Saying “thank you” and noting people’s contributions is key to business success. Here’s why employee recognition matters in your spa. 

Do you recognize your employees? We don’t mean “can you pick them out of a lineup?” We mean, do you acknowledge your employee contributions in meaningful ways? If not, you should start. Employee recognition is a key element of business success in your spa or hospitality company. 

When spas and hotels are busy and everyone is rushing around, working to make guests happy, people’s individual efforts can be overlooked. But saying “thank you” and noting people’s contributions is important.

As we have previously reported, hospitality’s record for making its employees feel valued is less than stellar. A 2020 study by Qualtrics found that travel and hospitality employees are the least likely out of all industries to feel valued at work. Another, more recent, report from Microsoft found that frontline workers, including hospitality workers, feel undervalued within their companies. And separate research found that 60% of job seekers wouldn’t even consider working in a restaurant, bar, hotel or other hospitality job. Those last findings don’t necessarily come down to a lack of employee recognition, but they do highlight that there are issues.

There isn’t one solution that is going to change this, but we do know that employee recognition can help people feel valued at work and improve morale and  engagement.

We have written before about the importance of communicating goals to your staff and involving them in decision making processes. People feel more invested in the success of a thing when they fully understand how they are instrumental in that success. Similarly, when they feel that their contributions are recognized and appreciated, not only does this boost morale, it engages and motivates them to contribute further. We all want to know that we matter. Some people might say that’s all anyone really wants.

We spoke with Mindi Cox, Senior Vice President of People & Great Work at O.C. Tanner, a company that specializes in employee recognition platforms. Cox believes “an organization’s business potential is intimately tied to its sense of humanity,” and she helps cultivate workplace cultures where people feel connected to the greater purpose and impact of their work. She was named 2018 Human Resource Executive of the Year by the Stevie Award for Great Employers. Here’s what she had to say about employee recognition, why it matters, and how to do it right.

Why is employee recognition so important? How does it change organizations and employee experience?

Employee recognition has the power to transform organizations and the people in them. Being deliberate about recognizing the positive actions, heroics, experiments or ideas that are of strategic and operational importance to your organization will lead to more of those behaviors. We often speak of company values, even put them on the wall, but recognition can be a strategic way to show our employees what those values and priorities look like in action. It’s amazing to watch the benefit of recognition to both the recipient and those who witness a great recognition moment. While the moment itself may incorporate an award, points or a trophy for the celebrant being recognized, some of the biggest benefit is experienced by those who watch and listen to a leader or presenter detail the accomplishment, connect its importance to the organization, and then think to themselves, “I can do that, too” or “I know a way I can create an outcome like that in my area.” This creates the best kind of ripples in an organization.

Beyond its key role in helping organizations bring strategy to life, recognition also improves the wellbeing of employees as it connects them to the purpose of their work and communicates that their hard work is seen, they are of value, and their work matters.

What are some examples of best practices around employee recognition?

The best kind of recognition is steeped in authentic appreciation for personal contribution that is connected to strategic outcomes. That sounds complicated, but it doesn’t have to be. For example, if you want your team members to greet customers in a specific way, catch someone doing it right and make a moment out of it. Need creative thinkers solving critical business issues? Don’t wait until you are sure the project will solve all of your problems, take the time to cheer the person or team for diving in, asking hard questions, and making progress. The best recognition is specific, timely, and sincere. Recognition done well connects people in your organization to their purpose and each other. Too often organizations opt for less personal, large group events where everyone is thanked – that is a great start and can be done in the right way, but too often that type of recognition is generic and scheduled in a way that makes it an expectation rather than a memorable, personal experience. You might also consider a peer-to-peer recognition program that ensures the everyday goodness your employees are bringing can be recognized by those who see it most and up close.

How can organizations improve their recognition practices?

