Shifting Hiring and Training: Tru by Hilton Harbison Columbia

In a recent survey designed to identify and resolve common problems across Sycamore Investment Group Properties, we asked our General Managers, “What is an issue you're proud to feel you are addressing well at your property?”

Successes In Columbia

Dorothy Kelley, General Manager of the Tru by Hilton Harbison Columbia in SC, responded that her “current Tru Team is the most consistent team in terms of both longevity and in regard to performance since the pandemic hit.”?

She added,?“I have changed our hiring strategies and reorganized our training program here in each department. This shift has allowed employees to feel more confident in their work and enjoy their work more which has increased their personal and team performance.”?

We wanted to recognize Dorothy for her measurable improvements and give other GMs a chance to learn from her success, so we asked some follow-up questions to find out just how she’s managed to boost morale and introduce new, quality team members.?

Shifting the Hiring Mindset

We asked, “What problems in hiring/ team building were you seeing that you set out to address?”

Dorothy told us, “We needed to change our mindset more than anything. During the pandemic, we made a lot of ‘Covid hires,’ meaning that if people showed up to interviews, we hired them. Now, we're shifting away from that practice to be more selective. Instead of saying, ‘We need people,’ we're choosing to say, ‘We need good people,’ so we can make quality hires that stick.”?

Easier said than done, Dorothy has identified and narrowed her focus to a few key elements of hiring that have helped her choose candidates she believes will fit her hotel’s workplace culture well.?

First, she insists on consistently interviewing new talent. Each department at the Tru by Hilton Harbison Columbia is required to hold ten interviews per week, even if there are no immediate positions to fill. This practice positively impacts both employees and management in the following ways:?

• Maintaining a larger number of employees allows for flexibility in scheduling. If team members request time off, it is better for everyone if there are enough people available to cover all vacant shifts. In today's climate, managers need more employees on payroll to fill their schedules than ever before.?
• Managers miss out on 100% of the talent they don’t interview. Hospitality leaders know that one exceptional team member can have a huge impact on company culture and hotel performance scores, so it’s critical that department heads never stop trying to find that diamond in the rough.?
• Consistent hiring prevents managers from finding themselves at the mercy of challenging employees. Avoid situations in which department heads are unable to discipline or terminate difficult team members for fear of having no one to cover their shifts by making sure there are always qualified candidates who could be called on to step in to fill vacancies.?

Innovative Interview Questions

In addition to scheduling ten interviews per week in each department, Dorothy has thoughtfully revised the 10 questions her managers are encouraged to ask.?

Candidates interviewing at the Tru by Hilton Harbison Columbia are asked to explain their likely responses to hypothetical scenarios or to recount specific instances from their past work history. A few of our favorite questions are listed below:?

• Describe your best experience dealing with a customer? Your worst? What did the story reveal?? Did they fight with a customer and then try to rationalize the behavior? How did they handle the best and worst?
• What do you do when a co-worker who’s not a friend is testy with you at the start of a shift? This reveals interpersonal and conflict-resolution style.
• What does success in the role look like to you? (Lots of pay, schedule flexibility, good friends at work, etc.) This reveals what motivates candidates most in their role and how to manage them in the future.?

Of course, evaluating and hiring employees is only half the battle. General Managers like Dorothy also know how much effort goes into training and retaining new team members.?

Involved Onboarding?

In Marcus Buckingham’s book,?First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently, he says, “The talented employee may join a company because of its charismatic leaders, its generous benefits, and its world-class training programs, but how long that employee stays and how productive he is while he is there is determined by his relationship with his immediate supervisor.”?

Keeping this concept in mind, Dorothy restructured her onboarding process to ensure new hires were spending quality time learning from their direct supervisors.

?She explains, “Our new system is more hands on than the way we were doing things before. Now, managers are the only ones allowed to train new hires. We've moved away from teaching new employees how to do things by just having them shadow existing employees.”?

The company has also created onboarding checklists for each department with review sections at the end that new hires must complete, and managers have to sign off on before anyone is assigned a solo shift.?

The checklist is broken into categories including “Orientation, Online Training, Customer Service, Shift Duties, and OnQ” tasks. Upon arrival on their first day, all employees receive a nametag, uniform, and tour of the hotel, making them feel welcomed as part of the team.?

Measuring Positive Impacts

We also asked Dorothy, “How has your team responded to these changes,” and, “How have you seen these changes reflected in hotel performance scores?”

She proudly told us that her team has responded really well, adding, “We've seen team members feel more confident in their work and decision making. We're also seeing longevity in how long employees choose to stay on with the company.”?

She also said, “Specifically in housekeeping, our scores rose by 14 points in March which was the first month that the entire department had completed our new training program. In addition to training new hires, we also restrained existing housekeepers with the new program, and it seems to have made a difference in guest satisfaction.”

Final Advice

While Dorothy’s methods are not guaranteed to solve all hiring or training problems, they might be helpful to other General Managers looking to rethink their strategies.?

Overall, Dorothy’s advice for other hospitality leaders facing similar challenges to those at the Tru by Hilton Harbison Columbia is, “Be patient. It's better to wait and be short-staffed temporarily while you find the right fit than it is to hire the first person who interviews just because they are available.”?

By Courtney Madeira