Breaking the rules when it most matters...
In the hospitality industry, where people deal with people, it can be a challenging workout comparable sometimes to a full contact game. Because, the needs of customers or their demands can vary from the mundane to the extremely intricate, and, staff can never be sure when and how hard there’re going to be hit or knocked off their feet.
Some situations may require staff to look at new ways to adjust, to rise above and / or overcome certain impediments – all in real time. Being forced to break the rule really means figuring out ways of doing things differently, when the usual is unworkable or deemed unacceptable.
Time and again, frontline staffs working in the hospitality industry face challenges, where a customer’s need or problem requires going beyond the shackles of their organisation’s rules. Only by doing so can they assist or please the customer. What then should an employee do when faced with the dilemma that unless a company rule is ignored, the prospect of delivering an exceptional customer experience becomes impossible? Obey the rule and lose the customer or circumvent it to win him/her over?
Some may point out that in such instances, employees should escalate the problem to a higher authority to take a decision. Why does only a manager or supervisor have the prerogative to bend or break the rules? When leaders break the rules and it results in a happy outcome, it is hailed as thinking outside the box. However, when lower ranked employees, acting on their own, defy the prescribed rules or organisational expectations to accomplish the same outcome - they end up being accused of doing wrong. This is where the lines of delegation and empowerment get fuzzy.
We know that there are rules in sports and rules in life. Every one of us encounters situations, be it on or off the field, which leave us with a choice – follow or break the rule. Clearly, obeying the rules is what we were taught as kids. But sometimes, at work, (and we’re talking here especially of the service industry), we have to be willing to break certain rules! Let’s be clear though - breaking rules in business, is not about breaking the law, nor even breaking a promise. It’s about enabling frontline employees to adapt a pro-customer rule breaking approach.
Pro-customer rule breaking involves adapting the delivery of service by overstepping the boundaries of the laid –down organisational rules in a different manner, so that the outcome benefits both the customer and the organisation in the long run.
It’s like in the game of cricket; where the fielder running to hold a catch realizes that his momentum will take him over the boundary line as he leaps to grab the ball in mid-air. He catches it past / over the boundary line and in a flash throws it up and back into the playing field - all the while with both feet off the ground and then runs back to catch the ball again. Catch taken and the batsman ruled out!
In some organisations, employees who break rules with a pro-social motive to help customers usually do not face any reprimand from their supervisors because by attempting to problem – solve for customers in challenging service encounters, their actions in real-time result in greater guest satisfaction.
Unfortunately, the majority of hospitality leaders often view pro-customer rule breaking as entirely negative employee behaviour. That should not be the case. While it should be evaluated with a certain degree of caution, (especially when done exclusively to serve an employee’s self-interest or malicious intent to cause harm), discouraging it totally, is counter-productive and morale breaking.
Empowering employees and equipping them with the right resources may help prevent employees feeling that breaking rules is the only way to serve customers in dynamic situations. Companies could make certain rules flexible to accommodate different customer needs or redesign jobs so that staff can have greater autonomy in how they serve customers by tailoring to individual preferences and delivering personalized service at the same time. For instance, employees at Ritz-Carlton can spend up to $2,000 per guest, per day, without asking permission from a supervisor, to resolve a problem and create a memorable experience for their guests.
Managers must beware of rules that bind them to a slow erosion of guest counts. Before you pull up someone for “breaking the rules” ask yourself what the rule stood for in the first place.
Remember that an ambulance that follows the speed limit rule would never make it in time to the hospital in an emergency.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex-Hotelier
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