Hotel Stats - Some Good News

The Hotel News Now has posted stats for the week ending July second from their parent company; STR. BC and Alberta seem to be faring the best leading in RevPAR, a rise of 9.2 and 8.8 respectively over last year. And, they both shared top spots for ADR increases as well. Seems the Westcoast is the place to be if you're operating a hotel in Canada, according to STR. On the other coast, Newfoundland took the biggest hit with their Rev PAR falling 15.8% and their ADR decreased 6.5%! Tough go in Newfoundland.

Read on for the full report....

"The Canadian hotel industry reported mixed results in the three key performance metrics for the week of 26 June-2 July 2011, according to data from STR.

In year-over-year measurements, the Canadian hotel industry ended the week with a 5.0-percent increase in occupancy to 69.2 percent, a 0.5-percent decrease in average daily rate to CAD$130.29 and a 4.5-percent rise in revenue per available room to CAD$90.19.

Among the provinces, Alberta reported the largest occupancy increase, rising 9.2 percent to 64.2 percent, followed by British Columbia (+8.8 percent to 71.5 percent) and Manitoba (+8.3 percent to 66.2 percent). Newfoundland fell 9.9 percent to 78.0 percent, reporting the largest decrease in that metric.

British Columbia rose 4.1 percent in ADR to CAD$143.11, reporting the largest increase in that metric, followed by Alberta with a 3.4-percent increase to CAD$139.41. Prince Edward Island (-6.6 percent to CAD$118.30) and Newfoundland (-6.5 percent to CAD$136.30) reported the largest ADR decreases.

Two provinces achieved RevPAR increases of more than 10 percent: British Columbia (+13.3 percent to CAD$102.30) and Alberta (+13.0 percent to CAD$89.54). Newfoundland reported the only double-digit RevPAR decrease, falling 15.8 percent to CAD$106.33."

Want to Reduce Labour Costs?

Series: Part 1/3

This is the one cost variable that can be a challenge, and typically a good reason clients seek my help as an hospitality recruiter. The need to carefully monitor and reduce labour costs is especially important in the current economic situation, with increased energy costs, and for BC, we must consider the imminent increase in minimum wage.

This series' focus is youth incentive programs although not exclusively:

+ Youth Skills BC(YSBC) Hiring Incentives or the Skills Link Program

+ Targeted Wage Subsidies for Employers (Nationwide)

The YSBC is a pilot project offering BC employers a $2000 hiring incentive (up to 3 employees at $2000 each) to hire eligible youth between the ages of 15 and 29 and goes further to offer a training allowance of up to $1000 for this new employee.

Skills Link provides funding to hire youth between the ages of 15 and 30 inclusive who are not on Employment Insurance and experiencing barriers to employment; ie: single parents or living in rural locations.

The Targeted Wage Subsidy program provides employers with temporary financial assistance towards wages of eligible individuals whom they hire. The incentive is for employers to hire candidates they may not have hired otherwise without the subsidy.


Target Professionals Hospitality Recruiting sources management and executive level candidates within Western Canada. Visit us online or call at 604.552.2377 for service information.

How Many Duds Do You Hire?

While much attention has been given to the importance of hiring talented employees, issues around the cost of bad hires are of increasing importance to both HR professionals and their organizations. What strategies could you use to improve the performance of new hires and how can you reduce the likelihood of their early departure?

With the best screening process and interviewing of candidates, it’s still possible to have a very high on-the-job success rate even if major errors occurred in the screening process. This may sound counter-intuitive, but there is a reason for this.

Tips for minimising new-hire early turnover
For the purposes of this article, the definition of a new hire ‘failure’ includes a new hire that: must be given major training or retraining during the first six months; voluntarily quits within six months; must be redeployed during the first year; is given performance management counselling during the first year; must be terminated within one year, or is a finalist who refuses your job offer.

Involve employees. If you have a less-than-perfect screening process, as we all do, the best way to minimize the impacts of any errors is to ensure that the new hire gets additional help once they start the job. In other words, even if the candidate does not have a perfect set of skills, they can still succeed if other employees want them to succeed and a buddy system is created. If other employees want them to succeed, they will provide the new hire with whatever special help, mentoring and guidance they need.

The best way to ensure your employees are willing to provide this extra help after the candidate starts the job is to involve the employees early on in the hiring process. Involving employees works because if they feel they are responsible for the new hire and that they own the hiring process, employees will invariably find a way to help the new hire succeed on the job. The best ways to increase employee involvement include paying special attention to employee referrals, providing peer-to-peer interviews, and, whenever possible, letting employees make the final selection from the group of finalists you have approved.

Here is a big one....avoid misleading the candidate.... giving them a realistic job preview. A major reason for candidate failure and early turnover is that the candidate was misled about the job, the manager, or the company during the recruiting and interviewing process. It’s important to not only provide the positive attributes of the job, but if you over-glamourize, many new hires quickly become disillusioned, disappointed, or even angry when they find out after starting that their real job compares little to the one outlined in the interview. This can result in poor early job performance or early resignations.

A realistic job preview should include both positive and negative aspects of the job. It can be a video, a site walk-through, or merely a list of the positive and negative aspects of the job. You can develop a list of positive and negative job features through an anonymous survey of recent hires and people currently in the job. It generally includes not just the types of bad and good things that occur, but also their frequency of occurrence.

Ask candidates what they require for success. Many candidates fail on the job not because they don’t have the required skills, but because they are not provided with the right information, tools, or guidance. That’s why it’s important to ask finalists, “If you’re hired, what would you require in order to be successful?” By identifying candidates’ key success factors and needs, you can determine if those are even possible before you hire them, and you can provide that list to the direct supervisor, who can utilise the list to ensure that new employees’ needs are met so that they can get off to a fast and successful start. The goal here is to create a win-win by taking care of your new hire's needs.

Make sure you have a solid orientation program in place. Even a great hiring process can’t guarantee that you won’t end up with low performers and high turnover rates. This is because the selection process is only the first step to success. The seeds of on-the-job failure can begin the very first day on the job if the new hire’s orientation experience goes awry.

For example, if the new hire starts and on their first day their manager is nowhere to be found, it can confuse and disorient them. During the first week, frustration and other problems can occur if the new hire has no uniform, work schedule, or training manual. The absence of managers and the frustration of not having the necessary tools might lead a new hire to develop poor habits that will permanently affect their productivity. In addition, poor orientation might cause candidates to develop such a negative attitude about the firm that they may prematurely quit.

Avoid ‘candidate abuse’, high offer - rejection rates and early turnover

Even if you accurately assess the candidate, you are likely to lose candidates if you mistreat them during the interview and hiring process. In fact, several companies have found that the highest reason for offer letter rejection is ‘candidate abuse’ during the hiring process. Some of the ways to decrease candidate abuse, and subsequently increase offer acceptance rates, include:

Stop doing stupid things during interviews. Sometimes interviewing managers can be the cause of high offer rejection rates. By taking phone calls during interviews, cancelling and rescheduling interviews, appearing disorganised, or even asking illegal or silly questions, interviewers can easily scare away top candidates.

Remember, great hiring only starts with effective skill assessment. If you disillusion or discourage top candidates, they will simply make up an excuse to drop out of the running or say no to your offer. Incidentally, you can only find out the real reason why they rejected your offer by asking them six months later.

