YOUR WORKFORCE – ADVOCATES OR DETRACTORS?

For hotels, restaurants and event companies, 9 times out of 10 the value of your brand depends on your people.

Location and product quality are key but to gain a continuous price advantage, an engaged and motivated workforce delivering at every customer touch point is critical.

Employees and customers

Since employees have a much closer relationship with customers than senior executives, they are the ones who can make or break a brand’s reputation and market value.

However, to take the UK as an example, only 23% of the workforce is fully ‘engaged’ and it is reasonable to assume that service industries do not differ significantly from the rest.

If you took a straw poll of your workforce would you find advocates or indifference towards you as an Employer?

Either way, statistics show there is a big opportunity to gain market edge right (up to 147%) now by recognising the contribution employees make to the value of our brand on the balance sheet.

At the same time, the workforce is changing fast.

Millennials and Generation Z, who demand a reason to stay with their employers rather than the other way round, will soon make up the majority of employees.

In fact, by next year, Millennials will constitute 50% of the workforce.

So there is no option but to prepare an employee engagement strategy that is fit for purpose and inspires employee loyalty across generations.

Employees and their Employers

To initiate a strategic engagement plan, mapping the ‘employee journey’ through the company will help to scope out a realistic strategy.

Simply mapping a career path from start to finish is not enough; the journey for engagement requires careful consideration at every touchpoint in daily interactions between employee and employer.

Similar in fact to mapping a customer journey but from a fresh perspective.

There are many success stories out there. 

At a recent meeting with Cycas Hospitality, winner of best hotel employer 2018, I discovered from founder John Wagner and Culture Coach Janet Roberts that the Cycas vision of “making its hotels the best places to work as well as to stay” has given a simple, singular direction to the complex task of delivering an effective employee communications and engagement programme.

The outcome speaks for itself from both employee satisfaction and a bottom-line point of view.

There is no escape from the reality that successful employee engagement and the competitive edge it brings demand as much care and consideration as customer engagement.

Also, like customer engagement, you have to be ’on it’ all the time.

For organisations of all sizes – hello@imlondonhq.com for help with employee engagement, brand engagement, internal communications: Find out more