How to Retain Employees Better... By Asking These 10 Simple Questions

From Better Chains

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I've heard that hotel staff deliberately disable the keycards of guests they dislike. Can anyone confirm this, or tell of other things hospitality staff do to get back at badly behaved patrons?

Just a little thought at all should tell you that this story is not credible.

If I took a dislike to a guest, the last thing I would want to do is disable his key card, unless there was some business or security related reason I had to, because you know exactly what's going to happen: the guy's not going to be able to get into his room, and he's going to be at the desk, in your face, complaining, and you've got to put up with him, for at least long enough to fix his card.

The same goes for any other juvenile pranks that you might want to do to a guest to get paybacks or make his life miserable. Never mind the guest is unhappy (which is always a very large concern with us), but any employee who enjoys the kind of confrontation that would result from something like that is too sick to have a job.Even if you feel that it's justified in some way, it just doesn't work.

And that's before we even go there about the consequences if the guest complaints to management . . . or even worse, to the franchise organization (who will often comp the room and give him a full refund and a bunch of free coupons to make him feel better about the whole thing, just for showing up and complaining, then bill it all back to your hotel, and you're going to have a very unhappy general manager) . . or the health department.

This isn't just a Starbucks disease

Many hotels are bad about it, too.

Business Insider article: Starbucks is quietly changing the business as furious baristas slam the 'cult that pays $9 per hour'

Observations:

We've seen this before: Management wants to micromanage the customer experience and leans too heavily upon 'service' and connection (which you can't force). Some even attempt to use it to cover inadequacies in the operation or facility itself. It makes any employee exposed to culpability for anything, and makes for a very unhealthy work environment.

No matter what the 'benefits' are, their value will show up as nebulous if you're not paying a living wage.

How far should hotels go to please and appease dissatisfied or unhappy guests?

I've seen very well-run hotels - ranging from economy to full service - draw a high number of guest complaints. I've seen some very sloppily run hotels - properties with obvious housekeeping, maintenance, or service problems - that drew almost none at all. Some of my colleagues have also noticed the phenomenon, so we sat down one time, asked why, and actually drew a graph. (X axis=frequency and occurrence of guest complaints on a scale of 1 to 10, Y axis=condition of property and quality of staff, service, etc. - 'is this a good hotel?' - on a scale of 1 to 10) and included every property in which any of us had ever worked.

What set the 'high-guest-complaint' hotels apart from where the guests were more content? Managers and staff buy into the complaints when they occur. Yes, you want to keep the guests happy; yes, you don't argue with an unhappy guest and yes, of course, you want to be sensitive to their needs and fix the problem. But the flipside of that is, you don't swing the other way. You don't get emotionally invested in the guest or the complaint, you don't over-respond... effectively, you don't "reward" the guest for having a complaint. You apologize, fix the complaint - and stop when the problem's been solved and the guest is happy and willing to come back, and leave it at that. Added 'delight' on the part of the guest following a problem or complaint gives you a nice, warm, fuzzy feeling inside, but over time it works against you.




(Yes, I want the guest to be 'delighted' too, to experience a higher level of satisfaction than he or she expected. But I want it to happen in response to what we do well, 99.5% of the time, not as a result of a one-out-of-two-hundred complaint. Doing good is the norm for what we do. Problems are the exception.)

What are some of the best ways to control attrition in restaurants and hospitality industry?

Authenticity. Real caring. Real respect. Real commitment. Real training. Starting with you. Treat your people like people, not objects to be manipulated, machines to perform mechanical functions, or puppets to perform on a string. Be real yourself, know the difference between real and phony, and don't reward or promote the phony.

If this doesn't sound much like a 'professional' 'service program' or 'employee engagement program', it's the best you're going to get out of me. I don't like such commercially produced programs. I can't make one and give it to you. A 'store-bought' solution won't work (although many are out there - I wish I had a quarter for every off-the-shelf whiz-bang program developed by some starry-eyed dreamer, and a dollar for every hundred-dollar-an-hour consultant offering one.). It has to come from you and your company. 

Otherwise, it's counterproductive. Would such a program or scheme motivate you? If hearing the magic words in its message goes right over your head, puts you to sleep, or (worst of all) sets off your own crap detector, you can bet it will do the same with your hourly help. And if you haven't spent an evening shift with your desk clerk, an eleven-to-seven shift with your night auditor, or a day with one of your room attendants at the location at which you plan to use it, you have no business even shopping for one. 

Nearly all of them are dreamed up by people who have no idea what it's like to  work in your workplace and deal with the day-to-day reality of it. Your  staff will know this as soon as they begin hearing or reading the material presented to them. 

When an employee threatens to resign and uses it as a negotiating tool, what is the ideal response from HR managers or company management?

