Creating Winning Hospitality Teams
Let’s talk teamwork today – because as everyone in the hospitality industry knows – it’s right up there on the list of things to nurture when it comes to a successful business.
Building a great team is tough in any industry, but the hospitality industry can be particularly tricky with all its idiosyncrasies and complexities. High staff turnover, a wide range of job roles, and a competitive, fast-paced market are all factors that can affect how your hospitality teams work.
Steering Towards Success
Great teams are an incredible resource. They’re what keeps your company going, growing and successful. But it should never be forgotten that your teams are people rather than a machine, so your management and leadership skills are paramount when it comes to building, maintaining and encouraging them.
Luckily, there are plenty of elearning companies that offer online training courses that can help you, and your teams, over both the short and the long term. You may consider learning and development as something your just employees need to engage with, but as a manager or company founder, you need to roll up your sleeves and invest in your own learning too. You’re essentially the captain of a ship and it’s your role to lead and support your teams. You’ve got to make sure your individual team members have direction and freedom to work, plus you’re at the helm when it comes to bringing crew members on board. However long you may have been in the hospitality industry, it’s almost certain that there are things you could be doing more constructively. Ultimately you’re aiming to make your business a success for now and for the future, and if you’re still reading, you’ve recognised that successful teams are the key to achieving this. So, let’s take a look at what goes into building a great team and how online training can help you; and them!
Team Selection
First up, recruitment. Let’s pose a couple of questions: What are you looking for? Who are you looking for? You’ve got to hire the right folks for the job, and then ideally, keep them for as long as you can. Consistency is key in the hotel, or restaurant business for instance, and retaining the staff members you hire and train ensures quality experiences for your customers. Elearning software can really help you identify what you’re looking for when you’re recruiting. Whether you need a front desk receptionist, or a kitchen porter, you need to be able to spot candidates who have the right credentials, attitude, and work ethic. There’s some superb online training available out there that can really help you refine your interview processes, spot red flags and even save you time when it comes to developing an interview for a particular position. You may be busy, but bite-size training courses that can be completed relatively quickly can either teach you new approaches or refresh your memory if it’s been a while since you led an interview. Training via mobile elearning platforms can provide courses if you’re always on the go, and microlearning courses can ‘drip feed’ you short training sessions if, like most business owners or managers, you seem to be time poor. Plump for lessons designed to help you recruit the right people the first time, and the chances of getting a revolving door of staff are lowered. There’s nothing more damaging for a team than instability when it comes to its members – they’ve got to have time to get to know each other in order to pull together! Elearning software can also reveal aspects to recruiting the individuals that will make up your teams that you might not have previously considered. Being able to identify and anticipate how different personality types will interact with each other is central to building a strong team. Training courses that focus on these topics will likely be incredibly useful to you. It might be tempting to hire three talented, creative chefs for instance, but your kitchen might quickly go into meltdown if your restaurant team doesn’t also include individuals with pragmatism!
Create A Vision
Great hospitality teams pretty much always demonstrate cooperation and understanding: but how will you get them all on board if your hotel, cafe, or restaurant’s core values aren’t clear? This is an area where learning software can work with you to build and communicate a list of things that your company truly stands for. Following this, online training courses for you and your staff can be created and tailored to teach everyone in the business how to espouse those values in their everyday work.
Online training starts with you getting learning assistance to identify what your hospitality values are, how to package them, and then comes down the line to everyone in your company through elearning courses that cover every aspect of their jobs. The benefit of this kind of learning management system (or LMS) is that information can be disseminated right across your operation simultaneously – and can grow with your company. In this respect, elearning can help you stay focused on your current objectives, but also give you the tools to identify your future goals. Great teams need motivation and something to reach for, so consider your LMS as a way of keeping your people up to speed with where you’re all headed.
Keeping Healthy
Building a positive company culture, and an environment where there is clarity and transparency helps you retain your staff and additionally gives them freedom. Hospitality teams that are comprised of employees that understand their workplace’s values, and have the initiative to deploy them in every facet of their job tend to be valuable, high-functioning teams. Remember knowledge builds confidence, and if everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet, then long-term consistency and quality service is going to be the result. Online learning can also include courses on behaviours that can deeply affect team harmony too. A healthy work culture that is built on mutual respect, support and positive action is supremely important, so consider elearning courses for your teams that provides regular reminders and guidance when it comes to these topics. A toxic work culture can never encourage teamwork, but setting out what you expect through regular and easily absorbed online training programs will explain and underscore what is, and isn’t cool.
Which brings us onto another topic that can hamper great teamwork in the hospitality industry. Micromanaging. Employees hate it, and frankly a senior staff manager who engages in it regularly tends to feel overworked. “I’ll do it myself” or “Why do I do all the work around here” are the sort of statements micromanagers tend to come out with, and these kinds of complaints really don’t improve teamwork. These sentiments and actions are actually the antithesis of teamwork and at the heart of it is a lack of trust. Micromanagers are more common than you’d think. One way this behaviour can creep in, is when one, or a few team members lack training – causing management to step in more frequently than they should need to. This then extends to staff members who don’t actually need extra supervision and… yep. Suddenly you have a micromanager. This quickly leads to a breakdown in team morale. Again, online training courses for your managers can regularly dispense ways to identify and support a team member who needs guidance, and then steer them toward the appropriate extra learning. Micromanaging can also be avoided by using learning software to help everyone recognise what is, and isn’t part of their job. Training managers to identify personalities and needs, and allocate achievable tasks to each team member truly builds hospitality teams that work smoothly. Employees will always respond well in an atmosphere of trust, and frequent engagement with LMS software will grow everyone’s knowledge bank – whether that’s knowing when to let people crack on if you’re a manager, or an employee independently keeping up to date with the interpersonal skills required for a wait staff role.
Rewards And Acknowledgement
And lastly, we need to talk about rewards, because great teamwork is rewarding. However, getting from point A, where everyone comes on board, to point B, where the end goal is customer satisfaction and a job well done, can be a long road. In the hospitality industry, there are going to be bumps on the way – the market for one, is an ever-shifting factor to consider. In order to keep your team focused and happy, you need to provide not one ultimate carrot, but a number, paced so that you can foster a sense of personal and collective achievement that drives everyone toward your chief objectives. Here, training, learning and development can truly provide opportunities to make your staff feel good about their work. Learning software can deliver entertaining, engaging content for your people that will not only expand their skills, but give them a moment in their day to complete a short task that can deliver an instant reward.
Here’s an example. For instance, a member of your housekeeping team might face a never-ending day of identical room turnovers, but fifteen minutes of a gameified course that teaches ways to interact with customers utilises different skills; and on competition, may deliver a certificate of excellence. This is an achievement that is complete and acknowledged for all to see. Learning software can offer waypoints and progress markers, and is often designed to be a refreshing change from everyday tasks. Your housekeeping staff, now armed with the skills to engage in great interactions with holidaymakers might then receive praise from your hotel manager who hears about their conduct directly from a guest. And so the team pulls together. As the boss, you need to encourage and praise your staff too, and training software can give you ways to do this in the most constructive of ways.
So, good luck with your hospitality teams – they’re the mechanism your business needs to run. Successful management means using all the tools at your disposal and learning management software, hospitality training and regular courses for staff is one of the best tools out there. Great hospitality teams are well-selected, informed, and praised, while your management should be clear and supportive. Take a look at what online training can do for your business and you won’t look back!