Getting the Most out of our Employees
July 2007
No matter how good a business plan a tourism entity may have, tourism is a customer service oriented business. Tourism business, be they airlines or hotels, attractions or restaurants depend on employees who care about people and who care about their company’s success. While this maximum has always been true in tourism, the tourism industry due to a changing political climate, high oil prices and climate changes is passing through some very uncertain times. A good rule of thumb is that especially during periods of economic and political uncertainly a great part of a business’ ability to weather unforeseen ups and downs is based on the loyalty and quality of its employees. If tourism staff members are not loyal and team players, then no amount of good advertising or marketing will be able to compensate for the poor service and bad reputation that the tourism business has. Tourism then is an employee driven business that depends on the good will, caring and loyalty of its employees. To help you create this necessary employee commitment, Tourism Tidbits offers the following ideas and suggestions.
- Try to remember who was your worst and best boss, then make a list of his/her worst and best qualities. Despite all of our education, often our best education came from life’s experiences. Think about for whom you enjoyed working and for whom work was merely doing your job. What were the positive leadership skills of your best bosses, how did they win your loyalty? Then reverse the process and think about what made you dread going to work when you had a bad boss. What were his/her mistakes? Write down the positive and negative points of each. That simple outline will tell you a lot about what not to do and what to do.
- Think about your employees in the most positive manner possible. Each of your employees has something special to add to the organization’s success. Seek out their special qualities and work to develop those qualities. Never forget that the more successful they are at their job, the better is your tourism product. Talk to your employees, learn something special about each one and then build on strengths rather than trying to correct weaknesses. By getting to know you employees on a personal level you may discover talents that will make them more valuable to the company and happier at their jobs.
- Make sure that rewards given to staff are meaningful. By getting to know one’s employees gifts and rewards can be given that do not appear to be standardized but rather have a special meaning to each person. Make the reward fit not only the job but also the person doing the job. Use rewards, certificates and thank you notes as a way to inspire workers to accomplish both long term and short-term goals.
- Honor your volunteers. Many tourism entities depend on not only paid staff but also volunteers. If you forget to recognize your volunteers, not only will they cease to work for you, but also paid staff morale soon begins to drop. There is a close relationship between levels of politeness and caring and our employees’ willingness to go the extra mile to permit the tourism entity to provide the best customer service possible.
- Make sure that you employees understand both your positive and negative expectations. If there are values that you wish to emphasize, then go over these values repeatedly. It takes time for values to become part of a person’s psyche. These values need to be emphasized and then re-emphasized again. In a like manner, every organization has a set of certain not-acceptable behaviors that an organization cannot tolerate. Do not assume that your employees were born knowing these regulations. Review them often and in a polite but firm manner make sure that all employees understand the consequences for breaking this code.
- Provide employees not only with the best equipment possible, but also with the time to learn to use the equipment and to use it. That means that you have to balance employee expectations with the realities of your business and the equipment that you can afford. Tourism is often a high-pressure industry. Our customers want service now and that means that we must be willing to permit employees to make on the spot decision.
- Make sure that people know how you define success. Often what an employers sees as a success may be different then what his/her employees see as a success. Make sure that all employees know what your priorities are, where success lies and how you define your success scale. A success scale also helps employees know where to place their efforts and what are your business priorities.
- Know what expectations your employees have of you. For example, nothing undercuts morale than a lack of honesty. If you cannot give out a specific piece of information, say so. If you do not yet have the information, make sure that your employees know that you will give out X amount of information at hoped-for specific times. On the whole, due to the fact that many front line tourism decisions must be made on the spot, tourism professionals like to be given regular training, informal and formal feedback on how well they are doing, a great deal of professional responsibility to make decisions in the field, and the least amount of red tape possible. The Ritz Carlton’s policy of permitting employees to “spend” a certain amount of money to make a customer happy is a good applied example of this policy
