How to Empower Your Hotel Staff to Elevate Guest Experiences

At its core, empowerment involves trusting your team to do their job. Display confidence in their abilities and their decision-making, and they’ll want to do the right things and go the extra mile for customers. They know you’re counting on them – and they can do a great job! Consider the following tactics for creating a more empowered workforce. 

Training Ideas

• Develop a mentorship program. Create a program where more senior members can guide newer hires in their efforts. Set up “coaches” for new staff to help with everything from dress code questions to sensitive subjects. 
• Encourage self-paced learning. It’s important that professionals try to improve on their own as well as at work. Provide resources like links to online classes or books that they can browse at their own pace. 
• Establish budgets for areas of interest. Put your money where your mouth is and set aside some financial resources for things like classes, training, mentor lunches, etc. 

Empowerment Strategies

• Use positions of power in prudent and positive ways. Make sure that your managers are personable and don’t abuse their authority. It’s well worth investing in special management training so managers can learn best practices. 
• Set inspirational or managerial goals for employees. When an employee joins, let them know in clear terms what you are expecting. Be realistic and set measurable goals. 
• Allow employees freedom in how they do their jobs (when possible). In the hospitality industry, it’s not always feasible to provide flexibility. Look for opportunities where you can give more freedom. For example, when it comes to scheduling, can you allow for shift switching that has limited manager involvement? For example, you can use Harri scheduling solutions to easily enable (and approve) employee-driven shift swaps, automatically factor in shift preferences when creating schedules, and give employees the ability to volunteer for open shifts. 
• Involve employees in the decision-making process. When important decisions need to be made in the organization, make a point of collecting feedback from the people it will affect. For example, if you want to change front-desk policies, be sure to speak with your front-desk staff and get their ideas. No one knows the job better than those who do it every day. 

Communication Techniques

• Give employees a platform for sharing their views and concerns. This could be through surveys, employee engagement software, or one-on-one meetings. Use Harri software to foster multi-way team communication and organize conversations. You can even implement the app on iOS or Android to maintain constant and proactive communication.
• Create custom message groups for teams. This allows your staff to better interact with their own department. You can use the Harri solution to organize message groups or news feeds based on role, responsibility, location, or unit to easily target the right team members. 
• Move beyond in-person communication. Too many managers only speak with their reports when they are together, which isn’t often. It’s important to be proactive in your communication approach and check in periodically, not just when there’s a question or an issue. With Harri’s solution, you can send all forms of media to deploy communications in the best format, and you can centralize important messaging, announcements, or updates.