Over the years, whether running
hotels or as a consultant helping
other hospitality organizations, I have
been focused on understanding how
managers and companies can help their
people move beyond the mundane
and status quo and start to exceed
expectations of both their internal and
external customers. Here are some
tips on how to start building a more
engaging culture for your hospitality
business:
1. Keep things simple. Don’t create so
many policies and rules that your
people spend more time completing
administrative tasks and paperwork
than doing actual meaningful work.
I have seen companies require
too many signatures, too many
approvals, and create too many
68 ILHA
unnecessary steps to complete
a task. We are great at adding
steps to a process but awful at
taking anything away for fear of
missing something. Stop inundating
your employees with worthless
information that creates noise and
makes it difficult to discern what’s
actually important. Our CYA
(Cover Your Ass) culture means
organizations send information to
everyone via email and consider this
as effective communication—it’s
not. Make it easy for people to
work for you and to get their work
done by communicating clearly and
concisely, and always check that
your message was understood.
2. Have a clear purpose and set of
values that truly guide how your
people and hospitality business
operates. The purpose and values
need to permeate throughout
your hospitality organization.
Communicate these often so that
employees realize their importance.
Your purpose and values need to be
discussed in the selection process,
promoted in orientation, defined
in the initial training, utilized in
decision-making, included as a
part of all feedback discussions,
recognized and incentivized, and
most importantly, seen in your
senior managers’ actions and words.
Too many hospitality companies
have a purpose or values that do
not truly guide how decisions are
made, and, in turn, employees lack
direction. Make sure your purpose
and values are meaningful and not