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Engaging the 'Hearts' of Workers
Inspiring workers and senior managers to focus on people issues, partnering with unions, providing five-star service, promoting the business case for diversity and legal trends affecting the hospitality industry were among the session topics for the second day of the HR hospitality conference.
In an inspirational talk to a packed room of HR leaders, Stevan Porter, president of the Americas for the InterContinental Hotels Group, urged accountability from HR and their senior leadership on people-related issues. "It's not the bricks and mortar. It's not the creativity. It's the people," he said during the second day of the 2nd Annual HR in Hospitality Conference at the Wynn Las Vegas. The conference, which drew more than 600 attendees, was produced by Human Resource Executive Conferences in partnership with Human Resource Executive® magazine and Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration and its Industrial and Labor Relations School. If organizations expect workers to "set aside [their] worldly cares" and "go forth and create our positioning" in the marketplace, Porter said, then organizations must do a better job of respecting individuals, engaging "the heart" of employees and expanding their horizons. Also key to success is celebrating shared values and preparing workers for the constant changes that buffet any organization or industry, he said. And, along the way, it's important to assess how employees and programs are doing. "The toughest challenge," he said, "is to get the attention of your senior leaders that this matters to them." And those leaders must not only be willing to communicate with the workers, but be willing to listen to them, he said. "Anyone can show up when things are great," Porter said. "It's when things are tough that our teams need the greatest reassurances." And such reassurances will surely be needed, he said, as the hospitality and leisure industry copes with pressures such as dealing with a war for talent that will only become more severe and industry growth in a time of economic uncertainty. One way the company engages its employees is a "Chase the Extraordinary" program that emphasizes community involvement, such as offering recycling opportunities for hotel guests or exchanging 225,000 light bulbs for low-energy fluorescent bulbs. Such programs make employees believe they are doing something meaningful, he said. One caution he offered the attendees was to think carefully before surveying employees on their thoughts and attitudes. "Don't ask people what they think if you have no intention of doing anything about it," he said. Porter also said he learned one of his most important leadership lessons when he first began working: "What it means to be a leader of people is to understand how to follow. ... Your top [of the organization] is only as good as their ability to connect with your front line." Partnering with Unions
At a panel discussion on the role of private-equity in the hospitality industry, a union leader and private-equity executive discussed the merits of partnership. "We know we can't avoid unions," said Christopher T. Chee, managing director of the real-estate group in the Los Angeles office of Blackstone Group, a private-equity firm that has invested heavily in the hotel industry. "We also realize that working in partnership [with unions] is far more productive [than not doing so]." Chee shared his comments in response to a question posed by Harry Katz, dean of Cornell University's ILR School. Katz was moderator of a Tuesday morning session entitled "The Influence and Impact of Private Equity Firms on the Hospitality Industry." "There's this myth out there that private equity is after short-term gains, that they slash and burn without any consideration for the employees," Chee said. "It's true we're not going to hold these investments forever. The actual average time we hold them for is around five-and-a-half years. "But the reality," he said, "is that we are the most active hotel investor in the world, having invested $54 billion in the sector over the past 15 years and acquiring roughly 4,300 properties. So we may sell an individual investment, but we're going to remain in this sector over the long run, with the goal of creating value." Though he said he's seen others "sadly" take this approach, Chee said it was "sheer ignorance" to fight with the unions and not deal with them in a productive way. "The fact of the matter is labor is a huge issue in hotels," said Chee, pointing to the importance of ensuring whether or not a hotel room is clean or whether or not employees provide a level of service customers appreciate. Bruce S. Raynor, general president of UNITE-HERE in New York, said that both employers and unions will be "losers" unless they join together to create good public policy. Raynor pointed to some of the successes his union has had working with the gaming industry. "We have a good partnership with a number of the gaming companies," he said. "If you look at Nevada, Mississippi and New Jersey, these states have extremely favorable tax rates for this industry. ... The result has been much more investment [and job creation] in those states. So the companies prosper and the unions prosper." At the end of the day, he said, "the mutual interests are much greater than the contrary interests." Looking ahead, Chee said, it's reasonable to expect all deals, including those in private equity, to slow down in the months ahead, considering today's shaky economy. "In terms of our own activity," he said, "our focus is less on new acquisitions and more on building out the businesses that we have." But long term, he added, "we have lots of capital to invest -- more than $11 billion. And given our long successful history in the hotel sector, it's impossible to think we wouldn't continue to make investments there."
