Mr. Kelleher

Human Resources, Recruitment & Training

You Don’t Want Satisfied Employees Staffing Your Hotels

By Bob Kelleher , CEO, The Employee Engagement Group

Engagement is particularly important in a hotel setting, where employee performance largely drives overall performance on various indicators — such as cleanliness, response time, absenteeism, and especially, customer service. Here are 10 steps hotels can take to improve engagement:

1. The link to high performance

Hotels need to build a culture of mutual commitment, by reiterating that both leadership and employees are in this together. You must make the business case for high performance and need to link assessment of individual employee performance to measurable and objectionable goals, and then bake these individual performance goals into the overall hotel goals. Clear, consistent communication should continually keep employees informed about your hotel’s goals, and performance against these goals. Employees are motivated by achievement, and the more a hotel can link the overall hotel goal’s with an individual’s goals, the better off you are.

Although we’re seeing a rebound, these have been a couple of challenging years for the hotelity business with both tourism and business travels. Successful leaders need to share the realities of the hotel’s results with staff. What is our occupancy rate? What is our occupancy rate against plan? Are we ahead or behind our business plan for the year? By being open and transparent with business results, employees will better be able to understand why raises might be lower than previous years. Establishing a “we’re in this together” culture should be your goal.

2. It starts at the top

Embedding employee engagement and high performance in an organization's culture require a high level champion. Successful leaders understand that they own engagement. You shouldn't delegate engagement to HR or corporate communication. The entire hotel leadership team, including your general manager, sales manger, hospitality director, etc. needs to practice the same principles and values that they want the rest of the hotel to exhibit. Never underestimate the shadow your leaders cast within your hotel!

3. Engage first-line leaders

Once your hotel’s leadership team is committed, the balance of the hotel staff needs to become aligned. The importance of line leaders is sometimes underestimated, but in actuality, one of the most significant drivers of engagement is an employee's relationship with his or her line manager. In fact, according to Gallup research, it is the number one driver of employee engagement!. If you have disengaged “people leaders”, their direct reports are 3 times more likely to be disengaged themselves according to a 2009 Sirota Intelligence Study.

Hotels may assume that if you're a good front desk representative, you'll be an effective front desk manager. We often promote someone with success as an individual contributor into a role where they lack the experience or skills to be effective supervising people. We then sit back and wonder why he or she is not successful. They may have great customer service skills, but lack the behaviors and traits necessary to lead and engage staff. Unfortunately, as we’ll discuss in Step 10, most hotels do a woeful job of identifying the ideal behaviors and traits that define successful line management within their hotel. Often, they give battlefield promotions, provide minimal training, and wonder why their employees are not engaged.

4. Communication

I call communication the cornerstone of engagement. So much of an engaged culture is driven by how a leader communicates with his / her employees. Hotels must promote open communication between all levels of employees to build alignment, trust, and buy-in. You also need to leverage all venues of communication, such as traditional methods — open door policies, all hands meetings, memos, and email — as well as newer methods — such as the hotel GM blogging, texting, and building on the various social media platforms. Half of the world’s population is under the age of 30 -social media is not going away!

5. Individualize your engagement

Just as no two hotel employees are the same, neither are their engagement drivers. Some are driven by personal achievement, some by recognition and others by safety and security. Often, these differences are generational, so a hotel may consider training managers on how motivators vary by generation. Line managers need to know the motivators of their employees and use those to drive engagement. A simple exercise is to meet with an employee to gain an understanding of what the employee “loves to do”, “what they’re great at”, and “what needs to get done”. This discussion really helps managers understand the intrinsic motivational drivers of their employees.

6. Create a motivational culture

While managers can certainly take a number of steps (such as the ones outlined here) to motivate employees, I do not believe it is possible for a manager to motivate each employee long term. Instead, managers should focus on creating an overall culture that encourages self-motivation. Here are some questions to ask: Does the manager provide opportunities to advance? Are employees' ideas and opinions solicited? Are employees allowed to question the status quo? Is there open, honest and frequent communication? Are employees empowered to make decisions? Is there a culture of recognition? One hotel I know of posts “Thank you for making a difference” cards throughout the hotel. Any guest, employee, manager, can simply fill out a card and drop it in a bin to recognize any employee. Monthly, a hotel sweatshirt, gift certificate, or other recognition award is given to the most recognized employee.

7. Create feedback mechanisms

Hotels must ensure employee feedback is actively sought and taken seriously. If employee opinions aren't valued, it can greatly reduce their motivation to do "what's best for the company." Employee engagement surveys are valuable feedback mechanisms as well as 360-degree feedback programs that are used to assess managers. Although 360-degree assessments are an important feedback tool, hotels should conduct training before implementing. You want to make the focus on staff development, not an exercise to criticize.

8. Reinforce and reward the right behaviors (and consequences for undesired behaviors)

In order to maintain engagement, hotels must demonstrate that high performance is rewarded and poor performance has consequences. Once you tolerate mediocre performance, you give the impression to others that the hotel tolerates underperformance. When you do this, you actually disengage your performers.

Here is a recent example of a company that provided a 10 percent bonus to all employees, across the board. While the move sounds good in theory, he argues it rewards all performers equally, which actually undermines a culture focused on high performance. An employee who's busting his hump sees that the person not pulling his weight got the same increase, so there's no motivation to keep that high performer at the same level. And there is no motivation for the underperformer to improve! This is why I discourage hotels from hotel- wide gain sharing. Although I’m all for sharing in rewards, hotels should redirect rewards and recognition to the most deserving staff. Treating everyone the same will discourage top performers from remaining top performers while discouraging others to reach top performance.

9. Track and communicate progress and success

Employees don't want to fail, but often don’t know what the score is. Creating that link requires tracking progress through metrics and then sharing progress openly with all hotel employees through various forms of communication. Employees should always know what metrics the hotel is using to assess performance and how the organization is currently performing against those metrics. For example, a hotel should share its customer service ranking on a regular basis as well as how the hotel compares to its hotel peer group. Given that employee and their leaders share a common goal (they both want to win!), it is important for all employees to understand the scorecard.

10. Hire and promote engaged employees for your culture

I tell some of my clients, 'you don't have an engagement issue; what you have is a hiring issue.' The key to an engaged culture is hiring and retaining employees that can thrive within your particular hotel. I recommend that hotels focus on identifying the shared behaviors and traits of their best performers in the organization and then seek out job applicants that share those qualities. Skills and education are always emphasized in the hiring process, but I would argue a set of consistent behaviors and traits that align with the organization are even is more valuable in a hiring decision.

In summary, building a culture of employee engagement is not a program, nor it is a “one size fits all” approach to talent management. Engagement is a process that requires time and customization to root, be embedded in a hotel’s strategic plan, and must be able to stand the test of time (during both and recessionary windows). Success is dependent on the mutual commitment between a hotel’s leadership and its employees. Hotels with a tenacious commitment towards engaging its employees will discover that it is the secret sauce to running a successful hotel or hotel chain!

Bob Kelleher is a noted speaker, thought leader, and author of the critically acclaimed LOUDER THAN WORDS: 10 Practical Employee Engagement Steps That Drive Results, which has climbed to the #3 Workplace book, #5 HR book, and #12 Management book on Amazon. A sought-after consultant, Mr. Kelleher travels the globe sharing his insights on employee engagement, leadership, and workforce trends. As CEO of The Employee Engagement Group, he also helps leadership teams better engage their employees and drive profitable growth. Mr. Kelleher can be contacted at 508-935-8070 or rkelleher@employeeengagement.com Extended Bio...

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