Hiring for attitude more than aptitude, looks and weight
No matter what you call it – beer o’clock, social hour, discount drinks, 2 for 1 cocktails – ‘Happy Hour’ is that magical time of day when drinks and appetizers are discounted at many restaurants and bars. What you don’t often hear is that “happy Hour’ is also referred as "Attitude Adjustment Hour," because the promotion is meant to change your attitude. If you're in a bad mood, cocktails sold at reduced rates can make it better (or worse).
Drinks aside, how does one recognise attitude?
An attitude is somewhere between a belief, a stance, a mood, a pose and a behaviour. If you've got an attitude about something, it can be hard to change it because you think you're right. An attitude is a way of thinking that you can demonstrate just by standing in a certain way. For example, putting your hands on your hips and rolling your eyes expresses one kind of attitude.
Essentially, attitude at its core consists of two parts- thoughts and actions. It begins with one’s thinking around how one approaches the world, relationships, work and other elements of life. Your behaviour towards the environment, people and situations is dictated by your attitude. The other day, I saw this comment posted online by a restaurant diner “I asked the waiter for a clean fork and all I got was attitude”. This illustrates a type of behaviour that can be described as truculent or uncooperative dished out by a negative attitude.
A bad attitude is like a flat tyre, unless you change it you won’t get anywhere. People with a good attitude will adapt and respond to it appropriately resulting in a positive outcome. Whereas, with someone who has a poor outlook it can take a totally different direction, perhaps leading to a disaster – like kicking the flat tyre in anger and hurting one’s foot.
How does one gauge aptitude when hiring service staff, particularly in the hospitality sector which speaks of a service attitude when dealing with people? One of many definitions of the concept called service attitude is about ‘being open to what you hear from different types of people and being told things that may sometimes not sync with one’s own beliefs.
Many of us know that technical tasks can be learned, but trying to change attitude is difficult. Managers can’t change attitude, it has to be a personal choice. Simply saying “change your attitude” isn’t gonna work. It’s a personal decision that person must make.
Hospitality and service organisations realise the importance of the interaction between front-line personnel and the customer. At the beginning, employees hired to work in the front-of-the-house (e.g. Reception) had to be “audio-visually” appealing, i.e. ‘look right’ (appearance) and “sound right” (speech).It was like putting up a vacancy board that said “We only hire pretty girls and good looking boys” – where physical attractiveness, was, and still remains the main hiring criteria in many businesses involved in dealing with people.
To stay politically correct every employer will say we never judge suitability by looks or physique. That’s not always the case: in the process of selecting new staff, the employees’ aesthetics are a decisive aspect. It did not take long for recruiters to realise that having employees possessing aesthetic skills without the ‘right’ attitude proved disadvantageous, where the interaction between front-line personnel and the customer is crucial if they aimed to create high quality service encounters.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex-Hotelier
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