Motivation In The Hospitality Industry

Published by: Incentive Research Foundation A new study on employee motivation and performance lays the groundwork for creation of the SITE Foundation Motivation Index.

Introduction About the Research The CANE Model Implications for Employers About the Researchers Where to Get the Study

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Introduction
Employee turnover within the U.S. fast-food and hotel industries costs those industries in the neighborhood of $140 billion annually. In more bite-sized terms, it will cost roughly 100% to 200% of an employees base salary to recruit and train a replacement. Although the turnover rate for these industries hovers between 78.3 percent and 95.4 percent on a national basis, some fast-food restaurants and hotels experience much lower rates, and have significantly greater success retaining employees. Overall, higher levels of motivation and motivated performance translate into a 53 percent reduction in worker turn over. It is generally understood that employment in these industries is often considered to be temporary, or stop-gap employment, with workers leaving eventually for what they will consider "greener pastures." And certainly, different economics are at work depending on the region, the type of establishment, etc. However, turnover rates also vary within the same economies, the same chains, the same cities, and the same regions. All things being equal, then, what accounts for the differences in turnover rates? And more importantly, what can managers do to reduce turnover at their properties? The Site Foundation is seeking to answer those questions by studying employee motivation and performance in the fast- food and hotel industries. The study - Motivation in the Hospitality Industry - measures key indices of motivated behavior using the widely recognized CANE (Commitment And Necessary Effort) Model of Motivation. The following describes key findings from research to date and offers methods managers can use to reduce turnover in their fast-food or hotel operations. [ Return to Top ]

About the Research

Hotel and fast-food employees from twenty-two job sites located in the Orlando, Florida area were surveyed in October 2003. All told, 545 responses were received. Mid-scale hotels contributed 14.9 percent of the responses; fast-food restaurants contributed 85.1 percent. A follow-up phase conducted in February 2004 surveyed the same job sites. The survey instrument was modeled after the CANE Model (Richard Clark, 1998). The CANE Model helps us to understand the various aspects of why people are motivated to perform a specific task. [ Return to Top ]

The CANE Model

The following chart illustrates the dynamics at work in the CANE Model. It is followed by an explanation of the ten predictor variables and questions in which the employee might express the effect of the variable on his or her behavior.
THE CANE MODEL Ten predictor variables identified by the CANE Model guided the investigation of the hospitality industry. These included: self-efficacy, agency, emotion, mood, importance, interest, utility, choice, persistence, and effort. Self-Efficacy The belief that one can organize and execute courses of action to obtain desired goals (Bandura, 1997). The belief that you will be supported in doing a task or allowed to perform the task in accordance with your goals. Negative emotions produce avoidance behaviors (tardiness, inattentiveness, job abandonment); positive emotions energize (choosing a task, staying longer on a task, etc.) Moods bias peoples thoughts, not their actions. People tend to commit to tasks when they identify with the task. People can commit themselves to tasks even when the only thing they get out of it is pleasure from doing the task. Willingness to perform A to secure B. Task utility is often the most powerful motivator. If the answer to the question at the right is "nothing," people are unlikely to commit to the task. Buy-in or the first step. This is that actual goal that people have selected; it differs from intention in that Can I Do This? Do I Have What It Takes? Will I Be Permitted To Do This and Be Supported? Can I Do This Under These Circumstances / Conditions? How Do I Feel About This Task Or Job?

Agency

Emotion

Mood Importance Interest

How Am I Feeling In General? Is This Task "Me"? Do I Like This?

Utility

Whats In It For Me?

Choice

Do I Agree With This?

Persistence Effort

it involves some sort of action or response and not mere thought or words (Kuhl, 1986). Continued choice in the face of obstacles. When Can I Continue To Do This? people persist, they generally succeed. An energy-based behavior involving actual thinking Is It Worth The Effort? rather than rote performance. When people exert effort, they increase the likelihood of succeeding in a task.

