The process by which a leader inspires and guides their team to achieve common goals. Business growth is driven by employee engagement.
Why is it Important?
The leader can inspire others, help the team reach decisions, foster cooperation, and help the team move in the right direction. Effective leadership makes the process easier and produces results.
How does It Impact your Business?
Leadership directly affects the way employees perform their work effectively and efficiently.
Leadership Resources: Learning Focus
-
- Establish your team’s shared Beliefs, Values, and Goals
- Model behavior for your team
- Recognize the importance of Accountability
- Create an atmosphere of Creativity
Leadership: How Employee Engagement Drives Growth for Your Business
As a customer service-centered industry, hotels need to focus on employee engagement in order to be successful. Engagement allows hotels to flourish by putting employees first, which will in turn benefit by giving guests the best service possible.
Why is it Important?
Regardless of location, size, and type, your business’s commitment to each employee’s emotional and functional well-being is increasingly vital to your business’s efficiency and bottom line.
How Does it Impact your Business?
Improve operational efficiency and your bottom-line profit. Hotel employees who are satisfied can save and generate money for your hotel in two big ways: Retention and a Positive Guest Experience. Guests simply get better service from a more engaged staff, encouraging repeat business and positive reviews.
Related Task
With your Area Director, review your hotel’ engagement plan. What is Culture and Core Values do you want to instill?
Leadership: Leading Your Team
What is Leadership? Leadership is the art of motivating a team to act toward achieving a common goal.
Why is it Important?
Good leadership qualities of Owners/Managers in the hospitality industry bring about mutual respect in the work environment. Both “people skills” and “business skills” are needed and a good Owner/Manager will exhibit both.
How Does it Impact your Business?
Good leaders directly impact employees, their productivity, and the success of the hotel.
Leadership: Employee Orientation
The orientation process is a chance for you and your training staff to provide new employees with information about your hotel and the specifics of the role they’re about to begin.
Why is it Important?
Orientation is important because it is foundational for the new employee’s entire career with your hotel and that specific department. First impressions are important. They establish the basis for everything that follows. Without orientation, a new employee can sometimes feel uncomfortable in his/her new position and takes longer to reach his/her full potential.
Orientation is important because it:
- Provides the new employee with concise and accurate information to make him/her more comfortable in the job;
- Encourages employee confidence and helps the new employee adapt faster to the job;
How Does it Impact your Business?
- Contributes to a more effective, productive workforce
- Improves employee retention
- Promotes communication between the supervisor and the new employee
Related Task
Review your Hotel’s Orientation Checklist. If none exist, work with your Area Director to help create.
Leadership: Developing a Successful Team
Developing a Success Team is essential at your hotel, where there are so many tasks that depend on teamwork. New Leaders need to be aware of the characteristics of successful teams. These include Objectives; Roles; Guidelines; Relationships; Individual team members; Working as a whole team and relationships among teammates/departments.
Why is it Important?
When teams have clearly defined roles, they’re able to complete their tasks and work efficiently. This allows them to better serve the needs of customers and clients.
How Does it Impact your Business?
Enables the team to work together to achieve the established goal of ownership.
Related Task
With Area Director, Review current new hire orientation. List key team development opportunities you want to implement at your hotel.
Leadership: Motivating with Team Communication and Collaboration
Teamwork is based on relationships. It is important, as a new owner, that you demonstrate this with trust in your team, patience in what they do on a daily basis, and being mindful of what your team is feeling.
Why is it Important?
Your employees want to feel a part of something larger. They desire to be recognized for their efforts, praised for work well done, challenged at times, given constructive feedback where appropriate, and asked for their thoughts and ideas.
How Does it Impact your Business?
It’s simple. Employee motivation can have a positive effect on their performance and can enhance their work output. Plus, motivated teams tend to want to stay and work at your hotel.
Leadership: Handling Team Conflict
Conflict in a hotel can include employees as well as departments, guest and employees and of course, guest themselves.
Why is it Important?
Your staff is entrusted with taking care of your guest and giving them a memorable experience. When your staff is happy, working together as a team, their focus will be on business – your guest!
Just listening can help solve many staff disputes. Allowing your employees the opportunity to express their problems can often be enough. Simple resolution conflict steps include: Preparing for a Resolution, Understanding the Situation, and Reaching an Agreement.
How Does it Impact your Business?
Handling conflict effectively encourages staff to trust each other and work together. When trust is lacking, it affects your business. Creating that culture is vital to your success.
Leadership: Strategies for Building a Cohesive Team
Team cohesiveness is vital in determining how effective your team will be. A cohesion allows your team to function as a unit, working closely and efficiently to achieve common goals.
Why is it Important?
A cohesive team improves employee performance and increases motivation among a team.
How Does it Impact your Business?
Team cohesion is important in the workplace as it leads to greater hotel success, improved employee satisfaction, and increased motivation. A clear understanding of individual roles, team goals, and trust that each person is contributing help build towards your overall success.
Leadership – Applicant Screening: The First Step in Hiring the Best
Employers in the hotel industry understand how important it is for them to hire great employees. As a hotel industry employer, you should not underestimate the importance of completing a thorough pre-employment hospitality or hotel background check.
Types of information often request include criminal history checks, employment verification, education verification, social media checks, even pre-employment drug testing, and criminal.
Why is it Important?
A background check is particularly important for the safety of guests and fellow employees and allows an efficient hiring process – saving time and money in the long run.
How Does it Impact your Business?
Shows if your candidate is reliable, has an accurate work/education history, or meets the legal requirements for the position. This will reduce the risk of turnover, protect your organization. Screening also allows an employer to verify if an applicant is a good fit for the position.
Leading by Developing People
In your hotel, part of the role of the leader has to be focused on the viability of the business. That means, to produce a high-performing team in a high-performing hotel, is about being goal-focused, but in a people-oriented way. It is about achieving a workable balance between both approaches.
Why is it Important?
One of the best ways to increase employee engagement and retention is to improve an individual’s satisfaction with development opportunities within your hotel company.
How Does it Impact your Business?
Satisfied employees are motivated to improve overall performance and help a hotel meet its goals.
Related Task
Review resources with your Area Director and create a development plan for your employees.
Leadership: Setting Expectations
The hospitality industry has a tradition of quality service and dedication to putting customer needs first. Though extremely diverse, the industry has an expectation of workers to be professional, productive, respectful, and responsive to customer needs.
Why is it Important?
Communicating your hotel policies or standards is important not only because it helps employees understand the rules and keeps them focused, but documented communication of those rules makes it easier to enforce them, if necessary.
How Does it Impact your Business?
Clear expectations help employees stay focused on their job duties and helps eliminate or reduce confusion and increases the chances of your employee being successful in achieving the goals set for them. This in turn enhances the opportunity for success of the entire hotel.
Leadership: Employee Turnover
A measure of a proportion of the workforce that is replaced during a designated time period (i.e., month, quarter, year). Computed as the number of employees who left your hotel divided by a number of employees at your hotel equals the employee turnover rate.
Why is it Important?
Understanding the cause of the biggest drivers of voluntary turnover is important because of the costly nature of replacing employees.
How Does it Impact your Business?
Your property may experience a high employee turnover rate if your wages and benefits are not comparable to surrounding hotels and/or hospitality employers. In addition, if your hotel has a negative culture and work environment, it often affects employee turnover.
Related Task
Calculate your hotel’s turnover rate with your Area Director. Create an action plan to reduce departures and enhance employee experience.