Hotel & Motel Management - June 2, 2008 - (Page 20)

20 Cornell Insights IN THE details What makes good service? No satisfaction-service link Climate helps performance Satisﬁed workers still help H&MM June 2, 2008 | HotelMotel.com www.HotelMotel.com/digital_edition Employee expectations ensure quality service T By Glenn Withiam H&MM Columnist o start with the end of the story, it turns out that having clear employee expectations is one strategy for ensuring quality service in your hotel. This runs counter to conventional wisdom, which holds that you need satisﬁed employees for quality service. The idea that happy employees give the best service is a logical one. After all, who wants grumpy employees in your hotel? The only problem with this genial belief is that it doesn’t stand up when tested in research studies. Two Cornell University professors looked at this conundrum with a test in one hotel chain, by investigating the question of what drives excellent service. Michael Sturman and Sean Way, faculty at the School of Hotel Administration, have found that service excellence begins with a similar-sounding factor, known as workplace climate (at least in the chain they studied). You can read the report by Professors Sturman and Way free of charge, “Questioning Conventional Wisdom: Is a Happy Employee a Good Em- The easy way to buy and sell existing ® Choice Hotels brand properties. ployee, or Do Other Attitudes Matter More?” from the Center for Hospitality Research, (www. chr.cornell.edu). Sturman and Way saw studies assessing workplace climate, so they suspected it might be a factor in driving service excellence. Workplace climate involves employees’ understanding of the hotel’s expectations for customer service. When your workplace climate is strong, employees and managers are clear on each job’s practices and procedures, as well as how the hotel rewards and supports employees. The researchers tested this idea with food-and-beverage managers in a hotel chain that operates 40 hotels in Asia. They compiled the satisfaction levels of F&B managers along with their assessments of workplace climate. Then they compared those assessments with actual supervisor ratings of the managers’ performance. They found no solid connection between employee satisfaction and actual performance, but service climate was a clear factor in good performance ratings. In fact, if there’s any connection between satisfaction and service quality, it’s the opposite of the conventional wisdom. Many employees are satisﬁed by a job well done, instead of the other way around. Even if employee satisfaction is not the ﬁrst step in the chain that leads to service excellence, it’s still important to have happy employees. Not only do satisﬁed employees create a better environment for the entire staff and guests, employee satisfaction is a factor in limiting turnover. The lessons of the Sturman and Way study are two-fold. First, make sure managers and employees have clear expectations on how jobs are done and how they will be judged and rewarded. Second, don’t run your hotel according to conventional wisdom. Instead, use the management strategies that have proven to ensure service quality. hmm@questex.com Glenn Withiam directs publications at The Center for Hospitality Research at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. He can be reached at grw4@cornell.edu. This is not an offering. An offering is made only by a Franchise Disclosure Document. © 2008 Choice Hotels International, Inc. All rights reserved. 08-387/05/08 CIRCLE NO. 160 http://HotelMotel.com http://www.HotelMotel.com/digital_edition http://www.chr.cornell.edu http://www.chr.cornell.edu http://www.forsaleatchoicehotels.com http://saleatchoicehotels.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Hotel & Motel Management - June 2, 2008

Hotel & Motel Management - June 2, 2008 Contents State Programs Help Define Green Hotels AmericInn Boosts its American Presence Questex, The Bench to Host Russia Event Perspective Letter to the Editor Legally Speaking Guest Column Marketing Matters Consultant's Corner Satisfaction Trends On Finance Travel Trends Cornell Insights Energy Star Update Maintenance Doctor Management Trends Trends & Stats Finding Financing Challenges Developers Credit Crunch Still Tops List of Lawyers' Concerns Mixed-use Funding Bleak, Panelists Say Luxury Landscape Keeps Pushing Higher PTACs Events Casegoods Seating Energy Controls and Sensors Pest Control Electronic Locks Transactions Supplier News Timeshare Misconceptions Still Prevalent Awards People Ad/Edit Index Marketplace Classifieds Checking Out

Hotel & Motel Management - June 2, 2008

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