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Implications for Employers

Simply put, the study demonstrates that certain behaviors have various impacts on turnover in various ways, and these differences suggest strategies employers might use to reduce turnover. These include:

Turnover is less when employees have a high level of value for their work. These employees persist more than colleagues who report low levels of value. Employers can help employees value their work through consistent praise, recognition, and special incentives. Turnover is less at work sites where employees feel supported by the organization. Organizations can increase the level of support their employees feel by listening more, understanding employee issues, and taking action accordingly. Employees who feel better about their jobs persist more, exert more effort, and are less likely to leave. Older employees tend to be more motivated, persistent, exert a greater effort, and are less likely to leave in the face of difficulties. Salaried employees are more motivated than hourly employees. Women are more likely to say their work is more interesting, more important, and more useful; however, turnover for women is higher than men. When employees feel they cannot perform certain tasks, managers should reduce the size of complexity of the task into smaller "chunks." This helps the employee to build self-efficacy. Employees who perceive their work conditions to be unfair and/or unreliable need evidence that the system is there to help them be effective. If negative perceptions are cor rect, management should rectify them.

Conclusion: When tasks are being avoided or devalued, a carefully targeted incentive system can solve the problem in both the short- and long-terms.

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About the Researchers

This summary of a SITE study is an edited version of a full report by the same name written by Steven J. Condly, Ph.D., Educational Studies Dept., College of Education, University of Central Florida, and Robin DiPietro, Ph.D., Rosen School of Hospitality Management, University of Central Florida. [ Return to Top ]

Where to Get the Study

For copies, contact The SITE Foundation: Frank J. Katusak, Executive Director 304 Park Avenue South 11th Floor New York, NY 10010 212-590-2518 f.katusak@sitefoundation.org; http://www.sitefoundation.org/ Published by: The SITE Foundation Copyright 2004. All Rights Reserv e d . This paper is an edited version of a full report by the same name written by Steven J. Condly, Ph.D., Educational Studies Dept., College of Education, University of Central Florida, and Robin DiPietro, Ph.D., Rosen School of Hospitality Management, University of Central Florida. [ Return to Top ] Copyright 2008, Incentive Performance Center These training ideas will successfully:

Build morale in your wait staff. Provide a way for you to reward your restaurant employees in an exciting, yet cost effective way. Allow you to customize the education, incentives, motivation and training of your restaurant staff with games and challenges according to your specific teamwork needs in selling your products.

Motivate your restaurant staff to personal success and prosperity of your dining establishment. Make your restaurant server team consistent in their knowledge and performance for the benefit of your customers.

Authored by a restaurant manager at the Walt Disney World Resort, these pages contain creative and innovative ideas to educate your restaurant staff. This information can be customized to fit any type of hospitality or restaurant location. Restaurant managers can utilize this tool to educate their staff on the issues they choose in a fun way that will build morale and bind them as a team. This easy to follow wait staff training manual can show you intriguing, innovative ways to capture the interest of your restaurant employees and help them retain vital information to make them more productive as a team. With over 14 years in the restaurant business, I personally know how vital it is to have motivated restaurant employees. Moreover, your sales people will be equipped with the information they need to up-sell your products to your customers. For the past two years I have been responsible for incentive, education, training, and motivational programs for my restaurant staff. Many larger companies charge hundreds if not thousands, to come to your location, interrupt your schedule and attempt to provide these kinds of results. You will find these programs to be simple with minimal cost and maximum results!

About the Restaurant Server Motivational Tools:

Jeopardy Game
The game revolves around a display board that depicts categories such as restaurant history, menu items etc. The game can be customized to fit your needs. The wait staff must answer correctly the question from the selected category. The rewards are as creative as the game and I give you many options for these prizes. There are fun and exciting twists and turns to the game that really create a fun training environment from which the servers take valuable sales information. Dramatic results have been realized from the simple playing of this game and using it as a motivational tool. You won't want to miss this one!

The Grand Tour Game

The basic premise of "The Grand Tour" is to send each of your wait staff members through various learning stations, each one designed to focus on one particular aspect of your agenda. This game will take your staff to a new level of higher education,

communicate the same information to all departments in your restaurant and form a more cohesive team, and make learning about your location fun and exciting so your staff will be more apt to receive and retain the information. This game is a favorite among the restaurant staff!

