How to Promote Employee Growth and Development in Hospitality
- By Harri Insider Team | June 1, 2023
Scaling a business upward to new heights is every business owner’s goal. Entrepreneurs are revered for their positive attitude yet the little-known truth is the vast majority of businesses in the hospitality sector and beyond fail. Failure is almost always the result of the inability to promote development and growth. Growth is one part value proposition and another part human capital.
Hospitality industry business owners who proactively embrace the challenge of employee retention, particularly through improving engagement, stand a much better chance of propelling their enterprise toward its full potential. Harri is here to help your business fulfill that potential with cutting-edge high-tech tools.
Importance of Employee Training and Development in Hospitality
There is a common misconception that most hospitality industry employees are thankful to have a job. Though most industry workers appreciate a weekly paycheck, many are disengaged from their work. However, as every hotel and restaurant owner/manager is well aware, customer service is integral to industry success.
Train your employees the right way, offer them opportunities for development along with consideration for promotions and the ensuing quality of customer service will improve. The moral of the story is respected and valued employees who are properly trained reciprocate that treatment to customers, creating a positive feedback loop that benefits the collective.
Strategies to Promote Growth and Employee Development
Promoting the growth and development of human capital is no small feat. People are resistant to change as well as new challenges, often choosing to take the easiest possible path and rest on their laurels. Implement the following strategies to boost employee growth and development and your team will be engaged and unified.
Developing an Employee Training Program
A number of factors have added obstacles for operators looking to implement a successful employee training program. Industry-wide understaffing combined with a high turnover rate have deterred even the most well-meaning of businesses.
Recognize that new hires need and deserve comprehensive restaurant training for any chance of retention, create such employee training programs and strategically alter them based on the feedback of new additions. When crafting your employee training program, consider the feedback of current employees to get a sense of what they felt was lacking during their restaurant training as well as what helped them excel in their roles.
Creating a Culture of Continuous Learning and Improvement
It is often said that the best way to learn something is to ask a person who knows the answer. Your experienced contributors have the knowledge your new hires need. The challenge lies in facilitating communication between the two parties.
Ask your veteran employees about their workloads and whether they have the latitude necessary to teach new hires or at least answer questions as they arise. If your most experienced contributors are overburdened, lighten the load so they can engage in a constructive dialogue with new hires.
Encourage new hires to ask questions and raise concerns, stressing how communication is mutually beneficial and the stage will be set for ongoing learning. Above all, prioritize “shadowing” in which new hires learn directly under the wings of experienced employees, giving them the opportunity to emulate those veterans.
Performance Management and Feedback
Contrary to popular opinion, hospitality industry employees desire to be reviewed at frequent intervals. Even if your performance management consists of brief written feedback, something is better than nothing.
Provide consistent quarterly or six-month feedback to each and every contributor, stress how that feedback is meant to improve performance rather than criticize and you’ll find your team is that much more engaged and motivated.
Opportunities for Career Development/Advancement
Positive reinforcement is an essential component of human psychology as well as a stable workplace. Reward those who’ve invested their time, energy and creativity in the enterprise with opportunities for career development and your business will be revered throughout the community. Those provided with opportunities for promotion will spread the word about your company’s merits to friends, family, other employees in the hospitality sector and even those on social media who might be job-seeking.
When a new opportunity opens up, make it crystal clear to the entirety of your workforce at every location. Democratize the promotion process through the fair treatment of candidates, give equal consideration to everyone who throws their hat in the ring for the open role and select the individual with the most merit.
Continue to build a meritocracy at your workplace and your contributors will recognize their hard work is not in vain. These motivated workers will put forth even more effort to nab those promotions and also inspire new hires to do the same.
Creating a Positive Work Environment
The right attitude is essential to success in both life and work. Provide your team with a work environment that is welcoming as well as rewarding and they’ll return the favor with diligence. A positive work environment consists of the following:
- Mutually beneficial dialogue
- Cordial interactions
- Respect for one another
- A framework of rules that benefit the greater good of the business
Encourage employees to report to a manager or human resources specialist when concerns or problems arise and they’ll be that much more inclined to feel respected in the workplace. It is this respect that employees crave, and respected employees carry a positive attitude that proves contagious across the entirety of the workforce.
Employee Development and Engagement
Take a moment to put yourself in the position of a newly-hired employee at your hotel, restaurant, tour guide service or other hospitality industry business. You engage in an initial meet-and-greet session with your new coworkers, proceed through employee training and development, then dive right into work within a week or even a couple days’ time. The risk in such an approach is that it might be rushed, especially if the learning curve for the position in question is steep.
Err on the side of caution, and concentrate on going heavy on development, training and engagement as opposed to providing the bare minimum. Go out of your way to fully engage your workforce, employ refined communication best practices for clarity and the interaction will prove mutually beneficial.
It is in every business owner and manager’s interest to recognize the common pitfall of speaking down to new hires through a monologue. Dialogue that involves communication from both sides is essential for employee motivation, comfort and development.
Gather the sentiments of your new hires throughout the employee training and development processes. Carefully review that feedback and weave in improvements to new hire development processes as appropriate. It is also worth noting that collecting worker sentiments can also be used in the context of evaluating managers, supervisors and experienced employees tasked with training new hires.
Harri’s team communication features offer custom message groups and news feeds that help your team function as a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Seize this opportunity to unify and streamline your work crew’s communications and you’ll find the team is that much more efficient. This technology serves as a consolidated hub for conversations to be organized, enhancing collaboration and teamwide awareness.
Our technology makes it easy to invite employees to group message channels for collaboration. This tech is essentially a social network for work used to centralize communication in a unified manner, and negates the need to use apps such as WhatsApp or Messenger, meaning that work chats stay professional and don’t seep into an employee’s personal life if they don’t want it to. From updates to announcements and more, the communication hub spreads the word about developments with unparalleled efficiency.
Functional on Android and IOS devices, native mobile apps provide push notifications to notify teammates and supervisors of important information.
Our TeamHub Time Clock keeps employees fully engaged through:
- Surveys
- Alerts
- Group chats
- Individual messages
Get a sense of what your team’s sentiments are pertaining to work challenges and successes, use our tech to gauge satisfaction levels and you’ll gain invaluable insight into the condition and mindstate of your frontline workers.
We also provide multi-channel notification abilities to guarantee communications are transmitted to team members. Such communications can be transmitted through SMS text messages, emails and push notifications.
Harri: The All-in-One Platform Hospitality Deserves
The importance of employee development and growth in hospitality businesses cannot be overstated. Oftentimes, it is the quality of these initial workplace experiences that determines whether new hires remain with the business or venture elsewhere. Take advantage of our tech solutions for enhancing employee growth and development, be patient and you’ll maximize engagement.
Request a Demo today and it won’t be long until our all-in-one platform helps your hospitality business realize its true potential. Our solutions are optimal for hotels, restaurants and other service-oriented businesses.
