Ms. Lewis

Human Resources, Recruitment & Training

Retaining Your Front-line Employees with Great (but Simple!) Talent Management

By Rene Lewis, Director of Human Resources , Signature Worldwide

Great employees know the importance of good customer service. They are willing to dedicate themselves to the success of the company they work for, especially if they are motivated and recognized for their success. Let them know how important they are to the company and to the customers. Pat your employees on the back for a job well done – they need you and you need them!

“Form doesn’t matter. Just get back on the saddle and hang on!” That’s what I recently said to a good friend of mine in an attempt to inspire her back into exercising. It came to mind as I thought of businesses having bad habits that can ruin whole or parts of organizations. One of the worst bad habits is poor customer service. So in this example, form definitely matters in customer service. Just getting your customers in the door isn’t enough anymore. We need them to come back, tell their friends and family, write us positive reviews, and engage with us in social media discussions.

Most of us will admit that our customers are extremely savvy. In some cases, I bet your customers know more than your employees know – specifically about specials, packages, and what specific “honored” guests receive, when they stay with you. Customers are online checking out deals and doing comparative shopping through their mobile phones and notebooks. They are looking at ratings on the numerous sites that also list the good, and bad, reviews about your hotel and your direct competitors in the neighborhood.

When it comes to customer service, and retaining your great customer service talent, it’s definitely time for a change. Nikki Baird, who is Managing Partner at RSR Research, said, “Customers have much more power in the [relationship] than they used to have, and there’s no end in sight. When Girl Scout cookies have MySpace pages … and when a consumer can compare prices and availability through a Google product on their phone … the balance of power has fundamentally shifted.”

So if customers have the power, what is a great hotel to do? The answer is to create great experiences that create great reviews and recommendations! This means retaining your front-line people who do great work. Without them, you’re in a losing battle with a bad habit of poor customer service.

In regards to your hourly employees, keep this information in mind:

1. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, turnover for hourly employees hovered around 4.5 percent per month, which translates to 54 percent annually. It’s usually much higher in the hospitality industries and can be over 100 percent annually.
   
2. Hourly workers are half of the U.S. workforce.
   
3. 8 out of 10 of the fastest growing U.S. jobs are hourly positions. We are becoming a service-centered economy.
   
4. Many employers target college students to fill part-time or hourly positions.

The United States is becoming a service-based economy and we need our employees to represent our organization and brand in ways we’ve never asked them to before. Your managers have to manage these people as they have never managed them before. We need to think about who is the best at providing the service our customers want and then think about what it takes to retain them.

It takes less than you might think to establish a good retention strategy. Even though our business may be changing, people really haven’t changed that much. And, creating engaged employees and great customer experiences will do the trick.

Here are some basic steps to get your form right in serving your customers and retaining your great talent:

Find out what your customers are saying about you. What’s great that you want to continue and what needs fixed, based on your brand or organizational expectations? Here are ways to find out:

1. Sign up with a review/social-media monitoring tool such as Review Analyst ($99 per month) or Revinate ($150 per month). These help you manage your online reputation.
   

2. If you don’t have this kind of budget, invest time in looking at the following websites. If it’s easy for your customer, it’s easy for you. If you don’t have the time, you can always delegate this research to an interested employee. Getting superstars involved in your business is a great way to retain and actively engage them. Make notes about the ratings and comments about your service level:
   a. TripAdvisor.com
   b. Hotels.com
   c. Oyster.com

3. Make it a point to summarize, or to read, the comment cards/surveys customers complete before they leave.
   

4. Meet with your staff and ask their opinions about your customers’ experiences. They know more than you think! Be sure to ask them for examples of both positive and negative experiences so it doesn’t turn into a demoralizer. In addition, to encourage the discussion, tell them to leave out names of co-workers so this process isn’t viewed as punitive.

List your top three areas for improvement and your top three areas to reinforce. Meet with your staff to talk about these things and get their ideas for improvement. Don’t have time? Try one of these easy ways:

1. Schedule a short shift meeting for all employee shifts that week. Work as a team to come up with some solutions to the problems and little ways to celebrate the good things. This should take a minimum of 15 minutes.
   
2. Have your managers and supervisors do this meeting. It will engage them and make them part of the improvement process. It will retain them, too!
   
3. Put together a focus group to talk about this. A sample of the employees who you think will be honest, open and productive is a good way to choose. This is a good choice if you can’t meet with everyone.
   
4. Send an email/memo to all employees that list your “good” and “bad” findings, and ask for their opinions about solutions and celebrations. Give them a form to fill out and hand in, anonymously if they want.

Look at the results of the employee information and make a short plan to do small things to make a difference. Celebrating success will retain the employees who do the best work!

1. List just one or two things employees can do to improve on the areas of service where you have problems.
   
2. Determine ways to celebrate the improvements – once a month take an exemplary employee to lunch or give them a $10 gift card, or just send a thank you note. Again, make your life easy by keeping it simple. These will go a long way in reinforcing successes. Employees who are recognized and rewarded will stick around.
   
3. Determine ways to celebrate and reinforce the positive results from your employee information. Develop a short, one-page communication that summarizes what your great employees do right. Send it to all employees.
   
4. Create a weekly or monthly communication to your staff identifying great experiences that have taken place.
   
5. Counsel employees who are not working your plan – it’s your business at stake. It will send a message to those employees who care that you care, too!

The bottom line is that great employees want to know that YOU know they have done a good job. They want to be involved in your business. They want you to communicate with them about the state of your hotel’s affairs. If you do this, your great people have a greater motivation to stay. Why? Because they have a stake in the success and they understand their impact on customer service.

If you take even a few of the steps above, you will see a difference in customer service and the engagement of your staff. Your “form” will improve and you won’t just be hanging on for the ride. You will be controlling it!

As the director of human resources for Signature Worldwide, Rene Lewis is responsible for talent management, employee relations, workforce planning, change management, company communications, leadership training and strategic organization planning. Ms. Lewis brings nearly 15 years of human resources experience to Signature, with 10 of those years being at the leadership level. She has held manager and director positions while working for such companies as Red Envelope, Orange County California, Gap Inc. and Caterpillar Logistics Services. Ms. Lewis can be contacted at 614-766-5101 or renelewis@signatureworldwide.com Extended Bio...

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