Hotel support teams shape the stay long before a guest learns their names. The guest compliments dinner. They may never meet the person who kept the kitchen supplied with clean equipment. They appreciate a prepared room without seeing the work in laundry. The event runs smoothly after colleagues have moved furniture, checked the setup and handled the things nobody photographed.
A hotel leader should know how those jobs contribute and what the people doing them need. Guest visibility is a poor measure of whose work matters.
Culture reaches those departments through ordinary decisions about equipment, information, schedules and how people are spoken to.
Learn what hotel support teams need
Spend time with the team and ask them to explain a recurring problem. Let the person doing the work lead the conversation. They may know why a piece of equipment slows the shift or why a delivery time creates a preventable rush.
A leader does not need to pretend to have mastered every craft in the building. Understanding enough to make a responsible decision is a useful place to start. Ask what skill the task takes, what preparation it needs and which other department depends on it.
Our hotel organization structure includes the departments around those dependencies. Walk through the work with the team to understand what the chart cannot show.
Include the people outside the daytime meeting
An overnight employee should have a way to raise a concern and receive an answer. An outsourced team needs the relevant information about an event that changes its work. A colleague who cannot attend the management meeting still needs to know what has been decided.
Consider a hypothetical late ballroom reset. The new plan reaches Sales and Events, but misses the people arranging the room. A short conversation with the crew could have identified the time and equipment needed. A hotel should make that communication routine.
HSMAI’s communication guidance calls attention to recognizing individual contributions across hotel teams. Applying that idea means examining who actually receives information and whose input reaches a decision.
Show respect in the conditions around the work
Recognition is welcome. Working equipment and a supervisor who responds to a concern are welcome, too. Leaders should follow the problem far enough to find out whether the team received the help they were promised.
The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center’s Employee Promise connects its service commitment to the value of employees and their development. A published promise is a starting point. Employees judge their own hotel through the conditions they experience.
That includes stopping disrespect between departments. A person should not need a guest complaint or an executive sponsor to have a legitimate operating concern taken seriously.
Ask whose effort the hotel is overlooking
At the next event review, invite input from a role that rarely gets asked. Make participation practical and paid as appropriate. Ask what made the work harder and what would improve the next event. Explain which change the hotel will make and return with an update.
Give specific credit when a colleague’s preparation improves a guest moment. Acknowledge the skill involved and share the result with the person who contributed it.
I want hotel support teams to know how much their work matters to the joy we bring guests. The people whose names the guest never learns are part of that. Leadership has to make their place in the hotel clear through how it treats their work.
Continue reading Hospitality Field Notes.