Stop ‘death by interview’. Many companies avoid the use of testing candidates due to possible liability and have become increasingly conservative in how they screen candidates. As a result of this fear, companies have increased the number of interviews to make up for the absence of other screening tools. In some cases, interviews have proliferated like rabbits. Where one or two interviews used to be common, now multiple interviews are frequently the norm.

The net result of this trend is that candidates must endure a large number of interviews that are generally spread out over a painfully long time period. From the candidate’s perspective, attending a large number of interviews on different days is expensive and time-consuming. The long delays and the uncertainty stress candidates and their families. The burden is even worse, however, because in a down economy, the odds of all that time and effort actually resulting in a job offer are actually pretty small. By reducing the number of interviews, holding them at night, and even trying to have them all completed on the same day, can reduce top candidate dropout rates and increase offer acceptance rates.

Stop ‘death by repetition’. In a related matter, when candidates are subjected to multiple interviews (at the same company) it is quite common for different interviewers to ask exactly the same questions in back-to-back interviews. This tedious repetition is often because interviews by different managers are not planned or coordinated. It is also partially caused by interview training manuals, which, by suggesting appropriate questions to use in an interview, can inadvertently cause interviewers to use the same questions over and over.

From the candidate’s perspective, having to answer duplicate questions over and over is frustrating and confusing. Lack of preparation can cause some managers to ask questions whose answers are clearly right on the resume, wasting valuable time and frustrating the candidate even further. By reducing the total number of interview questions and then assigning the appropriate interview questions to individual managers (based on their knowledge area), you can reduce repetition, candidate frustration, and offer rejections.

Don’t keep candidates in the dark. Another all-too-common abuse of candidates occurs when managers keep candidates in the dark about the interview process and what is expected during it. Candidates are not told about what will occur during the interview and what skills will be assessed. In addition, they are frequently not told who will be there during the interview and what the role of each interviewer is.

This lack of information leads to confusion and frustration on the part of the powerless candidate – all for no reason. There is no legal regulation that prohibits companies from telling candidates upfront about the process and what is being assessed during it. Failing to educate the candidate may cause candidates to over-prepare in unimportant areas and under-prepare in important ones. Not knowing who will participate in the interview prevents the candidate from doing research on the background of the interviewers. By telling the candidate more, you can limit their frustration and increase the likelihood that they will provide the information you need to make an accurate hiring decision.

Reduce interview overload by discouraging less than qualified applicants from applying. You are less likely to waste time and be fooled by less-than-qualified or uninterested candidates if you work with a recruiter. Also, you might consider these approaches:

• Put automated self-assessment company culture and skill assessment tools on your website so that candidates can pre-screen themselves in or out of the process before it formally begins.

• Make a list with specific numbers of the disqualification factors that will significantly lower or eliminate their chances of getting the position. Put them on the website, along with the job description, as a pre-warning that they will not qualify if they meet any of the disqualification criteria.

• Post your average job acceptance/failure rate (in percentages) for applicants, so that people know upfront that the odds of anyone (other than the most qualified candidates) of getting the job are very low.

• Be highly selective in where you advertize your jobs, and create links to your website. Don’t place them in general interest publications. Instead, study the demographics of the most qualified people and place ads or job openings exclusively where it is highly likely that only the most experienced and qualified individuals will read them.

• Post frequently asked questions and their answers on your website. By providing these questions and answers, you can discourage individuals who would have not applied had they known in advance the answer to their specific question.

In the end, tt’s essential that recruiters and managers take a more realistic and critical view of the traditional interviewing and selection process. Rather then assuming that it’s perfect, they should instead examine it closely to identify its many nearly fatal flaws.

In fact, if you look at the validity and reliability of interviews as a scientist would, you’ll find the accuracy of the process to be appallingly low. Why managers and recruiters consistently ignore these facts is confusing, but such ignorance is unacceptable because weak hiring systems and bad hires cost firms millions of dollars.

The average cost of a bad hire is two times salary and when customer contact is involved, the costs can easily exceed half a million dollars. Instead of being complacent, managers and recruiters need to take a fresh look at the process and the metrics or measures that they use to calculate the percentage of ‘duds’ that they hire.

The approaches outlined above can dramatically improve new hire success rates. Because they include less freedom and subjectivity than the traditional interview process, they will produce higher offer acceptance rates as well as new hires who are productive and faster, who stay longer, and who are more satisfied with their jobs.

Happy at Work?

Amazingly, most of us will spend half of our waking lives at work. Are you happy?

Few people can combine earning a living with a genuine passion. Most people essentially trade half of their life in return for money to enjoy the other half.

Yet, we can find great meaning in our work without that job having to be cancer research or working for Greenpeace. We just need to find the meaning within the work we're doing or make that meaning clear.


Step 1. Find the purpose

Essentially, we all want to feel part of something bigger, so the first step is seeing that bigger picture or purpose in our work. For leaders, it can be as simple as focusing on the why, as much as the how, when communicating with teams. Of course, the purpose needs to feel inherently meaningful. Profits are a perfectly good goal but they make a lousy purpose.

For many teams, we think the customer experience can provide that bigger purpose. It's not world peace, but improving the customer experience is a lot more inherently meaningful than just increasing margins. A focus on customer experience is essentially about understanding customers and creating a positive experience for them. Making them feel good. Even if we're selling hot dogs, we can find some inherent meaning in improving the customer's experience during that sale.


We humans aren't such a bad bunch; for the most part we actually enjoy making other people happy, especially those drawn to working in hospitality. You know the little thrill we get when someone drops something in the street we can hand it back to them? It took no real effort on our part, of course, but we still enjoy having done a good thing. Almost all of us are hard-wired with a little empathy and generosity. We find some meaning in focusing on another person's experience.

Step 2. See the individual contribution

Next, once we have an effort worth being part of, we need to see the individual role we personally play in that overall effort. We empathetic, generous humans are also a more than a little egotistical. So although we want to be part of something bigger, we don't want to disappear completely within it. We're each only one small piece of the puzzle, but we'd like that piece to be noticed and valuable in some way.

Step 3. Encourage ideas

And finally, step three: we want our ideas to be heard. It's another of our human quirks: the desire to have our input considered and to feel that we have some impact on the way things are done. Ask me my opinion, listen to my suggestions and I'll feel much more ownership of our shared goals.


So, the good news is that we're never more than three steps away from making any role meaningful - whether it's answering the phone, making ads or selling insurance. Which is just as well, because we can't all save the whales.

Do You Make Staff Sick?

Absences from the office are about a lot more than illness, experts say, and there's plenty a manager can do to reduce downtime caused by 'sickies'.

Believe it or not, organizational research suggests staff in many workplaces together develop something of an unwritten agreement regarding how many sick days are acceptable each year. And, in many of those organizations, staff will ensure they take their quota, having legitimized their absence thanks to the behaviour of their manager. It all comes back to the manager.

A researcher at the forefront of absenteeism at work is Professor Gary Johns, an internationally respected Professor of Management at Concordia University in Montreal Canada. Two of the biggest causes of absence, he says, are feelings of unfairness in how staff are treated and social causation, or the imitation of the behaviour of others.

"There is no normal amount of absence," Johns says. "There are major differences across companies, countries and professions. But research shows staff tend to peg absenteeism behaviour on that of others around them. So when people join organizations, their attendance behaviour fluctuates for the first few months, but over time it gravitates towards the norm that has been established within their unit."

What causes absenteeism?

As illness-related explanations are generally the only reasons accepted for unplanned absences from work, other reasons can go unnoticed or unmeasured, says Dr. Stefani Yorges, Graduate Co-Ordinator Psychology at Pennsylvania's West Chester University in the US.

