by Amanda Sullivan
Human Resources & Talent Acquisition, The Service Companies
Hospitality leaders know how to manage the variables: seasonality, demand swings, renovation timelines, and shifting guest expectations. But one disruptive variable is increasingly landing on the executive agenda for reasons that have nothing to do with business — changes to Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and other federal immigration and employment authorization programs.
This article will focus on TPS, but our broader subject is workforce resilience. Durable operational resilience requires a workforce strategy that is diversified beyond reliance on any single labor source or immigration program — whether TPS, H-2B, or J-1.
Regulatory frameworks shift, economic conditions change, and local labor markets move on their own timelines. The organizations that will thrive, despite these challenges, are the ones that stop treating workforce stability as an end state goal and start treating it as an intrinsic process — something they actively defend and continuously improve.
Compliance strategy is not about policy outcomes. It’s about preparation.
Properties that wait until a regulatory change is finalized to start thinking
about its operational implications are, by definition, starting late.
The properties that will fare best are those that have done the patient work of understanding their workforce, strengthening their compliance foundation, and building the kind of operational flexibility that makes any single disruption an absorbable setback, rather than an existential crisis.
The Unique Workforce Risks in Hospitality
Hospitality is a people business. Every cleaned room, every maintained public space, and every busy restaurant depends on good people showing up every day to deliver an exceptional guest experience. Housekeeping, EVS, Stewarding, Laundry, and Public Area teams perform work that can’t be postponed until a more convenient time. If rooms aren’t cleaned, they can’t be sold. If public spaces aren’t maintained, guests will notice – and will say as much in online reviews.
These departments also typically operate with lean staffing models, which means losing even a handful of experienced employees can meaningfully affect room turnaround times, productivity, overtime, and the day-to-day workload carried by supervisors and managers.
When employment authorization rules change, the impact extends well beyond compliance. Employees become uncertain about their future, supervisors don’t know how to answer their questions, and leaders struggle to assess what the changes actually mean for their workforce.
Even when only a small percentage of employees
are directly affected, the uncertainty created by changing
regulations will ripple across an entire operation.
To be precise: TPS changes don’t affect every employee the same way. An individual’s ability to work depends on their specific immigration status and employment authorization, and those circumstances vary widely. Employers should avoid assumptions and instead rely on the I-9 process and federal employment eligibility requirements to guide their decisions.
Operational managers need more than a compliance checklist. Leaders have the responsibility to communicate clearly, treat employees fairly, and maintain trust during periods of uncertainty. Front-line managers, in particular, need to understand what they can and cannot say when employees start asking questions. Equipping those leaders with clear guidance helps ensure employees receive consistent information while protecting the organization from legal risk.
One common misconception among hospitality leaders is that preparing for a new policy only matters if a change is imminent or if a property has a large affected population. In reality, the most exposed properties are the ones that have never encountered changes — because they have no clear policies or procedures in place, no communication plan, and no clear sense of which roles and departments will be hardest hit.
Preparation is inexpensive compared to improvising in the middle of a crisis.
Waiting until a policy change is confirmed to develop a compliant process
leaves an organization vulnerable to costly errors – and legal risks.
Operational and Financial Impacts
The hospitality business is unforgiving of planning errors, and in particular, offers little flexibility in work scheduling. Guests just keep arriving, whether the rooms are ready or not.
When a property experiences a sudden staffing disruption, operational pressure builds quickly. Managers scramble to cover shifts themselves, overtime increases, and supervisors spend more time recruiting and onboarding than actually leading their teams. The employees who remain must shoulder a heavier workload, risking burnout and, eventually, turnover — compounding the very problem the organization is trying to solve.
The financial impact goes well beyond the visible costs of recruiting new people. Organizations facing labor disruption typically see higher overtime spend, more onboarding and training investment, reduced productivity during ramp-up periods, and significant management time redirected toward hiring and scheduling. There is an opportunity cost as well: every hour a manager spends trying to solve a staffing gap is an hour not spent coaching the team, improving operations, or enhancing the guest experience.
None of this is visible to the guest — but its effects are. Guests don’t see staffing reports. They see whether their room is ready at check-in, how quickly requests get fulfilled, and whether the property feels clean, organized, and well-maintained.
Workforce stability elevates the guest experience.
Workforce instability erodes guest satisfaction, brand reputation,
owner confidence, and ultimately, financial performance.
For vacation ownership properties, the stakes are even higher. Unit owners hold a direct financial interest in how the property is maintained and presented, and staffing shortfalls that affect cleanliness or service consistency can quickly become an owner-relations issue, not just a guest-experience problem.
The same risk applies to casino resorts, where the volume and pace of turnover across guest rooms, public areas, and back-of-house leaves zero margin for staffing gaps to go unaddressed.
