At too many companies in too many industries, “People are our most important resource,” is the most cynical of platitudes, ignored as openly as, say, “Safety is our first priority.” But in a customer service-intensive business, no truer words could ever be spoken. You can’t even come close to creating a customer-centric organization until you learn to effectively recruit, retain, and develop employees.
Employee Lockers © Micah Solomon micah@micahsolomon.com
Employee Lockers © Micah Solomon micah@micahsolomon.com
The importance of employee development
A perfectly selected [see my article here on hiring the right employees for customer service excellence], newly-onboarded [see my article here on onboarding/orientation] employee is still a seed, a “redwood seed,” to use terminology I’ve borrowed from Brad Black, the CEO of HumanEx, the employee selection and development company. Lack of light and water can kill that seed pretty quickly (or can cause that seed—and here I mutilate the metaphor—to wander over to more fertile ground at a different company).
“You always have to start with the right talent,” says Black, “but those seeds need to be planted and watered. If you’re not developing your new employees, not coaching them, not planting them in a culture that allows employees to build great teams, then you’re not going to maximize the talent of those newly selected ‘seeds,’ and they’ll never grow.” The result will be low engagement and high turnover: negative results that directly affect the guest experience.
For an example of what systematic employee development can look like, let’s consider the framework that was famously developed during Black’s earlier tenure at Stryker, the Fortune 500 medical technologies firm. With this system, procedures are put in place to ensure that there’s a management discussion about each employee within a specified period (for example, every 90 days) to ensure they’re progressing in relation to their potential and their desires for career growth. “If our objective is to help them reach their potential,” says Black, “the best way to do this is with a system that prompts us to have a regularly scheduled [leadership] discussion about every employee and how they can advance toward their goals in the organization every ninety days. This is the most humane, the most inspiring, the smartest thing you can do to get the most out of, and for, your employees.”

Another procedure to schedule regularly is an annual check-in with each employee, to ask about the year that has passed and where the employee sees herself in the future. At these meetings as well, management should give employees feedback about their talents, as measured empirically and objectively, so that whatever the employees’ talents are, you’re helping them to grow.
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For a successful, high-stakes example of taking a “whole person” view of employees, consider The Broadmoor, a destination resort in Colorado Springs served by 2300 employees from all over the world on a level that has repeatedly earned it five stars (Forbes) and five diamonds (AAA) for its accommodations, food, and spa. There is nothing – nothing – easy about running an operation on this scale and with the level of expectations that guests bring to such an institution, and there’s no way to succeed without the support of a highly engaged workforce.
To this end, the leadership of The Broadmoor strives to “always look at each employee as a whole person, never as a ‘position,’ or ‘position-filler,’ says their director of training. “When you think of an individual as a whole person, you’re not thinking of them as a server, you’re thinking of them as ‘Jimmy.’ Human beings, including Jimmy, have things that happen in their life. They have kids, they go on vacation, they have up days, down days, aspirations, desires, frustrations, good things and bad things that are happening in their lives. If we understand the whole person, then when Jimmy comes to work and seems not the same, we can sit down, talk with him, and see how we can help.”
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Employee development, done systematically and sincerely, is a powerful force. If you do it right, to quote Brad Black again, “employees are going to brag about what it’s like to [work for you]. Now your worst problem will be that you have to [expand your operation] because you have so many people under your wing and growing that you’ve got too much talent. As they say, you can never have too much talent; you just have to find more opportunities.”