"There can be sensitive issues that prevent people from going to work, such as difficulties with partners, problems with children, or drug dependency," Yorges says. "Other factors may include psychological difficulties or perceptions that their work life is unfair in terms of return for input.

"There are also individuals who need to exert some control over their work environment, and without this, take time off. Others may feel their efforts are not recognized and that 'no one cares anyway'."

Johns estimates that around 30-50 per cent of sick days in a typical organization are not due to illness. One of the strongest root causes of absenteeism is perceived unfairness in the workplace, which is absolutely under the control of individual managers.

"Employees are very sensitive to fairness and absenteeism is one of the few ways they can affect the personal balance sheet quickly. There's a point at which this behaviour can be seen as legitimate. Managers have to be supersensitive to fairness," Johns suggests.

Reducing absenteeism

People respond to how they're treated and the solution to absenteeism begins with leadership and management. Managers must get to know their staff personally, not to a stage where they're becoming intrusive on the staff member's life, but they should know which hockey team they follow and how many kids they have. Leadership should be visible and this starts with the development of visible relationships.

Employees need to know what their place is in the company and how what they do impacts on where the company is going. They need to feel part of the company and know their opinion is valued. If there are good relationships and clear expectations and staff feel managers care about them then staff won't want the company to suffer.

Targeting three specific areas will likely bring significant change in absenteeism levels.

Improve the skills of current supervisors; recognize and reward employee contributions; and increase employee involvement in decision-making processes.

It's vital for managers to convey the importance of good attendance to employees, as well. Too often the matter will only become an issue when somebody is found to be seriously exploiting the system, but this does nothing to change habits of the mass of staff taking their regular amount of days.

If a manager conveys expectations that staff will come to work each day, and is honestly concerned when there are problems with absence, then chances are that absenteeism rates will decrease.

[Source: article by Chris Sheedy from Management Today, September 2010]

A Depressed Economy Stimulates Fear and Greed

The economy. I've talked to many people about the economy over the past two years and its impact on the hospitality industry in Western Canada. When we have a downturn in the economy and continued instability, there are two emotions driving our actions and that of business in the hotel, restaurant, and tourism industry; greed and fear.

Whether you're an unemployed bellman or a over-worked restaurant Area Manager, fear and greed are constantly directing your work (or lack thereof),directly or indirectly.

Take restaurants for instance - they have been slowly seeing an initial market recovery in their bottom line. In most cases, their recovery has been spurred by lay-offs and wage and benefits cuts. Although many are in a financial position to hire needed employees, greed and and fear prevent them from hiring some new employees. Saving money is great in an unstable economy and the fear that they may have to lay people off again is just too painful.

As Joni Thomas Doolin, CEO of People Report, has pointed out, "we are essentially terrified of making hiring mistakes, because the consequences have been so raw and visible. So we procrastinate".

While hiring managers are procrastinating, the skilled and unemployed hospitality workers are also terrified - terrified to be facing a pending cut in unemployment insurance and long-term career holds. Recruiters, myself included, will tell you that a fear and greed mentality has doubled and tripled hiring cycle times of what they have been in the not too distant past - and the job markets feel like wading through molasses.

According to Joni Thomas Doolin, "any hiring manager worth their salt is going to make more mistakes in the years ahead - the trick is the overall batting average - not perfect seasons from now on. More truth, this is a very fragile economy, with stops and starts, and progress and reversals, and it doesn't show any sign of changing soon. So it is possible that we will work in companies where there will be more restructuring, reorganization and yes- job loss."

We're in the midst of a massive change in the workplace while trying to recruit the right workers, in the right place, at the right time. But the perfect time doesn't exist in such a volatile economy. "As we all know in the interim, our existing workers are fried, doing more with less, less engaged and have their eyes on the door. No one needs another survey to get that" says Joni Thomas Doolin.

Accelerating the job market recovery will have to start the same place that market recoveries start - in our heads. Companies, employees and potential employees have to work through the fear and greed that dominates the current economy and affects our ability to be hospitable hospitality leaders. It doesn't have to be grandiose - or foolish - just a willingness to recognize that the road back to prosperity includes making targeted investments in talent.

Brand You!

Brand You: What Makes You Special?

Companies spend millions of dollars a year trying to develop compelling employment brands by interviewing current employees, surveying external job-seekers, and validating the conclusions they draw from the data.

But even after all that, there's no guarantee that the brand statement will perfectly reflect what an organization offers potential employees.

If branding is that difficult for a company with money and resources, how in the world can you and I figure out what our own brand is, how we can present ourselves for a career move, to land that first management role, to move up the ladder?

Fortunately, it's easier than you might think. Let me use the perspective of a recruiter as an analogy.

This morning I went to my "Rolodex" of business contacts (really a stack of business cards held together with a rubber band!) and randomly chose two. As I pulled them out of the stack, I wrote down the first word that came to mind:

Incredible. This is a woman who supervised another department at a company where I used to work. She was so smart and innovative I volunteered to take on any project of her choosing just for the privilege of working with her. I still marvel at how much I learned from her.

Innovative. This is an IT consultant I worked with for several years who is always able to think of a clever solution to any problem, and consistently delivers it ahead of schedule.

Let's face it: no one probably deserves to be reduced to a single word, and each of these people undoubtedly exhibits behaviours contrary to the labels I've given them. Nonetheless, over time, this is the label they've earned in my mind. What label have you earned in the minds of those you meet, work with, strive to impress?

A popular phrase among the self-help profession is "We teach others how to treat us." Do you find your coworkers/boss claiming credit for your best work, yet find yourself saddled with blame for messes you were not even involved with?

Perhaps the problem is your brand. Just like a company, everyone has a brand, whether they like it or not. It's that one word that comes to mind for people when they think of you. The challenge is to learn what your brand is and then position yourself such that you emphasize your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.

Gather Data and Assess Your Current Situation
People, like companies, have both positive and negative qualities. As a first step in the branding process, most corporate initiatives start with an assessment of some sort. This is accomplished through the use of focus groups, surveys, or individual interviews.

Similarly, when you're attempting to learn about your personal brand, it's also a good idea to find out how your "customers" perceive you. You can certainly ask a trusted colleague to share their thoughts, but I recommend one of the widely available 360° assessment tools. In a pinch you can also use a free Web-based survey tool.

Regardless of how you do it, it's important to learn what you do well, what you don't do well, and what overall impression you leave.

Determine What Makes You Unique
I remember being assigned to a business group as its new recruiter. Every person I talked with had the same thing to say: "I'm sure you're a good recruiter, but, alas, no one will ever be as good as jane was."

Jane was this group's recruiter several years before, and despite having worked with several competent recruiters since, the entire team was unable to get beyond the fact that their beloved Jane was now gone.

It would have been easy to start acting like Jane to try and get that client group to like me, and that's in fact what they really wanted. However, as I probed a bit, I learned that her style was very different from mine.

Also, she always asked the hiring managers what they thought about a particular candidate first, and would respond the same way each time: "Isn't that amazing, that's just what I thought!" No wonder everyone liked her! I realized quickly that such a style just wasn't me.

My style is more analytical: "You have expertise and I have expertise. You define success this way, and I define it that way. You want this outcome, and I want that outcome. Let's design a process up front that will get us both what we want, and allow us to measure how we're doing along the way."

Did they like me as much as Jane? I don't know, but we did hire some very successful people into the company.

