Employee Branding That Rocks

Aug 07, 09 | 1:58 am

By Jim M. Knight, Sr. Director Training & Dvpt., The School of Hard Rocks

How you attract, hire, train, develop and treat your front-line employees is commonly known as the one true strategy to provide great guest service. In lieu of managers doing all of the work themselves, a specific culture must be created and fostered to secure commitment from the employees to stick around and deliver the desired service. This takes time and a lot of work. This interactive session was designed to highlight best practices to create and maintain a strong internal employee culture. Knowing that Generation Y and the Millenials are the talent pool with which our industry is made, there are some key strategies that can be used to tap into and develop that workforce.

Because of its successes - publicly and internally - the visceral backdrop of Hard Rock International is used as a platform to discuss ways to create, maintain or revive a desired employee environment, regardless of the current state of the state.

Some of Hard Rock's practices may seem a bit too irreverent and unpredictable for your particular company, but the fundamentals - both theoretical and practical - are instructionally sound.

What is Employee branding?

I define this as the process by which employees internalize the desired brand image and are motivated to project that image to the guests. It is the organization's responsibility to create buy-in by internally marketing the brand. Great brands get everyone to sing off the same song sheet. It gets people to do what you want them to do, that they might not have done on their own. You've got to teach people and storytell to them in such a way that they feel like they are committed to the brand. It's all about internally marketing the brand to the employee first. But a lot of things have to occur for the experience to go right.

We are all pretty good at marketing to the consumer, but you need to do the same thing for the internal brand as well. I think that employee branding is becoming more important, especially in today's climate where looking for low cost initiatives is important. You have to look at things internally, and branding is where you can start. Employee branding put me on the map, both in my own company and in hospitality.

These days, every business has a traffic problem. You have to convince people to walk in the door. The only way to do that is to give them a positive guest experience. And the positive guest experiences come from the employees. You have to always ask yourself the question: Did we hire the right person?

But to some degree, if I'm trying to train and develop a wrong hire, all the training in the world isn't going to help that person. I'm not in favor of taking jobs from people, but if I get the weak link in my experience as a guest, that ruins the brand, particularly if it's the first time they've ever been to a Hard Rock.

I believe people fall into three categories: the don't know people, the can't do people and the don't care people. If they're a 'don't know', that's great because that person is easy to educate. But if they're a can't do, boy that's really tough. If the can't do person is a good employee, we need to put them in a role where they can be successful. They that don't care, unfortunately, those are people I don't care about. They drag down the brand.

Here's a quote I got from a fellow CHART member this week.

'It's not about mimicking the exact steps shown here, rather it's the 'ah ha' moments for each of you to apply to your specific culture.' Kate Shehan

Hopefully, there will be something I offer you that you can use in your own companies.

The Employee Life Cycle

There are several stages in the employee life cycle: Recruiting, Interviewing, Selecting, Training, Developing, Incenting, Retaining and Separating. Things have changed over the last two decades. Twenty years ago, employees showed up, did the job, went home and were happy to have a job. They tolerated old school attitudes. Ten years ago they started keeping an eye open for a better job, started standing up for their rights and responded well to those who just said, 'thank you.'

Today, they want it all. They bail at the drop of a hat, usually because of weak leadership. Their attorney's phone number is on speed dial, because they are standing up for their rights. Today's employees are loyal only to those who inspire and develop with compassion.

Here's the makeup of today's new generation of employees:

• Individuality is a priority

• They are visual learners (75% of everything we learn is visual)

• They have short attention spans

• They are technologically savvy

• They are socially conscious

This is one reason we use visual storytelling to train our new hires. I tell them first about the dudes who started Hard Rock. They were different sorts. Isaac Tigrett had a long beard, wore all black, sported silver chains and long hair. Peter Morton, the son of well-known restaurateur Arnie Morton, was the other partner and he had the restaurant technical knowledge. They opened in a posh part of London where there was a strict division of classes. Yet, they ignored the class division, making it accessible to everyone.

Their mission: 'To spread the spirit of Rock 'n Roll by creating authentic experiences that rock.' Many thought it wasn't going to last. But there's something about the spirit of how it came to be that makes it successful to this day.

How We Teach Employee Branding

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Source: Hotel News Resource