Are Managers really managing?It is clear that 2018 has been and will continue to be a challenging year for hoteliers. In an environment where price slashing and high rates are consistent issues for the hotelier to deal with, competition is a major concern. The hotelier in 2018 must invest in their own services and in the guest experience in order to differentiate themselves from the competition and provide the best value that they can, whilst at the same time maintaining their own standards of staff care, quality and profit.
Training is essential – and I think hoteliers need to drastically improve the training and motivation of Departmental / Assistant Managers and other supervisory staff. Time and time again, the majority of customer experience problems can be put down to “lack of managers managing” … a phrase that appears in nearly every report I write for clients. . I’ve found that the re-occurring issues in hotels are a lack of clarity over how things should be done, a lack of monitoring supervision and a lack of simple, polite ways of getting around problem experiences.
Let me illustrate this with an incident I encountered a few years ago at the ‘Hotel Show’. On Day 1, at one of the stalls operated by a 5-star hotel at the ‘Food Court’, I ordered Mongolian rice for lunch with the explicit request that instead of what was available, (it had a mix of seafood, chicken and lamb); they prepare me, one that had no seafood. The Manager in charge, eager to please promptly said it can be done and immediately instructed the cook to prepare it accordingly, ‘a la minute’. Outcome: an extremely happy customer!
On Day 3, I asked to have the same preparation for lunch at the same stall. It was a different Manager and he seemed hesitant to the extent that he asked the cook whether he could accede to my request. I was astounded when the cook replied that it was not possible – moreso, as it was the same cook who prepared it for me on Day 1. Naturally this did not go down well with me. Outcome: an irate customer and a manager who cut a sorry figure! Fortunately, another cook stepped in and diffused the situation by agreeing to comply with my request.
What we see here are two distinct styles of management - on the one hand, managers’ who stay in control, and on the other hand, those who abdicate it whilst pretending to be in charge. Bad attitude in service jobs is the “in thing” these days among employees. It's hip to be negative. Indeed, this is the roughest road managers must traverse. Unhappily, for many supervisors of these disgruntled employees, the result of their efforts is unmitigated failure.
Really, there are few places on the business landscape that clamour more for a people-oriented approach to managing than the customer-intensive service sectors of the economy. Why? Because, first of all, increasing numbers of people are finding themselves in jobs where they must deal face-to-face with living and breathing customers - and this kind of interactive work is fraught with unpredictability and stress.
For a variety of reasons, the atmospheres in many of these work environments are unhappy and unhealthy for both employees and the customers they serve. These particular slices of the service industries are crying out for a fresh kind of leadership - one that appreciates employees' unique needs and wants in these demanding job roles, but that also holds them to high standards of professionalism.
Shafeek Wahab, Editor –Hospitality Sri Lanka, consultant, trainer, ex-hotelier. |
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