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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Your team is probably tired and stressed after months of living with stress, uncertainty, and fear. Try these tips to bring joy to the workplace into, and beyond, the holiday season.

We have been living with the global COVID-19 pandemic for about eight months (at time of writing). It’s a difficult and tiring situation for spa and hospitality employees. The industry has been through layoffs and massive budget cuts, and for those who are still working, the day to day can be a lot to deal with. Employees are working with enhanced cleaning and safety protocols, and under the stress of getting everything right in order to keep both themselves and guests (with whom they may be in close contact) safe. All while wearing PPE and, more likely than not, talking about and hearing about the pandemic all the time with both co-workers and guests.  

As a result, people are tired, fed up, and frightened as we head into the holiday season this year. Your team members are probably exhausted; tired of the pandemic, tired of the fear, and just plain tired. What can you do to bring some joy back to the workplace in what is traditionally a time of cheer, and into next year, without breaking the bank? Here are several strategies and ideas.

Tap into play, purpose and potential.

Researchers have identified three factors that motivate people: play (joy in the work itself), purpose (value of the impact of one’s work), and potential (when your work develops your potential). Keep these in mind when planning your team’s days. Create fun activities for play, illustrate the value of what you do for purpose, and encourage learning and growth for potential.

Do something for others.

Bring your team together to help those less fortunate through a charity or organization. This activity has multiple benefits that include helping others, boosting morale, and promoting teamwork.

Recognize and reward.

It’s always important to recognize achievements. Call attention when an employee does well, demonstrates a core value of your business, goes out of their way to make a guest happy, or helps another team member. Be free with praise, recognition, and meaningful rewards. People are happier when they feel valued.

Do little things.

Little gestures go a long way in hard times. It doesn’t cost much to order pizza or bring in some healthy treats once or twice a week. Most people appreciate free food. Take care of a small but tedious task for someone else, give gifts or gift cards, or treat everyone to wine at the end of a weekend workday. Only you know what your team will enjoy and appreciate.

Create a welcoming environment for the senses.

Go above and beyond on the holiday lights and sparkles. A festive atmosphere will help lift spirits. Play good music and scent the air to boost, energise, and comfort.

Fill your workplace with plants and light.

Research has found that exposure to nature may improve health and wellbeing, that there is a strong correlation between workplace daylight exposure and sleep, activity and quality of life, and that having plants around decreases stress levels. 

Avoid focusing on the pandemic.

Try creating designated times for discussing news and concerns, and discouraging employees from talking about the pandemic at other times. A fun and silly activity you can do together is create a list of alternative conversation topics and stick it to the wall.

Create fun.

For example: most people are familiar with the Secret Santa holiday tradition in which people pick names from a hat and give a gift to that person (often anonymously). The “secret friend” game just eliminates the “Santa” part, and can take things a step further. Everyone picks names from a hat and then does nice things for that person for a month. They can leave notes, snacks, and little gifts, and get creative with their own ideas. The secret friends are revealed at the end of the month (which does not have to be December).

Encourage friendships.

A study of more than 2,000 managers and employees in 10 countries found that people who had few friends at work felt lonely either very often or always and were disengaged from their jobs. And almost two-thirds said they would be more inclined to stay at their company longer if they had more friends. A separate study found that 70% of employees say having friends at work is the most crucial element of a happy working life. The best ways to encourage friendships include modeling them by being a friend yourself, and discouraging drama and animosity between team members.

Check in and pay attention.

What does your team need? Pizza, wine, and secret friends are great ideas unless they’re not what your team needs. Do they need time off or more encouragement? Are last-minute cancellations wreaking havoc with schedules?  Would sending more reminders and confirmation requests to guests help? Are people working too hard and do they need time off?

When a leader is tuned in, they often know what needs to be done. You’ll figure it out.

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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