How can strategic thinking improve employee engagement programs?

What is engagement? Is it more feeling or action? In practical terms you want it to be both. You want your team to feel engaged and act as such. So first define what engagement means in your team in light of that feeling/behavior dyad. For example, you may want them to bring up innovative ideas (behavior) but for them to do that they will need to feel empowered or confident. When defining your purpose for an intervention, define the desired behaviors that would epitomize engagement in your organization. Then identify the interpersonal and professional skills that will enable such behaviors. Finally, design multiple interventions or programs that tackle those proactively and from different angles as needed for them to feel and act engaged.

In the hospitality industry, providing a great customer experience, both internally and externally, is of utmost importance. To achieve this, it's helpful to focus on improving NPS or department rankings. If you're unsure of where to start, prioritize three key areas: increasing revenue, reducing expenses, and enhancing the customer experience. Look to the organizational goals and what the executive leadership wants to improve, as this will provide direction for your program. Once your team understands the purpose, it will be easier to get their buy-in and make progress. Clearly communicating these focal points will help align your team and empower them to take initiatives that contribute to the goals.

When analyzing KPIs or internal metrics, it's important to understand the reasons behind them. If you can dig deeper and uncover the story "in between the numbers," you'll be better equipped to achieve the desired impact. One metric that is often overlooked is high turnover, as constantly having to train new staff can hurt engagement. To address this issue, take a closer look and determine if the problem is related to the department head, workload, pay, or something else. By utilizing data analytics, you can gain valuable insights and take targeted actions to make your engagement programs more effective.

Once you define the target, communicating the mission gets easier. Demonstrate why the goal is important and what it means to the division and the company. Continuously making progress towards the goals generates momentum and enthusiasm. And when you nail it, celebrate the success and reasons why before you move on to the next area of focus. Empowering employees with a certain level of autonomy not only boosts their confidence but also fast-tracks the achievement of organizational goals.

We strive to use a repeatable, consistent process for identifying gaps and priorities. Weekly, all managers should have one-on-ones and team meetings. We review results, progress, issues and feedback from these meetings as an Executive Team weekly. We also ask leaders to conduct skip level meetings to gather even more information. We conduct monthly and quarterly business reviews to identify more gaps and priorities. We also conduct a quarterly company-wide survey to ensure we understand what we should start doing, stop doing and do more of. The leadership team then ranks all of the opportunities we have identified to establish top priorities each quarter. Finally, we offer updates on each priority bi-weekly on our town hall meeting.

This is a key step in then process. It seems relatively easy to identify gaps that arise after an engagement survey but without an investigative exercise which delves that the core causes for those gaps, this analysis is incomplete. Cause identification will be what helps us define the priorities because if we want to create long term impact through the engagement program we need to address the foundational aspects that are creating disengagement. Strategic thinking will be important when narrowing it down to priorities- what to address first, which ones will have the highest impact, what are the long term implications.

In the hospitality sector, delays in addressing gaps can lead to a rapid decline in customer satisfaction and, consequently, revenues. Don’t wait and hope it problem takes care of itself. Immediate action is often non-negotiable.

Have an effective and well-researched plan with data study of Employee Engagement ratio. Most of us make plans and execute Employee Engagement activities but we don't assess the impact or don't quite evaluate the participation efficiency. Develop a plan but with a effectiveness calculation, engagement ratio calculation, and impact analysis with survey feedback.

One of the most effective ways to get a quality action plan is to involve employees in the process. Getting them to identify the milestones not only helps them understand the steps needed for strategic planning but it also helps with the buy-in to make it happen. Having open ended conversation points facilitates exploring all possible outcomes.

It is crucial to define the end goal and create a detailed action plan to make it more visible to everyone involved. I have experienced situations where the dreamer in the team sets unachievable timelines during meetings, resulting in frustration and wasted time.

The hospitality industry is constantly evolving, and so should your engagement strategies. Cultivating a culture of continuous improvement is essential to stay ahead of the curve.

As we think about employee engagement we must reframe our focus. A decade ago, employee engagement’s focus often was on getting the employee to DO what the organization wanted. We strived to get the employees “engaged” with the new program or initiative. Now, employee engagement is a focused on how the organization builds a strong positive experience for the employees. In building your engagement strategy it is helpful to focus on the seven stages of employee engagement: hiring, welcoming, connecting, balancing, rewarding, inspiring, and service (to the community).