Advertise and Embrace Your Idiosyncratic Differences
The best recruiters I know tend to unabashedly let people know what makes them unique in the way they approach their job. Adopting a professional style that's not "on brand" for you can make you look insincere, unconfident, and unprofessional.

To hiring managers looking for an opportunity to challenge the "current recruiting model" for their own political gains, such a flicker of weakness is like blood in the water. I've seen it result in phone calls to supervisors, power plays by HR generalists, and frustration on the part of recruiters who begin to question their own abilities.

There are many different recruiter styles, and they all can be effective. For example, we all know the recruiters who are loud, brash, and direct a never-ending stream of resumes at their customers. Some of the resumes are worthless, but they just laugh that off and send over even more. Their customers adore them, and over time they start to focus that barrage of resumes and zero in on the correct skill set.

We also know the more cerebral type of recruiter, the one who thoughtfully goes back to their workspace for several days, triumphantly emerging with a single, perfect resume in hand. Can you articulate your own recruiting style?

Communicate and Reinforce Your Brand
Once you understand how your customers perceive you, and develop a style that plays to your strengths, let people know what to expect when they work with you:

•"You'll be hearing from me by phone several times a day. I like to keep you informed as we work together."
•"Let's set up a face-to-face conversation each week to review the resumes I've sent you, and agree on next steps."
•"I'm only going to send you the resumes that meet your exact specifications; otherwise, we'll just waste time. I need you to be very specific about what a candidate must have and must not have."

Take time to point out the things that make your style unique as you develop working relationships in the industry. You'll be able to feel more confident and instill this in your teams. A win-win situation!

Your Attitude and Your Energy

The hospitality industry is very much a people focussed career and requires much of your personal energy to service customers and care for staff that also do so on the front line each day. Your personal energy is an important component productivity. Most people cycle between positive and negative energy states during the work week. But the percentage of time spent in positive and negative moods varies significantly. Some people seem to be overwhelmingly negative, which makes to tough for them to work in hospitality! Others in similar circumstances can remain much more positive.

Therefore, to increasing the time spent in a positive state will improve your personal productivity. Here are a few suggestions to be mindful of that will not only support your working conditions and those around you but also your personal life:

1. Work first on your relationships.
A simple yet prime issue, relationships are both our best sources of happiness and our biggest sources of problems and frustrations. Developing good relationships and improving or ending the poor relationships in your life will increase your personal energy. An effective tactic to start improving your relationships is to develop better personal boundaries and standards and work on reducing tolerations.

2. Develop a routine to start every day in a positive mental state.
It is very helpful to start the day with a routine that creates positive energy. Many people find activities like an early morning walk, exercise, meditation, quiet time, etc., effective in getting their day off to a positive start. It is easier to stay positive, if you can start with a positive attitude.

3. Learn how to monitor your current mental state and changes to it.
This is a complex area, but if you can link negative mood changes to a source or cause, then you are frequently in a position to quickly change back. The important point here is once you are in a negative state, get the message or value from the situation, then take some action to return to a positive state.

4. Create an energizing physical environment.
Invest some time and money to make your personal surroundings pleasing and energizing to you. Some small items may make a big difference to how your personal space affects your moods. Poor lighting can lower your mental state, especially in the winter in rainy Vancouver! Some people report a big improvement in their mood just by cleaning up their bedroom and making the bed before leaving for work. Clutter is de-energizing to many people. A sink full of dirty dishes is de-energizing to some. A small water fountain can create a feeling of energy.

5. Carefully monitor your self-talk.
Negative self talk is a common source of low moods. When you are hearing negative self talk, be alert to the unrealistic, overly negative messages. Focus on getting any truthful message, then shifting out of overly self-defeating criticism. It is true that we are usually our own worst critic.

6. Deal with problems effectively.
Problems are a part of life. Few people enjoy problems. But, in many cases we can learn from them and it may help to ask yourself several questions, such as:

•What am I contributing to this problem?
•What Life Lesson have I been missing here?
•What is the worst that can happen and how can I improve on that?
•What am I doing right?
•What am I going to do differently?

7. Focus your energy on attracting more of what you want.
Time and energy spent dwelling on problems is frequently better spent pursuing desirable goals. It helps to examine your own contribution to any difficulties and understand how you may need to change. Then be sure to ask others directly for what you want from them; don't fall into the trap of under communicating. In this way, you are always making course corrections and moving forward.

8 Be a positive energy source with others.
Negative energy seems to attract negative results. Keeping your own mood positive can encourage positive moods and suppress negative behaviour in others.

9 Avoid using negative energy as an energy source.
Many people have a shortage of positive energy in their lives and use negative energy as their energy source. They create busyness, use deadlines, crises, and problems to keep them going. In many cases, their motivation patterns shift entirely from seeking pleasure to avoiding pain. In most cases, serious burnout is the eventual result of becoming dependent on negative energy sources.

Employee Retention in Hospitality Industry

When managing in restaurants, hotels, reorts, casinos.... our number one goal is simple: attract customers and repeat customers because that drives our bottom line.

What makes it not so simple is creating the framework for this customer focus. One thing we know is that we depend heavily on the retention of management staff. Who wants to incur the loss of their management team's experience, education and indepth knowledge of the company brand?

According to Lori McInerney, hospitality employment expert with Careerbuilder.com, "hospitality organizations will need to upgrade retention strategies ...to keep their top performers, and their guests, from checking out early."

Hospitality is an industry that is prone to high employee turnover rates. Two in 10 hospitality workers have worked for 10 or more employers. In a nutshell, employees leave when the cost of staying exceeds the reward of leaving. This cost can be a broad range of compensation factors but the main pillars for candidates are challenge, responsibility and actual financial gain.

A retention program that targets financial gain, responsibility and challenge will up your employee retention rate. McInerney recommends the following hospitality employee retention tips:

* Define a clear path for upper mobility with training and development opportunities. Employees are more likely to invest in their jobs if they feel the company has invested in them.

* Communicate often. An informed employee is a connected employee who will feel a personal stake in the success of a company.

* Implement the "Three R's Rule": Recognize, Reward, Repeat. Pat your employees on the back for every job well done to continually reinforce your appreciation of their performance.

* Ask them about their day. Measure employee satisfaction with the same conviction applied to measuring guest satisfaction as the first will determine the latter.

7 Action Ideas for Leadership Development

1. Determine the best leadership style for your organisation
2. Identify current and potential leaders within the company
3. Identify leadership gaps
4. Develop succession plans for critical roles
5. Develop career planning goals for potential leaders
6. Develop skills road map for future leaders
7. Develop retention programs for current and future leaders

Resume Blunders

From screening job applications to conducting interviews, hiring practices have undergone a dramatic transformation over the past decade. Despite all the changes, common resume blunders continue to plague job search practices at all levels. This article attempts to overcome some of these errors.


#1: It's all about the number of pages
The one-page rule is probably the most common myth about a resume. Candidates, even senior executives, use microscopic fonts, leave off important information, use 0.1 inch margins, and resort to a myriad of unhealthy practices -- all in an attempt to restrict their resume to just one page.

Many well-meaning college counsellors advise their students to be concise and limit their resume to one page. That was important when you were a student with little or no experience, but why subscribe to the same wisdom after rising to the ranks of upper manaegment or a senior executive role?

There is an opposing viewpoint. Some job seekers mistakenly believe that if they can somehow balloon their resumes to four or five pages, they will probably be considered for higher-paying positions. What? Will someone offer me $250,000 simply because my resume is ten pages and redundant to the point of boredom?