Southwest Airlines Employee Motivation

The Southwest Airlines employee motivation phenomenon is no accident this company is a well-oiled, high performance organization. Wikipedia mentions these three facts: Southwest Airlines (SWA) is one of the world's most profitable airlines, posting a profit for the 36th consecutive year in January 2009. SWA is the largest airline in the United States by number of passengers carried domestically per year (as of December 31, 2007) SWA has carried more customers than any other U.S. airline since August 2006 for combined domestic and international passengers according to the U.S. Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Southwest Airlines employee motivation is a magnificent-living example of what most companies are striving for. The business press has continuously celebrated SWA outstanding performance. Fortune magazine has called it the most successful airline in history, and it ranks it in the top spots of its 100 Best Companies to work for. Despite the fact that SWA is one of the most highly unionized airlines in the US airline industry, it has consistently enjoyed lower turnover rates than other US airlines, it has high levels of employee motivation and satisfaction, and it has the lowest absenteeism and tardiness rates of any business in the area. In no particular order, here we mention key elements that play a critical role in the Southwest Airlines employee motivation visible fact.

7 Key Elements in Southwest Airlines employee motivation

1) STRONG SET OF VALUES

Values are peoples deep sacred convictions about how they must behave themselves values are behavior guidelines. The SWA set of values are not wishful thinking on the contrary, this companys values determine the behavior of all employees at all levels in the organization not only front line workers must behave according to these values, but especially top management as well, who maintains credibility by walking its talk and keeping 100% its integrity the values discipline is strictly enforced across the company. In SWA, values are mandatory behavior guidelines. Why are values important for Southwest Airlines employee motivation? For the following reason: The top three SWA values are in this order of appearance: Employees Customers Stockholders Translation: The SWA organization exists first and foremost, to exceed its employees expectations; in a close second, to exceed its customers expectations; and in close third, to exceed its stockholders expectations. Stop and think for a moment: In your company where you work right now, are the employees values that they live by every working day, identical to the companys corporate values? If your answer is no, your company has a clear area of opportunity. If you dont even know what your companys corporate values are, your company has a gigantic are of opportunity. 2) EMPLOYEES COME FIRST Just underneath SWA mission statement on the SWA web site it reads: To our employees: We are committed to provide our Employees a stable work environment with equal opportunity for learning and personal growth. Creativity and innovation are encouraged for improving the effectiveness of Southwest Airlines. Above all, Employees will be provided the same concern, respect, and caring attitude within the organization that they are expected to share externally with every Southwest Customer. According to SWA values, employees come first this is not some lip service payment to workers from top management and SWA workers know this for a fact. The employees personal well being is a most important matter for SWA leadership the entire company places significant importance on every single job. All employees are highly valued and respected as individuals, which in turn, this engenders strong feelings of mutual belief, trust, and certainty (read motivation) to perform. Top management is meticulously careful to invest heavily in training, in development, and in the creation of opportunity for everybody the company is willing to take risks on its people to a degree that might seem extreme for outsiders.

No wonder Southwest Airlines employee motivation is outstanding. Stop and think for a moment: Are employees, customers, and stockholders among your companys most important corporate values? If your answer is no, your company might want to redesign its value system and its corresponding culture (culture boils down to this: the way we do things around here). Among other authors, John P. Kotter and James L. Heskett in Corporate Culture and Performance (Simon & Schuster, New York, NY: 1992) found that the high performing companies have value systems that REALLY care about all three constituencies (employees, customers, and stockholders). 3) REWARDS & RECOGNITION Workers know that the company provides meaningful recognition and rewards for their performance they know exactly what it is the company gives them in return for their exceptional work there is no doubt about it. The entire company (read everybody at all levels in the organization) places particular importance in exploring every conceivable technique, approach, and device to recognize excellent performance this is an ongoing effort where everybody is involved. The organization recognizes all employees directly in proportion to their personal accomplishments and SWA does so by rewarding and celebrating them in many different ways, by direct supervisors and peers as well as upper management. This generates a contagious collective energy across the whole organization and as a consequence, the work environment is animated with eagerness, enthusiasm, and joy it is an environment that employees love. In this Southwest Airlines employee motivation context, formal compensation is of secondary importance. By profusely rewarding its employees for excellent performance, SWA is able to maintain loyalty, job satisfactions, and high levels of personal motivation. Stop and think for a moment: When was the last time your boss honestly and personally recognized your performance? How did you feel? Did his/her genuine recognition motivate you? When was the last time you honestly and personally recognized the performance of your direct reports? 4) MISSION The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit.