Compliance and Contingency Planning
The #1 priority for any operator is ensuring that all employment eligibility processes are sound. That means maintaining accurate I-9 records, monitoring employment authorization expiration dates, completing reverification when required, and making sure all managers understand that employment decisions must never be based on assumptions about an employee’s citizenship, immigration status, or national origin.
From there, workforce planning is the essential element. Close and continuous communication between operations, recruiting, and HR helps organizations see problems coming rather than reacting to them after damage to team resilience is already done. Leaders must regularly assess their recruiting pipelines, identify the roles that would be hardest to replace, and build contingency plans — before a staffing challenge actually occurs.
Organizations that prepare proactively are far better positioned
than those that are forced to react under pressure — and the difference
shows up in both labor cost and guest experience.
A strong workforce continuity plan answers a few practical questions before they become urgent:
- Which roles and departments carry the highest concentration of risk?
- What is the realistic timeline to source, hire, and train a replacement for each role?
- Which recruiting channels and partners can be activated quickly if needed?
- Who owns communication with employees if a disruption occurs?
- Who is accountable to ownership, brand partners, and other stakeholders?
The most common mistake organizations make is treating a sudden staffing shortage as a recruiting problem alone. Recruiting is only one piece. Without clear internal communication, a plan for redistributing critical work, and a realistic view of the financial impact, even a successful hiring push can arrive too late to prevent operational strain and negative guest impact.
Building a More Resilient Operating Model
The organizations that successfully navigate labor disruptions have one thing in common: they treat workforce planning as a business strategy rather than an HR function. They know where they’re vulnerable, they track turnover trends closely, they invest in employee engagement and retention — and they build recruiting relationships before they need them.
Retention is one of the most effective — and underused — workforce strategies. Replacing an experienced, long-tenured employee can cost thousands of dollars once recruiting, onboarding, training, and lost productivity are all accounted for. Experienced employees are also more productive, require less supervision, and contribute directly to guest satisfaction. They are among the most valuable assets of the property, a long-term investment to be protected and enhanced.
Beyond retention, the most resilient organizations also invest in cross-training, leadership development, continuous improvement, and strategic partnerships – all techniques for building operational flexibility without adding management burden.
The goal is not to eliminate every risk — that is simply unrealistic
in a business built on people. The goal is to build an operating model
that can absorb disruption without disturbing the guest experience.
The Difference Between Staffing and Managed Services
A staffing agency fills open positions. A managed services provider accepts accountability for measurable outcomes, in partnership with the operational leaders of the property.
That distinction matters more than it may appear at first. A true managed services partner, like The Service Companies, is accountable for sourcing, recruiting, onboarding, scheduling, training, performance management, retention, and delivering on measured operational outcomes — not just for supplying names to fill a schedule. That level of accountability allows hotel, casino, and resort leadership to stay focused on guests, owners, and overall property performance instead of navigating day-to-day staffing challenges.
Housekeeping, EVS, Stewarding, Laundry, Public Area Cleaning, and similar support functions are often the best candidates for this kind of partnership, because they require constant staffing and operational discipline, and because they directly influence the guest experience in ways that are immediately visible.
Three Recommendations for the Next 12 to 24 Months
Based on my experience with people-powered organizations, I have three recommendations for hospitality executives who want to successfully navigate TPS, earn the loyalty of their people, and build resilience in their workforce strategy.
- First, lead with facts, not assumptions. Ensure your I-9 processes are accurate, stay plugged into the evolving compliance landscape, and remember that every employee’s situation is unique — broad assumptions about any group of employees can create both legal and human risks.
- Second, don’t lose sight of the people behind the policy changes. Many employees are navigating real uncertainty about their future and their families. While employers must follow the law, they can also communicate with empathy, answer questions honestly, and treat every employee with dignity throughout the process.
- Third, make workforce resilience part of your business strategy, not a reactive response to the latest headline. Organizations that consistently recruit, retain, cross-train, and build operational flexibility are far better positioned to navigate labor market changes than those that have to scramble when vacancies occur.
TPS is the big issue on today’s agenda. Next year it may be a different program, a new law, or an entirely unexpected labor market pressure. The operators who thrive will be the ones who build workforce strategies with the durability and resilience to meet whatever challenges may come.
About the Author
Amanda Sullivan is Senior Vice President, People at The Service Companies, leading Human Resources & Talent Acquisition strategy. Prior to joining TSC in 2019 as Senior Director of Talent Acquisition, Ms. Sullivan was Director, Global Campus Recruiting for MSH International, where she oversaw Restaurant Brands International’s Global Campus and Corporate Recruitment Programs for Burger King, Tim Hortons, and Popeyes. She holds an MBA and is Six Sigma certified.