Content rules. The quality of experience should influence the length of the resume, not hearsay. If you have held only one job, then don’t try to create a five-page resume, but if your background merits a lengthier resume then don’t use eight point fonts in a desperate attempt to fit everything on one page.

If you are too concerned about the length of your resume, consider creating a one- or two-page resume with additional pages serving as an appendix or addendum.

#2: Make up that degree - no one will know
Lying on a resume is the worst mistake a candidate can make. Even if you pass the background check (very unlikely considering how sophisticated background checks have become), a savvy employer will discover the deception within days, if not sooner.

Apart from the legal ramifications, we live in a professional world that is influenced by social media. At the touch of a button, HR managers across the country can discuss their experiences. Maintaining a good reputation is more important than ever.

#3: Your resume must have an objective
“Seeking a position that will be beneficial and mutually rewarding … and will make use of my experience and education ....” If that is your idea of an objective, don’t bother using one. Every inch of resume space is precious. Don’t waste it on generic information that can be found on almost every other resume. Every word, every character that appears on your resume must position you as the perfect candidate for the job.

In place of objectives, use what many experts call “branding statements” or “headers”. The concept can be explained with the help of an example.

In the case of a clinical researcher, for example, a generic objective would be as follows:

“Seeking a mutually beneficial position that will make use of my 10+ years’ experience in hotel management.”

An improvement would be:

Hotel Manager with Hospitality Degree and 10+ Years’ Professional Excellence

Worked with top two global hotel chains. Leveraged hospitality expertise to manage three multi-billion dollar projects from ground 0 to financial growth.

The generic example does almost nothing to position the candidate but the refined version, in addition to serving as an objective, brings out three to four prominent strengths and an overall value proposition.

Whether you decide to use an objective or a positioning statement, refrain from presenting generic arguments.

#4: Your references must be listed on the resume itself
Normally, a separate page is used as a reference sheet. This not only protects the privacy of your references (imagine posting their contact information on every job board), but also makes the screening professional’s job a little easier.

#5: I can use the same resume for multiple job targets
If your current resume focuses on your hotel housekeeping background, please don’t send the same resume for marketing positions. It is understandable that you may qualify for multiple positions or be interested in pursuing alternate careers. If so, try to create a customized resume for each job target.

When it comes to a resume, never follow the “one size fits all” approach.

Stressed Out? How it affects your Decisions

How Stress Genders Decision Making

Many people in the hospitality industry arestressed out these days - those looking for work and those holding down the fort with extra hats to wear - are beyond their normal stress levels over the past 6-8 months. I mentioned in a previous article that men in Canada are more affected than women with job loss recently and here's a tip about dealing with stress from male/female perspective.

While it's been documented for some time that men take more risks than women (and, thus, are more likely to die violently or have addictive behaviors), a recent study indicates that this gap widens even further when stress is introduced.

When stress indicators as measured by cortisol levels were higher in women, their decision making was less risky than than their control group. Men, on the other hand, made more risky decisions when stressed than their control group did.

To test decision making under stress, participants' hands were placed in ice water while they performed a gambling game involving blowing up a simulated balloon on a computer screen. Points were accumulated with each pump of the balloon, but each pump also increased the risk of the balloon popping, resulting in a loss of all points.

The lesson here? Try to be aware of your gendered inclinations when you feel stressed out, so that you make the most responsible (men!) or effective (ladies!) decision. Consider what you'd normally do, and come up with a plan of action rather than react unthinkingly.

The bottom line? Don't worry, be happy!

Planning for the Upturn

When faced with a downturn in the economy, the obvious reaction is to cut costs and typically that involes a lot of firing. However, in studying the successes and failures of hundreds of companies as they navigate downturns, numerous reports suggest that this approach is a short term savings that doesn't justify the larger and long-term negative impact of cutting the employee numbers.

Most executives understand the potential damage of massive cuts to employee numbers and see the negative impact of the firm’s reputation and the goodwill of their employees. However, the oft used method to cut the wage bill is with lay-offs.

In a recent survey of HR directors conducted by Hewitt, 81 per cent of companies said they plan to further cut costs this year even though they have already made significant reductions. Furthermore, 28 per cent say they are planning to do so by “restructuring” and 25 per cent are considering lay-offs.

Meanwhile, a recent Towers Perrin study of 600 HR executives found that while cost pressures remain intense, cutting too deeply into an organisation’s muscle – its talent – could seriously hamstring a fast return to growth.

As economists and reports have stated, we have entered this downturn very quickly and may come out of it equally as quickly. The Hewitt study showed that 54 per cent of HR directors believe the US’s economic upturn will begin at the end of this year or in early 2010 and most believe their own company’s economic improvement will coincide with that upturn.

So it seems that the logical solution for companies under economic pressure is not to buckle under the pressure in the search for a quick fix, but rather be creative and innovative in looking for other cost-cutting strategies that will keep the company not only alive, but strong for the upturn.

There are many other options companies can take that will either cut costs, or counter the need to cut costs by increasing productivity and performance.

Below are five cost-cutting strategies proffered by various HR directors, academics and survey findings, which will help companies avoid the dreaded lay-offs.

Strategy 1

Purchasable annual leave

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) have had their “equilibrium” program in place for the past four years. It was introduced as a flexible work arrangement whereby indi viduals could elect to work in a range of flexible ways. But, as the company felt the pressure of the downturn, they opted to offer additional purchasable annual leave for an extended period of seven months, until the end of January 2010.

The offer was made to 4500 employees and was communicated in a transparent way, so that each employee knew the reason for the offer – to avoid having to lay people off.

The results of the offer were significant. Ninety per cent of the 4500 employees accepted the offer to take between 10 and 15 days unpaid leave.

“It was an amazing response,” says HR director of PWC, Nicole Brazil. “It really said a lot to us about the fabric of our organisation and that people know we are all in this together.”

Exactly how much money the strategy saved the company – and in turn how many jobs it saved – is difficult to quantify, however, with more than 4000 employees taking an extra 10 to 15 days unpaid leave it’s easy to say it would have a huge impact on overall savings. This measure will be far more beneficial to the company than letting people go in preparation for when the economic pressure eases.

Strategy 2

Job sharing

At the outset it might not seem like a cost-cutting strategy, but, job sharing can actually work as a means of saving cash.

If two people are doing the one job, in one sense there are the same costs involved because a company still has to pay the same salary for a particular role to be performed. However, the savings in benefits normally paid to a full-time employee are significant, so in that sense there is a cost saving to be had.

Job sharing also leads to reduced absenteeism and increased productivity. Having two people doing the one job means they work out a schedule to do certain hours and they therefore have more time off work and tend to turn up for those scheduled hours, leading to decreased absenteeism.

Job sharing also tends to motivate people. Loyalty is up, productivity is up, but where the customer is concerned it can be less predictable. However, overall the advantages over-ride the disadvantages.

Strategy 3

Pay cuts and reduced hours

A recent Employee Insights Survey of 560 professionals showed that nationally, 70 per cent would prefer to stay at their current employer and work reduced hours than face alternative cost-cutting strategies.

One of the most successful strategies globally has been to cut both pay and hours. But the key to success when taking this strategy is to cut it across the board – by including every person in the organisation. The management must tell the employees what the situation is and explain the environment they are working in. They must explain that everybody is going to cut back in order to save jobs.

