Effective leadership is unleashing employee power… special guest Robertson Hunter Stewart
Employee Power Unleashed
The book was born out of the need to prove a point about employees being the priority for a business.
If you get the employee bit right the rest happens.
In the hospitality business the employees are the front-liners facing, speaking, and managing the guests. They need to be empowered, have the right training, enough autonomy so that they can do their jobs. Couple with this there has to be trust in that fact that the employees can do their jobs well. Without that there won’t be good performances consistently.
An analysis of comments on Trip Advisor showed that nine out of ten times it’s not about the product but about the people. The service quality. This is where having an engaged employee becomes especially important.
What’s the first thing to do in order to have an engaged employee?
First thing to remember is that people work for people. Not for companies. So for a manager it’s critical to ensure the team can communicate properly within themselves and others, that they are treated well, and provide the correct equipment and resources required for them to do their job. Give them the opportunity to perform and support it with the right training so that employees can use these tools and are comfortable doing so. At all times the communication channels must be open and as a manager you have to be there to listen.
At the end of the day it’s not C.A.R.E. – Customers Are Really Everything; it’s E.A.R.E.– Employees Are Really Everything. This is so because its the employees who are giving the service, So all conditions should be conducive to help the employee perform.
As a manager you have to ensure that your employees know that you care for them as a person. If that link is missing, then there won’t be any engagement.
At this time of the global pandemic the care factor is definitely more heightened. People want to be able to trust and the first step on that is towards the employers and leaders. Going forward as the restrictions ease, country by country, and companies want their employees to start coming back into the office, this care factor is going to get more pronounced and actually result in creating the employee engagement in a post-pandemic time.
Care is important as it has a financial implication also. In the hotel industry the cost of replacing an employee with a new one is approximately USD 4000. Therefore, by putting in the effort to engage the employees one can directly show cost-saving.
Managers get the people they deserve. If you’re a good leader you attract similar people. On the other hand, if you’re just managing processes and not leading then you end up having a dysfunctional team. The good ones would leave, leaving behind the ones who can’t get a job and a group who simply just ticks the box.
This is so applicable in employee engagement. One gets what one deserves and its purely up to the management to ensure employees are well engaged through correct care and attention so that they perform well and don’t leave. It’s key to remember that in a team there are a group of individuals and each is unique and needs care and attention.
As people grow the business grows.
Robertson can be contacted at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertson-hunter-stewart-90538b1a/
About the author, Ross
Behavioural leadership coach committed to bringing more soul into business and reducing a leader's stress in managing their people