BHTA testing performance scheme

Workers’ Performance in the hospitality sector is going to be a major factor in future Barbados Workers’ Union/Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association wage negotiations. BHTA president Colin Jordan said the two organisations were currently working on a performance-based incentive scheme being run as a pilot project in a select group of hotels.Three hotels from each category of the BHTA have been selected for the pilot scheme, and training has been conducted for workers. Data collected will be submitted to the National Productivity Council for analysis. “We expect that the performance-based incentive scheme will move fully into the bargaining process sometime very soon. Between this year and early next year we expect it to become part of the negotiating process”, Jordan said.The BHTA president spoke during a reception for Barbados Workers’ Union Hotel and Restaurant Workers’ Week at Ilaro Court. Acting Tourism Minister Senator Haynesley Benn had said in an earlier address to guests that poor service in the tourism sector and “across the spectrum of life in Barbados was one of the issues flagged” very frequently at the recently concluded diaspora conference held here.Reacting, Jordan said, “We do recognise that customer service has some issues and we believe there has to be a structured way of measuring it and incentivising people so that people realise ‘I need to do better because I will benefit directly from doing better in the area of customer satisfaction’.”He added: “We realise two things, one is that some element of the wage increase should be tied to some element of the performance of the people who are going to be benefitting.” “Part of the assessment mechanism will include customer satisfaction. Part of the training we have done so far in the pilot phase speaks to service excellence interaction with guests and so on,” Jordan said. (GC)