What's next in service for the hospitality industry, a culture of care: Jan Smith at TEDxTemecula

fresh out of high school infused with way too much wanderlust and independence I decided that I would travel a bit before I had a knuckle down to go to college so I ended up on the island paradise of Maui Hawaii and I rented a room from a family that had lived on the island for generations and immediately they took me in like I was family and they didn't know me and I didn't know them but they were just so hospitable and caring and I watched over about a year of living with them how they shared that culture of care and that sharing and that servant heart with their friends their family their community and their workplace and they explained to me that it was their essence of Ohana which in the hawaiian culture is really the definition of taking care of family and it aligns itself so beautifully with the concept of hospice of hospitality which is the act of care and welcoming a visitor guest or stranger and I was a stranger in their home they didn't know who I was but we'd never know that because they were so ingrained this family there were three generations of family living in the home and with me there were eight of us in this very teeny tiny home with one bathroom so we were very cozy but they were so respectful to everyone that they encountered and I didn't know it then but I definitely know it now it was the introduction for me in a world of hospitality and a journey of my career and I can remember early on being at the kitchen table for breakfast and I was looking out the window at there at their home and through the window I could see these beautiful papaya trees and I was commenting how I had never seen anything like that before I know it out of the corner of my eye I see the little one that could have been much more than about four years old at the time scurrying up this tree and coming back with several papayas and his hand and from there on I had fresh papaya almost every morning now that's a sense of caring in a little teeny tot but it was all through that family so I posed the question can a culture of care change the service industry and yes it can because care is at the core of every service initiative and when we think about it that's the relationship between a guest and a customer and how critical that is first we have to care for the employee so they can care for the customer so yes it absolutely can so I always marvel at it why we often are in the service environment and we see things fall flat or fall short not too long ago I was at a restaurant with some friends and we sat down quickly they were very efficient to get a seated but then we watched the server go back and forth and just kind of buzz by our table she didn't ever look our way she didn't acknowledge us and finally when she came to our table this is what she said are you guys ready to order it wasn't hi my name is or welcome to this restaurant it was just an efficiency and that's how it went through the whole meal it's very efficient but it fell flat because there was no engagement no friendliness there was no relationship that would have been developed and for all of us at the table who had never been to the restaurant before we kind of walked away not so impressed not with the product but with the service so you wonder how does that happen at least I walked off wondering two things about this particular server one I wonder why someone so grumpy would choose to be in a career that required them to have a relationship with the customer and two I wonder why she's so grumpy because in the workplace as employers we are receiving people who have baggage they come to our workplace and they have all kinds of emotions they have all kinds of feelings but as an employer in the service and hospitality industry it's important that we bottle that culture of care with them first to recognize them as human beings to realize that they do have emotions they bring into the workplace but to set the high standards of service because that relationship between customer and employee is so critical especially to retain a customer in today's world so I had to look and think now who does this really well and I thought back to my days at the Walt Disney Company and I realized they are a master at creating that relationship between guest and employee and regardless of how anybody felt coming into the work day you had to check it at the door because for for that organization you were on stage and when you were on stage you had another persona didn't matter if you had a flat tire if you had a fight with someone you know in the household that day you got there and you had a smile on your face and that creates the environment especially in the service industry so I want to talk about service and hospitality because it's definitely you know what I have made a lifelong passion out of and a career choice and it's a great career choice for everyone whether you're brand new in the business they are high school or not sure what they want to do and they want to get into something hospitality and service is great because it gives them an opportunity to work with the public and the intensity that comes with the service and hospitality industry in this industry it is strong in fact the October job report just came out and in the nation there were 53 thousand jobs added in the hospitality and service industry that's fantastic news right because we've gone through some tough years but this is good news and in 2014 the hospitality and service industry anticipates great growth right now there's about 8% of the American workforce that works in the hospitality industry so it's healthy and it will continue to be healthy in our own community here we see openings of restaurants and reach sale and wineries casinos dining lodging and resorts but the service industry even goes a little bit further than that because anytime you have a relationship where you're trying to get something from your in your customer or to the employee that's service so it could be where you have your nails done or you have your car fixed or on the phone trying to deal with an issue and if we cannot as employers of this industry model a culture of care how could we ever expect that our employees can push that out to the customer it's real critical it's critical but we know that we have to have happy engaged and interested employees working in this industry but we know that that doesn't always always happen now what's really interesting about the demographics of trying to hire in this industry is that just in 2013 the American workplace report came out indicated that 70% of the respondents said they were not happy with their jobs they were disengaged and disinterested now that's not a formula for success when you come to the hospitality industry because it's the consumer you get that on the other end of with the example I gave of the server who just didn't really seem to care so there's some remedy to this