"There's the freakin' door . . . It's even got a backlighted sign mounted over it telling you in simple, one-step instructions exactly what you can do with it."

If someone has a legitimate (or at least respectable) grievance, or reasonable provocation, I can see them getting a little wound up. In that event, they really shouldn't have to make the threat: it could be, they're just getting emotional . . .



But as a negotiating tool?  Don't let the door hit you where Mother Nature split you. 

If they even make the attempt (in the form of a threat, rather than just describing an option if they do happen to have prospects elsewhere), it's highly questionable whether they need to be working there to begin with. I once had an employment lawyer share with me that, in every single case of employment-related litigation that crossed his desk it invariably developed, once all the potential witnesses are interviewed and discovery is completed, that the employment situation with that particular employee had broken down long ago and had not been working out for either the employer or the employee for quite some time. Whatever actually precipitated the termination, or the angry resignation, and the ensuing lawsuit was merely the catalyst, the 'final straw'. 

As a newly appointed manager at a store with mainly college students as employees (I myself am 22), how do I assert my new authority without the transition being too harsh or uncomfortable for all involved?

Don't worry about your authority. Your only concern is getting the job done. Okay, you have this store to run, you have these (however many) people to help . . .



Stay focused on objectives, not your 'position'. Everyone can buy into objectives. No one cares, or wants to care, about anyone's position. You can walk on water without getting your feet wet and still have people not wanting to buy into your 'position' . . .

Originally appeared on Quora

Is backstabbing a fundamental part of capitalism? (It seems that "The 48 Laws of Power" are a very effective set of tools that most mediocre minded people follow to dishonorable success, is this true? Are only a small percentage of entrepreneurs fair?)

I haven't read the book and can't comment on it. And I really can't say what percentage of entrepreneurs can be described as 'fair', because I try to deal only with those who are fair to me, deal only if I have to with those who aren't (and watch them), and don't keep a count.

But let me share a secret with you. Capitalism is about making money, by either creating and offering something of value that people are willing to pay for, or by connecting people and setting up trade in a more efficient way that the participants are willing to pay for. It's not about power. It's not about manipulation, domination, and control. It's not about getting into bitch fights with other companies (particularly competitors) or your co-workers at the office, and 'ruining' them or 'destroying' them, as depicted on the Dallas TV series from the '80's (the J. R. Ewing character was quite the poster child for that) and several other sitcoms that have come and gone on prime time since. (Yes, I said 'sitcoms'. Well, I got a good laugh out of some of the stuff that happens in them.). It's not about politics, and it's certainly not about crappy politics, brownnosing and backstabbing. You see stuff like that frequently. But it's not what capitalism, or 'advancing in your career' if you're an 'intermural' player, is all about.

How do I play office politics in order to get promoted at my office?

However you want, for as long as you last.

And if you're really good at it, you won't get caught: that's the nature of manipulation. Good luck with it.

We have a test that we give out to our employees a couple of times a year -- more often if we suspect a problem -- that I originally read about in a book about the Israeli Defense Forces years ago.

It's a major factor in how they select their officers. One thing about the IDF with which I've always been impressed, is how all of their officers begin as enlistees, starting at the very bottom; unlike American and British and Commonwealth forces that automatically put college graduates on an officer track, and just as arbitrarily consider anyone without a four-year degree as unqualified for any more than enlisted service: regardless of eventual experience, achievement or performance. (E-9, Sergeant Major or Master Chief -- which is still quite respectable -- is as high as he can go, unless, of course, he earns a degree while he's in service). As a college dropout who has frequently missed opportunities and experienced stalled career progression over the years for lack of a degree, my own very strong feelings are that there must be a better, more effective, more fair, and less arbitrary way to spot people with talent and potential; and that's what I want very much for any company that I run. If you're my competitor, go right ahead and mindlessly refuse to put anyone other than 'highly qualified' college pukes in your company's key positions. I'll have just the right people, with the precise skills, abilities and talent that I need -- including, perhaps, some of your rejects -- and I'll blow past you so fast that, despite our focus on what really matters, we'll actually regret just a little that we were moving too fast to see the look on your face as we passed you.

Considering the capabilities of that testing system, I'm thinking, if they give it to every guy in the Israeli army, how much of a secret can it be? And wouldn't it be really great to get a copy of that test and adapt it for use in an American workplace? And, it turns out, it's no secret, it's freely available. The only thing noteworthy about the IDF's use of it is that back in the sixties when they discovered it, they picked up on it and ran with it. A few American companies use it as well. It's very open-source: the psychologists who developed it have shared it around even more freely than Myers-Briggs. You can draw up the test yourself in accordance with the prescribed format, administer it, and there's a cheap shareware download that you can use to score it (the scoring algorithm is the only part to which there's any complexity at all).