If you are new to encouraging appreciation in your organization or prioritizing more formal recognition, just get started. You may find a quirky way to celebrate something unique about your company or way that you work – run with it. You can always iterate as your organization matures its recognition and appreciation practices. I would recommend taking the time to create or participate in a leadership training or at least a conversation that includes sharing both how to recognize effectively and why appreciation is critical to organizations, teams and individuals – this is key to ensuring appreciation becomes a key aspect of your culture modeled by its leaders.

You can visit octanner.com/global-culture-report to learn more about what employees are saying about what type of appreciation matters most to them in today’s workplace.

Hi! Check out this list of the spa & wellness trends we’ll be watching next year. Click here to download the Handbook: Seven wellness trends for 2022 

Spa Executive is published by Book4Time, the leader in guest management, revenue and mobile solutions for the most exclusive spas, hotels, and resorts around the globe. Learn more at book4time.com

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As the hospitality industry works to fix the staffing crisis, employee wellness should be top of mind. Let’s look at some employee wellness trends for 2022.

Employee wellness and wellbeing should be top of mind right now for leaders in the hospitality industry. Nobody should be ignoring it or putting it off. 

Staffing was already an issue before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and, heading into 2022, hotels, resorts, and spas are facing an unprecedented worker shortage. 

So, companies should be looking at any number of potential changes to their recruitment and retention strategies.

People don’t want to work in hospitality

We can’t gloss over it anymore; people don’t want to work in hospitality.

According to Forbes, a recent survey of more than 30,000 job seekers, from Joblist, found that 60% of job seekers would not consider working in a restaurant, bar, hotel or other hospitality job. Of those, 70% said nothing would convince them to work in hospitality. Plus, 38% of former hospitality workers said they are not even considering a hospitality job, and only 26% said higher pay would incentivize them to change their minds.

Fortunately, this can change. As dire as things sound, it’s not an unsolvable problem. It will, however, take attention, time, and financial investment. Hurdles may be bigger in hospitality than other industries, thanks in part to the amount of person-to-person contact required in these industries, but they are not insurmountable. You only control what you can control, but that may be a lot more than you think.

You can make employees feel valued

Companies can increase pay and workplace flexibility. They can listen to their employees and pay attention to people’s needs. A focus on employee wellbeing is something everyone can offer. Making employees feel valued is another thing that everyone can offer. 

Studies show the primary reasons employees quit their jobs is when workplace health and sustainability expectations go unmet and they feel underappreciated and undervalued. And a 2020 survey by Qualtrics found that travel and hospitality employees are the least likely out of all industries surveyed to feel valued at work. 

Focus on mental health

In a recent SWNS poll of 2,000 Americans, 57% said they would willingly exchange supposed perks like “free in-office food” for free mental health resources, and six in 10 ranked health benefits as the most important non-salary-related factor when considering a job. Separate research found that healthcare, sick and parental leave, and flexible work schedules were the most valued workplace benefits. (The specifics of these factors and their importance depends on where people live, as some locations, like Canada, already offer free healthcare).

The Joblist’s report shows that these benefits are currently a major factor in attracting employees, with 55% of job seekers saying they would even consider taking a lower-paying job if it offered better benefits.

More findings include: 74% of job seekers believe employers need to re-evaluate their benefits after the pandemic and 43% of job seekers say benefits are more important than financial compensation when considering a new job.

Digital outreach

Technology can play a role. There’s suggestion that tech can help keep people engaged in their own health and employers in the loop. One example is ​​the Moodbeam, a tech wellness device that links to a mobile phone app and web interface. The device has  two buttons, one yellow and one blue. Users press the yellow button when they’re feeling happy, and the blue one when they’re unhappy. The idea is to have team members voluntarily wear the device to increase awareness and communication. 

The Moodbeam is said to be “a complete solution, helping you map happiness across your people and teams, driving positive change and improved wellbeing.”

What more should one know about employee wellbeing going into 2022?

Wellbeing and wellness programs are an employment-brand differentiator

According to Ryan Wolf, Physical Wellbeing Lead at Gallup, employers are looking to wellbeing “as a solution for the great resignation.” When we asked Wolf what employee wellness trends he’s predicting for 2022, he said, “A continued double down on mental health – and a greater realization that the wellbeing and wellness programs are an employment-brand differentiator.”