though that's the same respondent said look if my company would just pay attention to the strengths that I bring to the organization help me grow a little bit in their organization also what I contribute I mean there's always accomplishments to to any employee and if an organization notes those accomplishments and then takes care of them their well-being that that happiness level would go up and I think that's true but 70% that's 7 out of 10 so we have to do better in that regard there is a return on investment though with those companies that understand a culture of care because when that's implemented and the employer is really paying attention to their their staff they get a higher employee engagement which means more customer service higher levels of productivity because we all know when you're not happy with your work you kind of slack off a little bit and you don't give it at all give it your all and then most importantly a culture of care can it can have a result a resolution of having stronger employee retention and stronger customer retention so let's think about that employee retention for a minute the cost of turnover is expensive and employers know that it's tough to get the right person in place but it's even tougher to keep them in place so there's a turnover factor that employers want to watch very carefully because it's just it's a bottom-line cost to their company in addition a retaining a customer I don't even know how you put a value on that but if you're as in the service industry and you get somebody through your door you want them to come back it's 90 percent of the consumers that go elsewhere go elsewhere because they did not have a good experience it's 90 percent that you might be losing out your door so it's critical to have that culture of care implemented in your organization so what does this look like when I'm talking about culture of care let me give you a scenario if you're a manager out today in the audience if you're a manager we know that's a tough job it's time sometimes thankless but let's just say in this case we have a manager and he has a stellar staff he's been very happy with all of them and he has had the same team for years and one in particular has been fantastic a single mom she's tried extra hard because she likes her job and she's happy with everything about it but the manager has observed over the last several months that this employee is calling in sick she's not showing up or she's showing up late but he doesn't want to bother he doesn't want to ask her what's going on so he's leaving it alone hoping it will go away but we all know these things don't naturally go away on their own so he's getting more and more frustrated and one final callin he just its Fester's he's had enough he kicks it up to human resources and he says you take care of the problem just fire her now in human resources we see this often the employee or the managers just getting a little too angry at the employee so Human Resources called that employee in and sits her down and asks a pretty simple question what's going on what's causing your performance to slip you're a great employee what is happening so the employee takes a deep breath and she says recently I've had to take my elderly dad into my home he's has advanced stages of dementia and I'm the only one in the family that can handle him so I brought him into my home but to pay for that care I'm now working Saturday and Sunday I've gotten another job as well as this job in addition my middle schooler is being so tormented and bullied in school and I'm absolutely I don't know what to do with that I'm so frustrated and so I'm back and forth to the school administration trying to handle the situation because it's so scary and not that I needed another cloud burst but my car's transmission blew last month and I've just been scrambling to get to work to get to my son to get to take care of my dad one of my first employers in Human Resources told me something profound be kind because everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle and I believe that to be true every single one of us to some degree and employers have to consider what's going on with their employees if they want to implement a culture of care and if it had been implemented in this situation the manager would not have been frustrated as much as he was and the employee would not have been left to be disengaged and disinterested wondering I wonder why after all all these years working for this business no one even cared to ask what was going on you see we cannot have unhappy disengaged disinterested people working on frontline as our service ambassadors because your product may get them through the door originally right we all have a product but guess what our product has competition we almost all of us have some type of competition so service is the differentiating factor to not only getting a customer through the door but keeping a customer through the door critical absolutely so I want to share with you a story about how a company locally has implemented a culture of care effectively this is a local service industry they've been in our community for about five years and before they even opened their door I had a chance to meet with the owners and they said to me they were going to do something a little bit different they were going to ensure that that their employees understood they were valued in their organization so the company owners decided to pay a little bit more in a wage they gave him a great opportunity if they wanted to stay with the organization to grow and they gave him a great work environment and to this day they do some fun little perks like give a fully-stocked break room now one would say what does that matter it just reinforces that sense of Ohana in that sense that you know this is these are not just my employees they are valued to me and I'll tell you something it's worked because this year this particular service organization was named the number one clinic out of 600 in the nation now that doesn't come by happenstance that comes by an organization valuing their most important asset their employee Mary Catherine Beatson a cultural anthropologist once said caring can be learned by every employee every individual can be weaved into the design of every life to meet an individual need or a pervasive need in society so can a culture of care change the service industry yes it can by beings of better employee engagement stronger customer service levels higher levels of productivity and increased retention of employees and customers a company's commitment to the essence of Ohana and hospitality will change the service industry thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 122,746

Keywords: tedx talk, TEDxTemecula, Business, Culture, United States, ted talks, Community, English, TEDx, ted, tedx, ted talk, Social Change, tedx talks, ted x

Id: rlNdbqkglvg

Length: 16min 19sec (979 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 25 2013