SINGAPORE — Room attendants at Sheraton Towers Singapore have received a 7-per-cent increase in their gross salaries since June, thanks to a more productive room check-in process.

The hotel has digitised its check-in process and put it onto smartphones, giving room attendants less paperwork, allowing them to work faster and communicate better.

In turn, the increased productivity led to pay increments. Room attendants also receive a monthly productivity bonus of S$100.

This example is only one of the 238 job improvement projects carried out in the hospitality and business sectors under the labour movement’s Inclusive Growth Programme. Launched in August 2010, it has seen over 18,000 workers across 172 companies receiving a wage increase due to raised productivity. On average, they received an increment of 11.06 per cent.

Mr Lim Swee Say, Secretary-General of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC), yesterday toured Sheraton Towers — together with officials from the Food, Drinks and Allied Workers Union — to view the initiatives introduced by the hotel to help raise productivity.

The hotel’s other efforts include upgrading its laundry machines, job redesigns and implementing a progressive wage model at the executive level under which management trainees can be groomed into assistant managers within two years.

Laundry operator Alice Lim, 58, said the new machines help her do her work faster and more safely.

The hotel has machines that can iron a shirt in less than five minutes, a vast improvement from a decade ago when Ms Lim first joined Sheraton Towers and had to press a shirt in eight steps.

To attract more Singaporean workers, the hotel has combined its front office and receptionist functions into a rooms division executive position which offers a higher starting salary of S$2,000. Two Singaporeans have since taken up this position, placing Sheraton Towers’ full-time workforce of citizens to 69 per cent — higher than the industry’s estimated average of 55 per cent.

Mr Yeo Guat Kwang, Cluster Lead for the Hospitality and Consumer Business Cluster of NTUC, said: “As the labour market is getting tighter, all employers must think of a better way out by making the jobs easier, better. And at the end of the day, we must not only make the workplace more attractive, but must make the wages more attractive.”