If pay cuts are not across all levels of the organisation, he says, it creates a level of cynicism and consternation among employees. People want to see that the situation is affect ing everybody – including senior executives – and that those strategies are a genuine and sincere attempt to save the company.

People need to buy in. If you have employees buying in and they see what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and it has a good level and degree of fairness, then people will work with you.

Strategy 4

Work with employees – not against them

In a lot of cases, cost-cutting measures are driven from the top down,. but sometimes it's better to go to employees themselves and ask them how they think they could save money or increase productivity.

The staff know their own jobs themselves and each of them knows where there is corporate slack, so if you can work on a system and involve the employees on eliminating slack – eliminating non-value-adding components of their work – it produces a lot of buy-in and goodwill.

The differentiator between companies in times like this is getting out there and growing the business and seeking opportunities to expand and grow when every one else is hunkering down.

A suprising statistic suggests that increasing performance by 1 per cent has a much greater impact than reducing employee costs by 10 per cent, so moving the focus to increasing performance under economic pressure is a better cost saving method.

The other big way in which HR can make a difference is through talent management.

HR can really make a difference by identifying who your best players are, who will bring you through this period and how you can help these employees, coach them, and position yourselves to ensure you keep them and mitigate the risks of them leaving.

Because of the speed with which we entered this down turn, and the possibility that we may exit from it just as rapidly, if a company doesn’t have the right people in place to respond when the upturn comes, it will be in danger. Therefore, there are a lot of dangers involved in cutting costs too much. If you’re just cutting costs and cutting costs … when the upturn comes you don’t have the people or the structure in place to respond.

Everybody turns to cost cuts as a good way to go, or taking out numbers as a good way to go – but it’s got a huge cost in terms of brand damage and reputation and that’s one of the hardest thing to get back.

Strategy 5

Avoid layoffs and utilize alternative measures first as a means to cut costs.

Lay-offs must be the very last resort. It has such a huge impact on the culture of a company and people don't forget.

It impacts staff motivation and although productivity may not be impacted short-term, in the long-term loyalty gets affected, work satisfaction gets affected, innovation gets very much affected.

You have all these negative aspects which sometimes are very difficult to quantify. You spend years and decades building a corporate culture and then a bump occurs in the economic cycle and managers jump straight to employee lay-offs.

While lay-off are not always wrong, companies must look for a solution that is creative, that will work in the short, medium and long-term and keep in mind that the economic downturn is only temporary and will pick up again.


[Source: Human Resource Leader, 25 June 2009]

Not a recession , but a HE-cession......

I came acorss this report on our current economic situation and found some suprising news for men.....

Although the recession is hitting Canadians hard across the country, a new CCPA report reveals that men are taking the biggest hit when it comes to loss of employment.

Canada's "He-cession": Men bearing the brunt of rising unemployment, by Income Inequality Project director Trish Hennessy and Senior Economist Armine Yalnizyan, shows that 71% of those who have lost their jobs in the recession so far are men.

The report notes that this recession differs from those of the 1980s and 90s, which ushered in the 'freedom 55' era of golden handshakes for older workers. By contrast there were actually 78,000 more workers aged 55 and over in June than there were at the beginning of the recession, a 3% increase since October.

"Most of the workers deprived of their jobs in this recession (63%) are between the ages of 25 and 55," Yalnizyan says. "Workers under 25, who make up 15% of the labour market, account for more than one third (37%) of job reductions since October."

The report also notes that Ontario accounts for two-thirds (66.4%) of all jobs eliminated to date in this recession, driving the province's unemployment rate to its highest in 15 years.

"The recession is affecting Canadians from all walks of life and all parts of the country, but it could easily be portrayed as an Ontario-cession, an age-cession, and, above all, a he-cession," says Yalnizyan.

To read more of this report, visit policyalternatives.ca

The Spirit of Hospitality

You may not be particularly religious, but this article is a compelling perspective on the hospitality industry and very thought provoking. Although I've adapted and shortened this, it's still long, yet worth the effort....

"The Christian humanization of work: job satisfaction in the hospitality industry."
by James Spillane written in 2001 for Review of Business

The tourism sector is the largest industry in the world. Today it is estimated to provide about 255 million jobs and amounts to 10 percent of world employment. It has now grown into a modern, mature industry where workers are forming their professional identity. These "hospitality professionals" are primarily concerned with customer satisfaction.

Workers in the service sector find the fruits of their labor are frequently intangible. In some cases, their emotions are involved. One can easily broaden management guru Peter Drucker's concept of "the knowledge worker" to include "the emotion worker," who must deal with people on a more interpersonal level. In our modem, service-oriented society, there is a need for literature devoted to the special needs of this kind of worker, especially in the area of "spirituality of work"

By its very nature, hospitality work has a spiritual dimension. Of all industries, it is the most intensely interactive, with people serving people and providing comfort, sustenance, conviviality, transport, amusement, enlightenment, employment and much more. Given the complexity of human behavior, concerns about the work's spiritual dimension can be neither ignored nor hidden. For this reason, perhaps the most challenging of all hospitality industry problems today is not so much job satisfaction as a proper spirituality of work.

In short, the challenge is to help hospitality professionals find genuine meaningfulness in their work.

Spirituality of Work

Today people are less and less sure about what "work" really means. Their expectations of work, especially getting it and enjoying it, are now matters of both deep anxiety and mundane reality. There are several reasons for this. First, there are high unemployment rates in industrialized societies. For many people in modern society, work is no longer something that happens in a fixed place during a fixed unit of time, producing a fixed output and reward (5). Come points out how societies frequently define human beings in terms of the work they perform (7). The question "what do you do?" is a central one in many people's lives.

Religion teaches that work is its own reward, and that it will lead a person toward the virtuous life, if not salvation. Work is the natural course of action a human follows to find his or her role, niche, position, and the shape of his or her soul. Therefore, steady employment, a life in which one's lot continually improves, sits as the cornerstone of rational and calculable human action. It may well be the cornerstone of physical and mental health as well. How can it not shape the nature of spirituality?

It is in the work and working that a person's consciousness takes shape and life reveals its meaning. For it is in working that a person believes he or she has made sense of life's mystery and has found reasonable ways to avoid vexing metaphysical questions. For the content and structure of a person's consciousness, story and spirit remain his or her work, or lack of it.

Faith and the World of Work. Wright points out that many contemporary Christians experience some discomfort when they seek to relate their faith to the world of work, especially the work of wealth creation in industry, commerce and other services (27). The workplace is perceived as a Godless and even immoral part of their human condition. As a result, many people feel the need to find consistency between their work and the rest of their life.

Why should one be concerned with the relationship between faith, work, and the world of wealth creation and provision of services? First of all, work is where most people spend a great deal of their time. Second, the creation of wealth and provision of services are the processes whereby all people survive on this earth, since they serve to satisfy their needs and wants.

Finally, and most important, there is a unique Christian truth and revelation: the Incarnation. Christians believe that, in Jesus, God became human at a particular moment of time and lived on this same earth that we inhabit. Jesus was very much involved in the world of work of his day. Many of his stories came from everyday life and the workplace. The world of work and wealth creation is very clearly part of God's creation, and God took part in these very activities. Hence, there is a need to relate them to our Christian beliefs and to face up to any discomfort we perceive and feel in doing so.