Wolf explained, “The pandemic has made mental wellbeing a subject that doesn’t have to be danced around anymore. It is a safe subject to discuss and address – and employees are expecting their manager, leaders, and employer to genuinely care about them as a human being. Employers who demonstrate just how much they care about their employees will see a trickle-down effect to customers.”

We also asked Wolf to explain how employee wellbeing strategies contribute to employee acquisition and retention, as well as how it affects a business’ bottom line.  

He said, “Employees want to know that all their needs are being met. Gallup conducted a large international study in the early 2000’s called the World Poll to discover the differentiators between a good life and a great life. Career, social, financial, physical and community wellbeing were the common elements of wellbeing identified by world residents. Employers who can address these elements (in conversation, through communication, and via interventions) will boost employee wellbeing which has downstream effects on all the significant KPIs that business leaders are evaluating and managing.”

Particularly in hospitality and wellness, happy employees are key to the guest experience, upon which revenue is entirely dependent. Those who don’t place a premium on employee wellness and wellbeing will almost certainly pay for it.

Employers who recognize this positive trend of making employee experience part of their employer brand, on the other hand, are far more likely to thrive.

Wolf said, “We are experiencing a purpose crisis, one fueled by a lack of fulfillment and negative emotions. Deaths of despair, ranging from obesity to overdosing, are higher than ever.  Employers who can integrate meaningfulness into jobs and roles will create a workforce, a workplace, and a balance sheet that thrives and flourishes.”

We’ve released a list of the spa & wellness trends we’ll be watching next year. Click here to download the Handbook: Seven wellness trends for 2022

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Employee productivity is a key element of business success. You want your team to work hard, be productive, and make the best use of their time. Sometimes this requires coaching and guidance. Not everyone instinctively knows what they should be doing at all times. This is where leadership comes in. It’s up to leaders to create an environment where people are encouraged to be at their most productive.

This means engaging employees and ensuring that they have all the tools and resources they need to do and be their best.

Here are seven ways to increase employee productivity

Communicate expectations

Too many employers in all sectors are unclear about what they expect from their employees, and then they complain when they don’t get it. From the moment an employee is hired, there should never be a time that they don’t know what is expected of them. If you want to increase employee productivity, they should know what success means for their role and how that fits in with what success means for your business. Set clear goals and targets, communicate those goals from day one, and keep communicating. A lack of communication can leave employees confused and unmotivated, and one study reportedly found that businesses with good communication practices were more likely to have lower than average turnover.

Track and analyze data

Once goals are set and communicated, they must be tracked. Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) tell you how your business is doing and how your team is doing. Your spa software should be able to tell you everything you need to know about your revenue performance, retail, occupancy, and more, in seconds with just the click of a button. Then we determine what role the employee plays in those KPIs and whether they are meeting expectations. Staff KPIs might include retail penetration (retail vs services), request rates, and repeat guests. How much is their average ticket and are they doing well at upselling? Are they frequently requested by guests or not at all? If goals are easily reached, move them, or your employees will have nothing to work towards.

Respect your employees for the unique value they bring

Analyze performance from more than one angle. It’s important to look at retail sales, but also at how much unique value a service provider brings overall. For example: maybe Lisa is a sales dynamo and many customers love her exuberant energy. Jeremy is more of a quiet and calming personality whose retail numbers are significantly lower than Lisa’s. But, upon further inspection, you learn that Jeremy has a much higher request rate and that Lisa and Jeremy bring equal value — or maybe Jeremy even brings more. Maybe this is because people enjoy his lower key energy and lack of sales pressure, and some of Jeremy’s clients would actually stop requesting and recommending him if he started pushing retail sales. Does it make sense to tell Jeremy he has to sell more retail? Maybe not. Be careful of working against your employee’s strengths and, ultimately, against your business.

