Empowering staff is not about letting go of power
Tom Peters calls empowerment “purposeful chaos”. Robert Waterman refers to it as “directed autonomy”. What does one call it in terms of the hospitality industry? There are a multitude of descriptors. What I liked most was the one that goes on to say that it is the art of improvisation that embraces a quick real-time response to customer needs and complaint resolution during service delivery. Easily said than done though!
Some easier to handle examples of empowerment can be where a guest asks the front desk employee if he can check-in at noontime when the stipulated check-in time is 1.00 pm, or when the diner at the restaurant requests a waitress for French fries instead of boiled veggies (as the accompaniment), even when the menu says no substitutions. The swiftest, shortest and most often usual form of response will be, where employees, ruefully say, “Sorry, we can’t do that, it is against our usual check-in policy” or “I’ll have to run it by my manager or the chef if that can be done?”
The failure to empower employees in such situations can lead to potentially frustrated or angry customers. When guest-facing employees are not equipped to make decisions, they are compelled to either allow the problem to remain unresolved or run it by the supervisor, in which event it causes delays and annoyance to the customer when he/she realizes that they are dealing with a middle-man and not the decision-maker.
All that is needed to turn these interactions into positive ones, especially when rooms are ready at noontime or where substituting vegetables with fries is no hassle…is a bit of rule-breaking. As one CEO of a hotel chain said “Courtesy without empowerment is doomed from the onset. Our employees cannot be expected to have greater accountability without greater authority”.
How true, especially where many companies pressurize their staff with statements like: ‘delight our customer’ or ‘give customers attentive service and maximize sales’, without providing employees, particularly those in the frontlines with the tools and training within a supportive framework. Empowerment by delegating limited authority that inhibits employees from efficiently carrying out their daily tasks is what most organisations do. When that occurs, it all becomes empty and meaningless management rhetoric.
In general, most managers are reluctant to empower their employees because they fear that by doing that, they are giving up or losing power. What they fail to understand is that by empowering their staff, they get back a greater reward in terms of loyalty, where employees feel recognized, important, and responsible, and commit to performing better at their jobs and to the organisation they represent.
There are of course drawbacks when empowerment done without proper training can lead to the negative use of the power received. There can also be the high risk of failures if supervision at the initial stages is non-existent.
From an individual’s perspective, empowerment can lead to ascending motivation and morale and job satisfaction. Empowerment nourishes greater self-confidence and sense of ownership which plays an important role in improving employee job satisfaction. In organization cultures, job satisfaction comes from the ability of workers to have control over the jobs or feelings of empowerment in their lives at work.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex-Hotelier.
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