The Nature of Spirituality

Spirituality has become a broad, inclusive term that is no longer confined to, or defined by, religion. It names a human reality difficult to define but whose patterns can be verified in quite different religions and movements. Spirituality now focuses on the human spirit of believers and non-believers in their lives as a whole; that is, on the physical and emotional, the intellectual and social, the political and cultural, and the secular and religious dimensions of their lives.
According to Thompson, a person's spirituality is individual and collective, and reflects how a person responds to God's initiative while facing the challenges of everyday life within his or her specific historical and cultural environment (25).

Faith, Love and Hope Replace Obedience. According to Regan, personal development of healthy human qualities occupies a more central position in one's personal outlook toward spirituality today (19). Accepting what is authentically human leads people to use their native talents, creative expressions and heightened personal initiatives. On the other hand, anything that dehumanizes a service provider or "receiver" in the hospitality industry is viewed as unChristian. This approach allows more emphasis on an individual's personal response of his or her religious and inner values, both human and Christian. Empowerment, decentralization, co-responsibility and subsidiarity become the new hallmarks of what was once viewed as religious "obedience."

With today's personal response-to-inner values approach, there's a greater emphasis placed on personal responsibility and individuality. In this approach to the spiritual life, a person is viewed as entering a profession or a community to develop oneself fully in the service of Christ and neighbor, to put one's full talents at the disposal of people, and to take part in and share responsibility for the Church and for the community itself. Rather than obedience, selfless charity becomes the primary Christian virtue. Life itself is seen as a response of love to God and in the neighbor in accordance with Jesus' teaching. This approach seems particularly appropriate for hospitality professionals, whose training now emphasizes their empowerment to make decisions by themselves.

It is not easy to affirm the dignity of work and the worker when the characteristic form of work in an industrial society is symbolized by the assembly line. Repetitively carrying out a mechanical task gives faint image of the worker as a sharer in God's creative activity. It was much easier to promote the Christian vision of labor in a pre-industrial society when the dominant form of work was a craft, with the worker involved in the entire production process. The same is true of work in the service sector, including the hospitality industry.

New work structures, therefore, pose challenges, but also offer opportunities. To be efficient, the new workplace requires employees to take pride in their work and each other, and promoting such feelings can provide multiple benefits for any manager. It fosters loyalty toward the firm and one's fellow workers. At the same time, the experience of building solidarity vindicates a traditional Christian understanding of the dignity of the human person. For Wright, the starting point for a Christian perspective on the world of work is Teilbard's divinization of human activity (27). The Incarnation substantially strengthens that perception, showing that the tension and paradox in the human condition are part of our working lives.

Work is an act of self-giving directed toward the good of others. Work consists primarily of cultivating and care, in bringing forth new life. Work should basically be a joyful activity, even though it often entails fatigue and pain. Don't forget, though, that rest and leisure are good, too, and are, in their own way, integral to the work process.

Spirituality of Work for Hospitality Professionals

There are many qualities of life rooted in the example of Jesus, with three basic qualities specifically reflecting Jesus' life of hospitable service to others: responsiveness, competence and respect.

Underlying Jesus' desire to serve those in need were sensitivity, adaptability and willingness that are today basic building blocks for an apostolic spirituality of hospitality. Sensitivity to the situation at hand is essential if a hospitality professional's response is to be effective. Adaptability to the situation as it changes is also essential if their response is to be appropriate. Willingness to be involved is essential if their response is to be consistent Ultimately, the driving force behind this responsiveness is compassion, which is not the same as pity. The true core of compassion is the urgency to act. Compassion never merely observes; it initiates and interacts. In Jesus' work, compassion is second only to love. On the other hand, when personal benefit becomes the primary goal of service in the hospitality industry, this compassion gives way to conceit.

Competence shapes the overall effectiveness of our response. However sensitive, adaptable and willing that response maybe, its lasting effect must reflect competence. Service industries require a level of competence quite different from that in agricultural or manufacturing work. The hospitality industry revolves around two separate realities: material variables and personal variables. Material variables differ among the various areas of the hospitality industry, but they generally include some common elements. First, there is a body of living knowledge, with new information replacing old on a regular basis. (I use the word "living" in the sense of growing and changing.) Second, there are natural or acquired skills that enable hospitality professionals to use their knowledge. Third, there are the willingness, capacity and commitment to acquire new and refined skills to match developments within the field of knowledge now called hospitality, leisure or tourism studies. Finally, there are resources necessary for hospitality professionals to use skills with knowledge. Personal variables for hospitality professionals include the personalities, preferences and predicaments of those they serve.

Respect is characterized by a hospitality professional's recognition of each person's uniqueness. It is their affirmation of the dignity of each person, a dignity based on their creation as God's image and likeness, as well as their efforts to listen, communicate and interact through ways and means consistent with that uniqueness and dignity. Work in the hospitality industry brings professionals to encounters and interactions with many people. Respect reminds them that, regardless of what they have to do in the work of hospitality, the value of a human being can never be compromised.

The driving force behind respect is love. Christian spirituality should acknowledge the goodness of all that is human. Emotions, sexuality, temperament, personality and the prayer life should all enter into the Christian response of the whole person. Development and fulfillment of these truly human aspects should be incorporated into any authentic approach to the Christian spirituality of work in the hospitality industry.

Job Satisfaction in the Hospitality Industries

The "rational" parts of any organization put a high value on efficiency. All jobs and tasks should be designed to achieve the organization's goals as efficiently as possible. Jobs are specialized along two dimensions: horizontally (restricting the range of different tasks) and vertically (restricting the range of control and decision-making over job activities). Job specialization is most obvious at the operating levels of organizations. However, highly specialized work can injure the well-being of workers and thus poses an important problem of justice for employers (for example, unskilled workers without freedom of choice). Such injustice can actually lead to decreased productivity.

On the other hand, there is a significant link between worker productivity and programs that improve the quality of the work life of workers by giving greater involvement in, and control over, a variety of work tasks. Velasquez [26] points out that there are two determinants of job satisfaction:

1. Experienced Meaningfulness. The individual must perceive his or her work as worthwhile or important by some system of values he or she accepts.

2. Knowledge of Results. The worker must be able to determine, on some regular basis, whether or not the outcomes of his or her work are satisfactory.

To influence these determinants, jobs must be expanded along five dimensions:

1. Skill Variety. The degree to which a job requires the worker to perform activities that challenge his or her skills and abilities.

2. Task Identity. The degree to which the job requires completing a whole and identifiable piece of work -- doing a job from beginning to end with a visible outcome.

3. Task Significance. The degree to which a job has a substantial and perceivable impact on the lives of other people, whether in the immediate organization or the world at large.

4. Autonomy. The degree to which the job gives the worker freedom, independence and discretion in scheduling work and determining how he or she will carry it out

5. Feedback. The degree to which a worker, in carrying out the work activities required by the job, gets information about the effectiveness of his or her efforts.

Traditionally, employees have relied on their supervisors for task guidance and good feelings--especially consideration and being treated like adults in order to perform their jobs both well and happily. Schneider and Bowen point out that when employees do not get this from their supervisors, they may turn to customers as "substitutes for leadership"

(20). Customers may be given a say in designing the organization that produces the goods and services. With services, it's often possible--and desirable--for customers to actually participate in production.

But the problem is that customers are not subject to the same kinds of fears, commitments and structures as employees, so they are very difficult to manage. To best capitalize on customer competencies, management must be able to:

1. Explicitly determine exactly what role/job they want their customer to perform.

2. Ensure that customers have what it takes to perform their jobs well through role clarity, ability and motivation.

3. Regularly appraise customer performance.

Service customers also often play the roles of directors, guides and even "order-givers" for employees. Customers play a dual leadership role by providing employees with guidance and providing them with positive feelings. There are two reasons. First, the employees' supervisors tend not to provide the guidance and good feelings they should. Second, customers of service firms feel they have a right to give orders. Employees like the positive feelings they receive from customers but do not like customers telling them what to do.