Offer feedback and coaching

That said, people often need help. Be there to provide it and make sure that your team has all the resources they need to reach company goals. Give feedback in a constructive and productive way. Tell people when they’re doing well and don’t reserve feedback for when you have something negative to say. If there are areas that need improvement, offer support and solutions rather than just criticism. Be consistent, doing regular check-ins rather than once or twice yearly check ins. Everyone will be more productive if you communicate regularly.

Recognize and reward performance and improvement

Offering performance incentives is a great way to motivate employees. Employee incentive programs are great, but avoid only recognizing top performers. When companies do this they risk falling into a trap of always recognizing the same people: the A Players. This means that your B Players are consistently overlooked, and that is demotivating and demoralizing for them. It’s also unfair. Not everyone can be A Players, and, while your B Players don’t bring in the most revenue individually, as a group, they likely make up the bulk of your revenue. You don’t want to lose them. So, reward them too. Also, rewards are great but don’t underestimate the power of praise and a heartfelt “thank you.”

Make sure everyone has what they need to be great

Your team members should not be spending time on tasks that could otherwise be automated and looking for information that should be readily available to them. What this means:

• Making guest information available before an appointment so service providers know who they will be working with. Your software system should store your guests’ names, purchase and treatment history, personal preferences (sparkling water over tea, Brahms over Enya, favourite scent is rosemary-lime, etc.), details like robe and slipper size, and even past conversations, across multiple properties and make it readily viewable for those who need to see it. Then your team can access all of this before an appointment to prepare a highly personalized experience.
• Optimizing schedules with no double booking and no long gaps between appointments for individual providers.
• Making these schedules viewable from anywhere with a cloud-based system so your team can be prepared.
• Properly managing inventory in your software system so everyone knows what is available and items that have run out can be immediately restocked.
• Utilizing online and mobile booking, virtual intake, and contactless payment options to free up front desk staff time and allow them to productively focus on the guest experience.

Trust people to make decisions

An empowered team is a productive team. When people feel like they have to consult a superior before doing anything – whether it’s offering a small gift with a service to a loyal customer, moving an appointment, or reversing the charge on a service due to a complaint – that is exactly what they will do, and that eats up time and morale. When you step back and trust your team, rather than micromanaging their every move, they grow into the space offered to them and take responsibility. This makes everyone more productive and operations run more smoothly.

It’s easy to motivate people with the right tools and resources. An engaged workforce is a productive one.

Book4Time can help with KPI tracking, performance management, and more. Visit Book4Time.com to find out how. Or schedule a demo now.

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Employee stress is a factor in hospitality and your team’s wellbeing is as important as that of your guests. Here’s how to reduce employee stress and make a difference.

Working in spa and hospitality is stressful. Work is demanding and the pressure to offer the ultimate guest experience while keeping up with safety protocols can be a lot to handle. Burnout, as we all know, is not uncommon.

Moreover, a recent report found that travel and hospitality employees are the least likely out of all industries surveyed to feel valued at work. And separate research found that feeling undervalued at work was correlated with the highest levels of workplace stress. In other words: hospitality is already a stressful sector, and the common feeling of being undervalued adds stress to that stress.

The five elements we need to thrive

This costs hospitality companies. Stress has been called the “health epidemic of the 21st century” by the World Health Organization and the “business world’s silent killer” by Forbes. It’s estimated to cost American businesses alone up to $300 billion a year.

The hospitality world is very focused on creating a stress-free guest experience and on guest wellbeing. Managers should also be sure to spend time and energy on the wellness and wellbeing of their employees.

Employee wellbeing matters for your wellness business

Advisory company Gallup studied wellbeing in more than 98% of the world’s population and identified five common elements that people need to thrive in their professional and personal lives. Gallup found that how employees rate these five elements affects business outcomes:

• Career: You like what you do every day.
• Social: You have meaningful friendships in your life.
• Financial: You manage your money well.
• Community: You like where you live.
• Physical: You have energy to get things done.

We spoke to Ryan Wolf, Gallup’s Physical Wellbeing Lead, about how hospitality leaders can apply those five principles to reduce employee stress, improve wellbeing, and create healthy, happy workplaces. Here’s how he answered our questions.

