I am all about engagement, having experienced firsthand the connection between employee engagement and customer satisfaction. A key engagement driver is creating an environment in which your employees’ opinions and ideas matter. As such, leadership teams must empower employees to seek ways to improve the guest experience, boost profitability, build brand, improve marketing, and improve quality. To be better than your competitors, you have to be different – and your employees often have the answers. Perhaps you just haven’t asked. Or perhaps you have but no one responded. Or perhaps you’ve asked, heard, and forgot about following up on your “we’ll get back to you” reply.

Many leaders fail to create a safe environment for employees to contribute ideas. Or worse, they create an environment in which new ideas are met with rejection. I tell leadership teams that if they want to kill employee engagement or employee initiative, then they simply tell employees that they can’t do something “...because that’s not how we do it here”, or “...because we’ve tried that before” or “...because management will never accept that” or “...because it is not policy”. A ...