivations to the MA Governors actions than concern for the well being of those laid off housekeepers.

It is interesting to note that he is not doing well in his re-election efforts and in particular it was pointed out in a Boston news article that the interest group he is weak with is the unions… we can read between the lines on that one.

Thanks again for adding to the discussion.

@michaelmccurry

You raise some good points here Dave, thanks for calling them out.

In my eyes time will tell whether this was a bad decision on Hyatt’s part or not. They made a business decision, based upon the real challenges they are facing, and have to live with the consequences that go along with it.

In our world today, with the economy being the way it is, trying new things, and innovating is not something a company should be faulted for. I think the real key here is the apparent manner in which they rolled this news out to the affected employees. Increasingly it is becoming obvious they were not very thoughtful in the way this piece of the process was handled.

I would love to see a response from Hyatt on this blog, or any other blog, but suspect we won’t see any.

Thanks for adding to the conversation Dave,

@michaelmccurry

To look on it lightly, they thought that it would help if the housekeeping staff didn’t know about what was happening. They thought the housekeeping staff wasn’t worth a notice. The problem occurred when they lost trust in their housekeeping staff.

The goodwill measures that are described may exist to control such damage, but there is no exact word(yet) on how many return to another Hyatt location(same or different position), how many get picked up by the outsourcing provider, and/or how many head to the unemployment line for good.

No matter how Hyatt wanted it to go, they lost some trust from other staff in similar positions and customers whom do not trust the new staff.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113154008

What gets me is “cleanliness” has to be a core value for any hotel. You don’t outsource a core value. You might supplement it with temps for spikes in occupancy, but not 100% of the time. Loyalty and pride of employees is rarely equalled by temporary workers. Employees who work alongside temps, help raise the bar for their performance. This move would surprise me less if we were talking about limited service or extended stay properties.

Right or wrong, this move has hurt the Hyatt brand significantly more than the cost savings envisioned. They need to move quickly towards a better strategy before more damage is done.

Dave Lutz
Velvet Chainsaw Consulting