What’s the manager’s role in employee wellbeing?

Workplace wellness started as a way for employers to shed some of their increasing healthcare costs. So, a lot of the initiatives were to help employees lose weight or get more exercise. But workplace wellness has evolved tremendously over the past 30-40 years, and now integrates all determinants of health and happiness. It’s not just going to the gym and eating broccoli, it’s thinking about how your relationships and your career support your health.

Leadership needs to have a strategy for wellbeing and managers can make or break that strategy. It can be challenging because they don’t necessarily want to be a wellbeing expert or a life coach for their employees. But they don’t need to be the experts. They just need to be conduits and good dot connectors to help identify available resources based upon specific needs. Sometimes these resources are available through programs already available in the organization, and sometimes they are outside the organizations. Everyone has a special wellbeing need. Our needs are as individualized as we are individual human beings. Recognizing an individual’s needs and supporting them in finding the resources they need is the manager’s role.

How do the five elements Gallup identified factor in?

Physical wellbeing is often the first pathway people focus on, but now we think of physical wellbeing as efficiently managing your energy so you can take care of the important things in your life: having creative and mental energy for work and emotional energy for relationships. The work we do, the passion that we pour into it, the purpose and meaning that we get out of our work, our relationships and friendships, are all very important for longevity, physical wellbeing, and happiness.

Can you talk about ways to avoid burning out employees?

Gallup also identified five major reasons that people burn out: being treated unfairly, an unmanageable workload, a lack of expectations within their role, lack of communication, and unreasonable time pressure. It’s the responsibility of leaders to address these issues.

We’ve also found four elements that employees need from leaders. These are hope, stability, trust, and compassion. Leaders should be intentional about these things. Caring about people is very simple. It comes down to caring about people more than just their productive units and knowing that engagement at work is highly linked and correlated to wellbeing.

How can managers lift some of the employee stress their teams are experiencing right now?

Being communicative, helping people understand what’s expected of them, and being clear about the organization’s financial situation and what the plans are going forward are very important at this time.

Another thing is playing to the strengths of each individual employee and understanding what makes them tick and the kind of work in which they thrive. Identify that setting and help them develop by doing more of that.

CliftonStrengths is a tool that we use to help individuals identify their strengths. There are four domains of strengths: relationship building, strategic thinking, influencing, and executing. Someone who is a really high executer likes to get things done. They might like checklists and just doing hard work. It wouldn’t necessarily be wise to have that person at the front desk of the hotel or spa, checking people in and making small talk. We’d want to put someone who thrives in relationship building and influencing in front of people. So, they can be more of who they are and help the clientele feel comfortable.

What makes a great employee wellness experience?

We need to think about who these individuals are and help them carve a path to explore and experiment with ways to live their best life. Rather than providing programs that try to fit everyone in a box, we should be giving people the autonomy to experiment with what might work best for them.

It’s time to look into our crystal balls and predict the future for the year ahead. Subscribe to our newsletter and download our special report on the trends we’ll be watching: Nine spa and wellness trends for 2021. Download here.

Spa Executive is published by Book4Time, the leader in guest management, revenue and mobile solutions for the most exclusive spas, hotels, and resorts around the globe. Learn more at book4time.com.

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A new report has found that travel and hospitality employees are the least likely out of all industries to feel valued at work. Can we turn this around? 

COVID-19 has hit travel and hospitality employees hard – possibly harder than those of any other industry. While there are many positives to working in this industry at this time, like working in an area full of passionate advocates and being at the forefront of tech wellness and innovation, there are clearly some issues to be worked out. Employee culture is one of them. 

Now, a new report from Qualtrics has found that travel and hospitality employees are the least likely out of all industries surveyed to feel valued at work. This is bad because it will cost hospitality companies, including hotels and spas, big.

Qualtrics writes, “As closed borders and canceled conferences forced many across the globe to either stay home or scramble to get home, those in the Travel & Hospitality industry faced furloughs and layoffs.”