Five-Star Service During a session entitled "Is Your HR Department Providing Five-Star Service," Cindy E. Clark, director of HR at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, Co., shared some of the HR strategies that have contributed to the 90-year-old hotel's success. Clark noted that the Broadmoor, which is the longest-running AAA 5 Diamond and Mobil 5 Star resort in the United States, is extremely thorough in screening candidates. "We're really looking for that service attitude from the very beginning," said Clark. For HR to be effective, Clark said, it needs to have an operations focus. "That's why we hire people who have been in operations," she said. "Most of the people who work in human resources have worked in other departments throughout the resort. "We believe there's no way [for recruitment managers] to screen candidates without knowing what's entailed in the job," she said. Andria Ryan, a partner with Fisher & Phillips in Atlanta who has worked with Clark and the Broadmoor for many years, said she believes such exposure is one of the best ways to ensure that HR has credibility in the business. Clark said it's not by accident her HR department, which includes 18 HR leaders who serve 1,800 employees, is situated right next to the Broadmoor's sales and marketing department. "We are selling an employment experience," she said. Noting she's often asked why Broadmoor employees seem so happy, Clark pointed to the company's open culture, the thorough screening of job candidates to uncover the best employees and a significant investment in training and development. Management turnover at the Broadmoor is at 8 percent, Clark said.
Diverse Workforces Sysco Corp. created a program to recruit and develop diverse talent "because of the business advantage" it brings the organization, said Albert L. Gaynor, vice president of industry relations and diversity at the Houston-based $36 billion company. The initiative began with a push from Chairman and CEO Rick Schnieders, and after three years of operation, it now has five full-time professionals assigned to it, he said. Because the organization's 90 operating companies are autonomous, the Diversity and Industry Relations group "can't force this down to them. We have to do a really good job of being a salesperson with ideas they feel can help them grow their business," he said. A heterogeneous workforce offers "new ways" to look at problems, create products and offer insights into cultural differences that may not be readily apparent, said Tiffanie McDonald, senior director of the Diversity and Industry Relations group. An analysis of the company's demographics showed a diverse population, but with most of the minorities and women stuck in lower-level positions, she said. In addition, 70 percent of the new U.S. labor force by 2008 will be women and minorities. One way Sysco believes it can increase the number of women and minorities in senior management is through its STEP program, which builds a bigger pool of candidates by exposing warehouse and delivery employers via mentoring or coaching -- and with a training component soon to come -- to front-line supervisory jobs, she said. The company also began a diversity internship program as well as a recruiting strategy designed to bring in diverse candidates -- specific to different geographic areas -- to groom them for senior-level management roles. In that initiative, it worked with The Lucas Group, which works with former military personnel transitioning into private industry. As diversity in the workforce increases, so, too, does the need for sensitivity training so employees are "prepared to deal with the mix of cultures," McDonald said. Resentment of education -- by lower-educated, long-time employees of newly hired workers with higher educational attainment -- can also be a problem, Gaynor said. He said it wasn't an issue with the hiring of the military personnel into the management-training program because the new workers displayed no sense of superiority and they had "been in leadership positions and tested under fire" in Iraq. Even for gang members working in the lower-level positions, "that gets their attention real quick," Gaynor said. Legal Issues The advantages of the Internet and on-site kiosks for recruiting are numerous, but too many HR leaders fail to understand the potential liabilities, according to Jennifer Brown Shaw and D. Gregory Valenza, partners in Shaw Valenza, who presented a session entitled "Four Legal Trends You Can't Ignore." HR leaders who fail to consider whether such recruiting tools accommodate disabled persons or job candidates who are not fluent in English may be leaving their organizations open to lawsuits alleging disparate treatment or violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, said Valenza. In addition, HR needs to consider the record-keeping aspect, he said. How long should information be kept? How should it be stored? What policies, practices and procedures should be instituted to purge such data? There are a lot of unanswered questions with regard to electronic information, Valenza said. "Legal trends have a way of lagging behind the creativity of technology and businesspeople," he said, "so the law is usually not ahead of the game." Breaches of sensitive data also offer problems as there are a multitude of state and federal laws regarding what actions organizations should take if that occurs, said Shaw. There is also the problem of finding sensitive data on the Web, such discovering an employee is a sex offender listed on the Megan's Law Web site. That information cannot be used for workplace decisions, except in cases such as schools or day-care centers, Shaw said. "Find another way to get the data [other than from the Megan's Law site]," she said, noting that some employers may decide to leave themselves open to potential liability by firing such an employee anyway.
March 19, 2008 Copyright 2008© LRP Publications |
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