The lesson here is fairly simple but too often overlooked: Feedback is a critical part of job enrichment. Service firms need to think creatively about how to respond to these opposite reactions to customers' leadership behaviors. Customers can be trained to be a source of good feelings for employees and, at the same time, socialized to limit task direction over employees. Although management may have great "legitimate influence" over its employees, service work puts employees closer to their customers and, therefore, more involved with the kinds of rewards they receive and the distribution of those rewards. When a hospitality enterprise meets the various needs of employees through rewards--dispersed equitably and fairly--customers will experience superior service quality as well.

Combining Job Satisfaction with Spirituality for Hospitality Professionals

Mainardi has pointed out that hospitality professionals are dependent on contact with, and reception of, the public (14). Therefore, they presuppose some degree of availability toward the client, a considerable margin of initiative and a generally strong sense of personal responsibility. In fact, employees in the tourist transaction play an intermediary role between the industry's structure and its clientele. This role is particularly decisive in achieving the results desired by both sides. AM these situations are undoubtedly favorable to bearing witness to the spirit and practice of the Gospel before others.

The hospitality professional's conduct is not only circumscribed by the material manifestations of the tourist industry. It must also be determined by psychological and ethical factors aimed at completely satisfying the tourist's wishes. Tourists want to be treated differently--better--than they are normally treated in their daily routines (e.g., with tradesmen, fellow workers, etc.). Furthermore, there is substantial evidence that customers like to interact directly with people in the tourism trade, not machines. This is also unavoidable, since providing tourist services without human assistance remains inconceivable.

This contact with the hurried or solitary traveler enables tourist professionals to reveal their own personalities--both as expert and human being--responding to each client's unique wishes via their own mental attitude, manner, initiative and creativity. The human person is truly the central and fundamental point of the tourism industry, with the economic aspect clearly secondary.

Simon used the concept of satisficing behavior to accommodate the balancing act of achieving multiple objectives in human behavior (21). Normative economics fails to include some of the central problems of conflict and dynamics. Simon attacks the hypothesis that firms strive to maximize profits for three key reasons: (1) The theory leaves ambiguous whether it is short-run or long-run profit that is to be maximized; (2) The entrepreneur may obtain all kinds of "psychic income" from the firm apart from monetary rewards; and (3) the entrepreneur may simply want to earn a satisfactory return, not looking to maximize gains. Simon points out that "economic man" is a satisficing animal whose problem-solving is based on his or her search to meet certain aspiration levels, rather than a "maximizing animal" whose problem-solving involves finding the best alternatives in terms of specified criteria This is certainly true in the case of the hospitality professional who seeks job satisfaction rather than merely looking to maximize salary.

The true mark of hospitality professionalism is excellence on the technical level and fellowship toward the client on the moral level. Such a global commitment involves a wide range of material services and mental attitudes in welcoming, guiding and assisting the tourist It also opens up more far-reaching horizons to practice Christian witness in so many privileged circumstances--in the form of personal contacts, conversations, exchanges of view, good conduct, etc. Nevertheless, this world also brings a lot of "baggage" with it for most people in the tourist and similar industries. Such difficulties include stress, high anxiety, burn out, low social status, feeling like a "hired host," low pay, tensions between career and one's personal and family life, as well as high turnover and mobility.

In professional activity, a concrete and unmistakable sign of integrity is to observe professional ethics. In other words, professionals should conduct their business honestly--giving clients the right amount of service and goods proportionate to their requested price. Whether you're talking about a travel agency or a tour company, a hotel or a restaurant, personal service must focus on the needs of the beneficiary of hospitality--i.e., the client Specifically, the 10 dimensions of service quality are: reliability, responsiveness, competence, access, courtesy, communication, credibility, security, understanding/knowing the customer, and tangibles that include the physical evidence of the service.

Generally speaking, hospitality clients are not equipped with the controls and consumer protections many other customers enjoy when they purchase industrial products. With the exception of large-scale fraud, it is, in fact, very difficult for clients to contest the quality of tourist goods or services purchased. In the majority of cases, the tourist client is thus put in an inferior position. That's why it's all too easy for hospitality professionals to "swindle" and behave in unjust and dishonest ways. This is a recurrent risk faced even by the well-intentioned, and one that can only be dispelled if the will to bear witness is cultivated systematically in the depths of the individual conscience.

Regard toward the client's "person" can--and should--be demonstrated by imbuing him or her with a sense of psychological and physical well-being, and by being willing to serve. Customers should also benefit from: material protection of their person and possessions, the constant good functioning of the tourism facilities, professional correctness and an effort by service providers to achieve maximum standards of hygiene (in food and environment). Modern managerial conduct should also aim to overcome the "coldness" and lack of intimacy typical of bureaucratic organizations. What's more, the influence exerted by hospitality managers and their staff may play a significant role in "educating" clients in the use of tourism, whether aimed at recreation or any creative endeavor. In the words of Paul VI, we should strive to "humanize and spiritualize tourism."

Make That a Vegetarian Soup?

A Funny Chef Video to start our workweek.......

An Interview or CSI Investigation?

As a recruiter in hospitality for many years, I've been privy to the interview mindset of clients looking for new management and executive candidates. While various styles of interviewing come and go, has it ever seemed to you more like a criminal investigation?

If you said, "Yes!", there's good reason it seemed that way. In my experience, some intervieews approach the interview with the vigour of the most experienced CSI Investigator, as though they just picked you up off the street holding a smoking gun and pleading innocence.

The conductor of this type of interview has taken passion for their work to a new level and lost the primary intention of an interview: to tease the best from the candidate, not the worst. They take great efforts to ask the most obscure questions, give test questions that are not at all related to the position, and probe into your home or personal life. All with the aim to find information to use against you. Amazingly, when an interview becomes criminal it's often not because of anything the candidate has done, but because the interviewee has gone far beyond the probing behavioural question.

Too often an interviewer may wander in with a test in hand and ask you to complete it. It doesn't matter that you'll never be expected to know more than half the answers in relation to the job.

Let's not forget the computer savvy that crawl over the internet for clever and obscure questions that appear to test the candidates' ability to solve problems under pressure. Even working in the front line of the busiest restaurant where the pressure is intense, you'll not likely be in a life and death wine corking horror: it just doesn't happen.

Let's be honest, if a candidate is a proficient liar, the interview is not where you'll catch them out: you're just going to catch normal people making small mistakes. Just like you and I do. And you wouldn't want your career to hang on one small mistake, would you?

So, instead of trying to find ways to trip up candidates, let's remember the first rule of interviewing: show the candidate the same level of respect that you'd want to be shown. Be pleasant and courteous and make an effort to put the candidate at ease: that way you'll get far more out of the interview and you'll be able to make an informed decision when it comes to making the final choice.

Of course one must take into account the business culture and whether or not the person sitting across from you can fit in and you should be able to determine that during the course of a well conducted interview and this should also form an important part of the decision making process.

Remember that first impressions are important and go both ways: just as you'd be aghast if a candidate walked in wearing shorts and sneakers, think about the impression you're making on them. You are the front-line representative of your business. Observe the fundamentals and the interview process should be more rewarding and fruitful. After all, even the ccused criminal on CSI gets a phone call.