It’s not just about layoffs and furloughs

One might think that travel and hospitality employees feeling undervalued can be blamed entirely on layoffs and furloughs, but this isn’t the case. Only 42% of travel & hospitality employees who are still working full-time say they feel valued by their company. What gives? Some people have some work to do. Moreover:

• 29% of travel & hospitality employees who are still working full-time say their employee experience has gotten worse since the pandemic — the highest of any industry, and the only industry where more workers said it got worse rather than better.
• Travel & hospitality employees rated their company’s response to COVID-19 the lowest, along with automotive employees.
• 36% of travel & hospitality employees say it’s been harder to feel connected to customers now compared to before the pandemic; 24% say it’s been easier.
• 42% of travel & hospitality employees say it’s been harder to deal with customers than before the pandemic; 25% say it’s been easier.

This matters for a number of reasons, one of which is the cost of employee disengagement for your company. Research findings suggest that when employees feel undervalued they are significantly less engaged in their jobs, and the fallout costs of this can be huge. Unhappy employees may expect bigger salaries and, anecdotally, may increase costs by arriving late, leaving early, and taking advantage of out of office expenses. Poor employee engagement can also hurt talent recruitment and retention, customer acquisition and retention, productivity, and revenue. A disengaged workforce costs you at literally every level, some say an estimated $16,000 per employee per year.

Strategies for increasing travel & hospitality employee engagement

Qualtrics recommends the following strategies for improving the situation:

Listen to and act on employee feedback. Travel & hospitality was the only industry where employees said their experience is worse since the pandemic. They were also least satisfied before the pandemic with the ways in which their managers listened to and acted on feedback. Qualtrics suggests conducting regular employee pulse checks to help identify experience gaps and determine the best course of action.

Make employee experience a priority. Qualtrics found that people in most industries expect the pandemic to increase focus on employee experience more than anything else, but less than half of workers in travel & hospitality believe the same. They suggest building interactive tools for employees, especially frontline workers, to help them feel like part of the broader organization. 

Communicate the positive changes you make that are designed to improve employee experience with your employees – and hold your organization to them.

Here are eight more strategies for increasing employee engagement at your spa, wellness, or hospitality business:

Encourage ownership. Communicate company goals and involve everyone in achieving them. Be transparent and let your team in on how you’re doing and where you want to get to. People are more committed to the success of an organization when they feel they are an important part of it.

Involve them in decision making. Consult everyone at your company on decisions related to it and encourage their input. Again, if they feel more involved they’ll feel more invested. 

Recognize and reward success. Too many employers only communicate with their teams when something is wrong. Give praise where it’s due – often and effusively – and be a cheerleader along the way.

Get to know your team. Being friendly with employees and asking them about their lives and interests is one sure fire and very simple way of improving your relationship with them. 

Provide them with the tools they need to succeed. Effectively train and onboard new employees. They should never have to wonder what is expected of them and not know who to go to for answers. Make sure they have what they need at all times, be it available schedules, insight into commissions, products on hand, face masks, or clean towels. 

Have tools and strategies for difficult situations. Note that Qualtrics found that customers have become more difficult to deal with recently. Ensure that your employees aren’t dealing with this alone, and that they know you have their backs and are providing tools and guidelines for dealing with situations. 

Support career development and growth. Help your team members grow and reach their career goals. If you’re not in a position to promote internally, support growth anyway. An employee who moves on to move up will be easier to replace if they feel valued because they will be a promoter of your employer brand rather than a detractor from it. 

Don’t overdo it. Interaction between managers and team members is good but be mindful of people’s time as well. If all your team building exercises, trainings, and check-ins are piling on top of endless meetings, this will be resented rather than appreciated. People have lives and families on top of their jobs. Keep that in mind.  

It’s never too late to change the way we do things. We can improve this situation. It just takes time and effort. 

Now read:

Your guide to the ultimate spa employee experience

Spa Executive is published by Book4Time, the leader in guest management, revenue and mobile solutions for the most exclusive spas, hotels, and resorts around the globe. Learn more at book4time.com.

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