Personnel, personalized

Mind your Ps and Qs (15)

A year ago, our youngest granddaughter decided to venture across Canada by herself to live in British Columbia. Ever since we have worried about her. With the pandemic disrupting her education, she has put off going to university. But when she called the other day, she sounded surprisingly chipper.

In describing her jobs on a construction crew and in a restaurant, she talked in glowingly familial terms and concluded: “Here I truly feel as if I can be myself.” How nice it was to know she was in the process of finding herself, happy, surrounded by supportive colleagues, making friends, and actively engaged in living her life on her terms…while still deliberating about her future.

I mention this because too many people, these days, are feeling empty, exhausted and enclosed, burned out and disillusioned. We have all experienced these feelings ourselves, but are we truly aware of how prevalent they are among those with whom we work or who are in our employ?

Perhaps, but as managers and leaders what are we doing - what can we do - to rectify their debilitations? If we operate as DMOs, economic development departments, business improvement organizations or chambers of commerce, should we even care what`s happening in individual enterprises; after all, what has this to do with our jobs as policy makers, marketers, developers and educators?

Everything. Tourism thrives, flourishes and excels when host-guest interactions and encounters delight our guests as well as our hosts. When workplace cultures stagnate or disintegrate, destination reputations can sour, employee retention becomes problematic, strikes occur, and all sorts of blowbacks manifest themselves.

in Tourism HR Canada, as in many jurisdictions around the world, efforts are being made to address and counter these issues by building “world-leading tourism workforces”. Skill development and capability enhancements are essential but are they sufficient? While it can be argued that tourism development doesn`t equal bad jobs, weak government protection does, what more has to be done?

As we all know, in certain locales there can be a persistent dark side to the working conditions in tourism which, along with workplace bullying and feelings of despair that coincide with other abnormalities or adversities, can have implications for peoples` mental health.

For these and a host of other reasons, virtually every destination suffers from labor shortages. While there are multiple strategies for redress and varied solutions, according to the OECD to strengthen resilience far more has to change, especially when too many organizational workplace climates remain toxic; employees are treated as second-class citizens; and some countries seek to decimate already tight labor markets by deporting anxiety-induced immigrants and getting rid of EDI initiatives.

Making “progress” through innovation, managing change and making improvements (as outlined in the previous links) may seem logical but, aside from being time-consuming and laborious, most are likely to fall short if they fail to “Please, please me” - the means toward improving peoples` well-being` or overall sense of `wellth`.

In study after study, leadership, social norms and work design have consistently emerged as the best predictor of toxic cultures. My take on undertaking a cultural detox, while not deviating from the recommendations in the article, demands a deeper dive into assessments of organizational workplace cultures…the discomforting enclosures of workplaces and work life.

While it may be simplistic to assume that enlightenment can be found through empathy, kindness is important and must be a significant part of any reflective, transcendental journey. Unfortunately, such journeys are rare in commercial and transactional industries that covet economic and financial performance and productivity. Even so, it`s evident that companies that consistently perform well do so by ensuring that their strategies are connected to culture, reinforced through continuous improvements to service quality improvements and unwaveringly commitments to empowering their employees to delight.

Let us consider two organizations. First is Union Square Restaurant Group. Through the power of hospitality, enlightened hospitality, it has made a policy (if not a strategy) of assigning primary status to their employees.

Learn from Danny Meyer as you watch the video and appreciate the importance he places on “Ubuntu”… the African philosophy that honors the authenticity of individual human beings who are part of a larger and more significant relational, communal, societal, environmental and spiritual world. As Danny tells it, the practice of enlightened hospitality obliges us to see and understand the other…to bring people together…to build teams that support each other.

Within our communities-as-destination we all fail if we disregard the well-being of our frontline and back-of-house workforce. As revenue generators, they deserve to be admired, dignified and adequately rewarded. They perform the service work, cook the meals, make the beds, pilot the airplanes, maintain the buildings, lead the tours, provide the entertainment, drive the taxis, provide information, and embody the desire to be creative, mindful and hospitable, especially when encouraged and given permission to do so.

The other organization that deserves our praise is Ritz Carlton Hotels. As the first service-sector organization to win the coveted Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award they have proven, time and time again, that their employees - “Ladies and Gentlemen Serving Ladies and Gentlemen” – must be empowered as hosts to make vital decisions in service to their clients.

Hospitality and tourism thrive when each and every host/guest, employer/employee encounter is recognized as a vital moment of truth. To ensure these encounters delight and satisfy it is essential we upgrade the knowledge, skills and capabilities of our hosting communities, coach and provide helpful advice and opportunities to shine, invest in their well-being, demonstrate the dignity they deserve, and do so by focusing on those moments that matter most to them.

Personalizing our personnel occurs when we make the effort to know, reach, show, delight, engage and listen to them as individuals; ensure their “fit” and sense of freedom within our organizations; make the effort to understand the uniqueness of their needs; and customize their development. Talent development that goes beyond talent management and is based on what employees value; what they find fair and motivates them; boosts inclusion and avoids burnout; and is equitable. As one well-known conservative publication argued: Unless and until labor is honored, it may be time to rethink unions.

Emulating companies like Ritz Carlton or Union Square Restaurants and spreading their performative practices needn`t seem unfathomable. The exemplary organizations that exist within your own community need to be recognized, rewarded and profiled. Furthermore, as more leaders and managers within tourism clusters are encouraged to take their responsibilities to their communities more seriously, it seems that deep dive assessments into determining the current state of organizational workplace cultures should become a priority.

As a starting point, what follows are a few sample questions. They represent part of a more in-depth destination assessment contained in my e-book, Astonish! Smarter Tourism by design (available to subscribers when paid subscriptions are activated):

Employers talk a lot about labor shortages, why? Why do so many put insufficient effort into understanding retention and the overall experience of employees? Evaluate the current state of organizational and workplace cultures, and whether employees are treated as costs rather than as assets…distorted by financial accounting. Identify the macro- and micro-aggressions, dysfunction and disharmony at work or in the community? Why do they exist? Consider the plight of parents as they try to balance childcare with working in a convoluted world. Is talent being matched to value? If communities-as-destinations hope to achieve super-cluster status, employment in visitor-serving enterprises should rank high as “great workplaces”. Do they? To what extent is the industry providing racially-just workplaces, “good jobs”, middle-class jobs? Honestly, how serious are they about diversity? Build on to the questions in this link to evaluate employee experiences within your community-as-a-destination. As you’ll discover, there may be a need to revolutionize workplaces and how they and jobs are managed, including development of soft skills (e.g. the Income Tourism Project), harnessing peoples’ everyday genius especially through diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts, even “offboarding”. COVID led to “the great reassessment of work”. How are employment upheavals, pandemic fatigue, and mental health being rectified? Review employee performance management systems, particularly in regard to establishing expectations and accountability to ensure individuals and organizations can reach their goals. Develop and administer your own Employee Experience Index.

Once done, efforts to transition and transform can get underway…a momentous movement that will require an agile strategy to turn a reluctant “no” into a deliberate “on”.