An Engaging Technology for Re-Engaging Employees

By Peggy Lin Hamm

It’s often tempting to neglect employee feedback in the hospitality and resort industry during uncertain market conditions. But contrary to conventional thinking, there has never been a better time to start this process than when marketing dollars are stretched thin and RevPAR is taking a slight dip. The reason is very simple: The biggest paradigm shift today in our business is that employees who positively influence guest attitudes, behaviors and purchases are profit centers—not cost centers.

Engaging Surveys Make Engaged Employees

As consumers we have all seen customer satisfaction surveys; most of us that have worked in companies have also seen staff surveys. But according to my experience as an HR specialist in the upscale resort industry, simply doing a survey isn’t enough to engage employees or achieve more positive outcomes on the business side. Employee engagement systems that produce quantifiable results utilize scientifically developed questions to identify critical issues that can be correlated with key performance indicators so that ultimately staff can be more involved in satisfying the customer.

Firstly, the questions must be designed to engage employees in the actual survey process itself. Secondly, a system should be devised that allows management to understand what the critical issues are and how to take remedial actions. Thirdly, surveys must identify positive areas that have the most impact on staff motivation and success, and then management must replicate those areas across the organization. We accomplish all these things at Troon Golf with UniFocus’ STAFFScope system.

Statistically Valid Sample Size Yields Valid & Actionable Results

Before putting an employee engagement system into place, it’s important to establish a benchmark of workplace quality as a baseline. The other relevant component of any meaningful staff survey program is a sample size that gives you the desired confidence level, usually a response rate of 70% or more. Advanced web-based technologies such as STAFFScope provide for statistically valid sample sizes that make it possible to derive what the critical issues are. The critical issues analysis forms the basis of our intelligence for identifying key areas where we can truly re-engage our staff to take ownership and get them more involved with better utilization of their talents.

Meaningful Information Enables Significant Organizational Change

In order to effect true organizational change that impacts our business, we need to have survey results in an understandable format that can be shared. This kind of meaningful information can be produced by sophisticated online reporting capabilities that allow survey results to be segmented by group or demographics and benchmarked. We can also drill down and find the root causes for a specific ranking and then relate the scores to another area such as work environment.

Some of the broader issues we examine involve making critical connections that never before showed up on the radar screen. For example, if you’re getting lower scores in training and development, there may be a linkage to other dimensions such as performance or evaluation.

The areas that are most often related to motivation and success are collaboration, communication and training. So it’s not surprising that higher satisfaction scores come from more collaboration between management and staff, more open communication and more effective training. Then you should empower your employees who apply what they’ve learned so that they will be more highly motivated to move on to the next level.

Satisfied Employees Make Satisfied Guests

It is a recognized saying in our industry that satisfied employees make satisfied guests. UniFocus has even established a mathematical correlation between staff attitudinal factors and guest satisfaction scores. This relationship can be clearly seen when you ask the right questions, systematically address the opportunities for improvement, validate the things that we’re doing right, and then collaboratively move forward. That’s when you can spot the tangible benefits this process brings to the organization.

Action-Plan Technology Ensures Successful Outcomes

The most important component of any employee engagement system is its tracking functionality because that’s where your ROI is. Integrated goal setting and action-plan technology enables organizations to achieve the kind of value-driven results and positive outcomes that make your business successful. This also ensures that specific action initiatives are directly tied back to feedback.

To summarize, many service organizations today fail to acknowledge the cost of customer acquisition or the exorbitant costs of replacing invaluable staff positions and training new hires. The fact of the matter is that when your staff is more engaged in creating memorable guest experiences, employee retention goes up, guests are more likely to return and recommend to others—and business is more profitable.

Peggy Lin Hamm is Director of Employment and Employee Relations for Troon Golf, the world’s largest golf management company. Previously she was the Regional Director of Human Resources for Shell Vacations, a leading company in vacation ownership. Prior to this, Peggy served on the Board and was the Board President of the Hospitality Human Resources Association. She was also an active member of the Valley Hotel and Resort Association and served on the Education Committee.