Inside Asian Gaming

IAG JAPAN JUL 2020 48 IN FOCUS I magine, if you will, that you’re an employee of Las Vegas Sands. On 17 March the company announces that its three Las Vegas properties, including the one you work at, will suspend operations for at least a fortnight – but probably much longer – in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But don’t fear, it also issues a statement confirming none of its 9,300 local employees will be laid off or furloughed despite the shutdown. Now imagine you’re an employee at Rampart Casino, owned by Hotspur Resorts, which in May informed a number of your colleagues they were being laid off – not in person, but via voice recording. Which company would you feel most comfortable returning to work for? While much of the focus in recent months has been on the plight of casino operators around the globe as they start eyeing their first steps toward recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, a crucial element of that recovery will center around the wellbeing of their employees and, more specifically, how those frontline hospitality workers are likely to feel about stepping back into the furnace. “Companies who have demonstrated strong leadership where there is mutual trust between the manager and staff, and who have genuinely cared about how their employees are from a satisfaction or engagement viewpoint, are the ones that will emerge from this the strongest,” explains Jennifer Martinez, President and CEO of Las Vegas-based Consult HR Partners. “For employees, it all comes down to the way they’ve been treated during this period of time. How have the F&B management or HR or the company’s executives communicated with them? How did they handle those first few weeks of the pandemic? And how effective has the re-boarding and re-training process been upon their return? All of these factors are really going to make a difference as to how the employees feel and if they want to stay. Even though there are going to be a lot of people out there in the market because they’ve been laid off or furloughed, if people aren’t happy, they Macau’s DICJ implemented strict sanitization measures early on to ensure the health and safety of customers and employees. マカオのDICJは、客と従業員の健康と安全を確保するために、早い段階に厳しい衛生対策を実施した