- By Kostis Chalkiadakis
The digital work card brought about a revolution in the organization of hotel businesses, a measure that was implemented from March 1 this year with the aim of transparency, employee protection and the fight against undeclared work, which nevertheless found itself at the center of the daily lives of thousands of professionals in tourism and catering.
As Katerina Santikou, Hospitality HR & Business Development Leader, notes in her post, the transition was not without obstacles, since alongside the benefits, significant challenges emerged that the sector is called upon to manage.
As Ms. Santikou points out, the daily operation of hotels often clashes with the rigidity of the system. Seasonality and mass recruitment make it difficult to immediately activate all employees, while constant staff movements between departments, irregular schedules and changes after midnight create deviations from the declared schedule.
In addition, extraordinary events such as delayed flights, VIP visits or unforeseen groups, as well as activities before the start of the shift, such as seminars, uniform collection or briefing with the supervisor, often remain “invisible” in the system, creating friction with the staff.
Practical tips
To address these issues, she suggests practical tips, such as: organizing the activation of all employees in a timely manner via Taxisnet, the application and devices, having a clear procedure for those moving between departments, and recording all activities before the shift as mandatory work.
Meanwhile, significant challenges are also identified in the infrastructure, such as points without signal, queues for clock-in on a single tablet or remote devices make recording difficult and in many cases formal and not real. For this reason, Ms. Santikou suggests checking the signal and number of devices in a timely manner so that recording is smooth and accurate.
At the same time, she notes that payroll requires double checking, manual corrections for night shifts, weekly days off and deviations from the schedule, resulting in managers dedicating many hours to “cleaning” the data. Here, the tip is to provide time for correcting deviations and to use dashboards so that supervisors can monitor in real time who is on or off shift.
She makes special reference to employee trust and the protection of personal data, which, as she says, are another critical point. Employees ask questions such as “what is recorded and for how long?”, while the balance between transparency and data protection must be clear and documented. The tip here is to inform employees about what is recorded and for how long, in order to strengthen trust.
Overall, as Ms. Santikou concludes, the Digital Employment Card is here to stay. The challenge for the tourism industry is to make it a functional tool that will facilitate everyday life and protect both employees and hoteliers, instead of remaining simply an obligation with fines.
