4 weak reasons for neglecting to develop staff

As a hotel or restaurant manager, you are no doubt familiar with employee turnover. Not only do exiting employees disrupt productivity and impact guest service in a number of ways, replacing them usually requires a significant investment of time, effort and money. In this scenario, you now are faced with two choices:-

1. Help your employees acquire better skills and become knowledgeable so that they perform productively, thus helping your team achieve the desired results.
2. Ignore developing your staff so that they stagnate, stifle business growth and have good employees leave.

If you are a rational person, you would without any hesitation say that developing your staff is a key function. Think again…because in reality, you may be unconsciously doing the opposite.

Now, the rationale for saying this is that, in your mind, you are following choice b) - based on certain factors you consider perfectly justifiable. What are these so called good reasons for your failure to invest your time and effort towards developing your staff?

1. Blaming it on the ‘Got No Time’ This is, and will continue to be the worst excuse of all. So, how do you spend your time at work? Doing meaningless things? Certainly not. As the manager, I bet you must be doing all those important things that need your attention…and so it should be! In short, if developing your staff is not one of your priorities - it must be unimportant. Wrong. Shockingly, some managers even view it as a waste of time that takes them away from the more important demands of their “real job”.
2. Why spend time and money and then see them leave? Are you kidding me? Research proves otherwise. Developing people actually influences them to stay on. You don’t need to fear seeing them leave…it is only when you do nothing that they begin to exit – especially the ‘better ones’ who get incredibly stressed out from continually carrying the burden of chronic understaffing. If employees are not given opportunities to update their skills, they have no inclination to stay. Stands to reason.
3. Treating entry-level, casual or seasonal employees as an afterthought. When hospitality relies on such staff, why this indifference? Many hotels provide minimal training, little skill development and no clear encouragement to full-time status or upward advancement. If employers do not invest in employees, why should employees invest in their employers - except do the minimum and collect their paycheck at month end.
4. I train only those who will be winners. Think again. Lamont Marcell Jacobs of Italy shocked the favourites to storm to victory in the 100m finals at this year’s Olympics. He clocked a blistering 9.80 seconds to cross the line first – having never previously gone under 10 seconds until that race. Jacobs was considered as just another runner who simply made up the numbers. Too often, managers fail to identify potentially capable employees, because they do not look deep enough.

As a manager you got to do more than just manage business operations. You need to connect all employees to the larger company goals and mission. Well trained and knowledgeable staff – at all levels builds loyalty and commitment and can be formidable tool for success.

Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex-hotelier

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