However, SWA accomplishment is NOT in the writing of its mission any company could have written the very same mission statement Southwest Airlines employee motivation does not reside in its mission itself. Rather, Southwest Airlines employee motivation exists in the fact that SWA has been able to frame its work as part of a deep and rewarding purpose (its mission) that employees find fulfilling. In the mission arena, SWA accomplishment is this: Southwest Airlines employee motivation exists in the fact that SWA has been able to place its mission as a noble purpose in the eyes of its employees, and as a consequence of this, its employees visualize a dignified mission for their organization that rises above any short-term financial profits. The force of a mission any mission statement is not found in its wording (however, a mission statement must be well written), but in the organizations capacity to transform its mission into a live force embodied in every single worker and Southwest Airlines employee motivation is fueled by this. Stop and think for a moment: Is your companys mission statement alive in the everyday behaviors of your companys entire workforce? If your answer is no, your company has a clear area of opportunity. If you dont even know what your companys mission statement says, your company has a gigantic are of opportunity. 5) HIRING SWA has a VERY rigorous hiring procedure nothing and nobody is left to chance and/or to gut feeling. The SWA search and selection processes are by far much more meticulous than at most other companies the selection is purposeful. Deciding who becomes a permanent worker of the company is a significant decision SWA goes to great lengths to make certain that they get the best of the right candidates. Plus, a permanent rehiring way of thinking prevails employees are expected to maintain top performance, or else In other words, Southwest Airlines employee motivation is not an option if you genuinely like it here, you stay; but one thing is for sure, if you dont like it, you can not fake it for long. SWA is not for everybody and so it goes for all high performance organizations with strong corporate cultures. Stop and think for a moment:

 Does your company also have rigorous search and selection processes in order to guarantee your company gets only the best of the right candidates? Or do managers make gut decisions when hiring new employees? If gut decision-making plays a role in your companys hiring practice, your organization has a clear area of opportunity. Remember, any team is as good as the players it is made out of. 6) DISTRIBUTED LEADERSHIP SWA has a strong leadership at the top AND throughout the management hierarchy top executives genuinely take for granted that everyone is able to lead in significant ways. Most employees at most organizational levels play leadership roles as needed most workers start actions that other employees will follow. Becoming skilled at leading is everybodys duty at SWA and to make this happen, top management invests a great deal in front line leaders. What does distributed leadership has to do with Southwest Airlines employee motivation? SWA doesnt hire candidates who dont get thrilled with the possibility of leading. In this context, leading is inherently motivating. Since the essence of leadership is change, a positive organizational change index creates a higher degree of adaptability, which is necessary now more than ever only cultures that help organizations anticipate and adapt to environmental changes will have superior performance over the long haul. Stop and think for a moment: Does your company have a broad-base leadership? If not, your company has a clear area of opportunity. If your companys top management denies this fact, your company might not be able to adapt to the increasing number of incoming environmental changes. What does this mean in the medium to long-term time frame for your company? A possibility: becoming a dinosaur extinct. 7) PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT A key feature of SWA performance management is its performance transparency. To begin with, SWA obsessively measures three dimension of performance: Employee well being Customer satisfaction Shareholder gain Hence, in order to reach their clearly articulated goals, the performance of the average worker is critical; therefore, SWA emphasizes a rigorous tracking and rewarding of individual performance, coupled with clear, immediate and straight feedback.

It goes without saying that goals, roles, and responsibilities are crystal clear across the SWA organization, anybody (anytime, anywhere) can spell for you performance metrics that matter to the company. All employees at SWA have a clear image of the background in which they work, they clearly comprehend how performance is measured, and what it is they can do in order to improve it. The focal point on performance begins with recruiting and hiring, and it goes on throughout the performance appraisal, recognition, and reward processes. The understanding of current individual performance, current departmental performance, and current organizational performance in other words: having the big picture is a key factor not only in Southwest Airlines employee motivation, but also in any employee motivation setting. Stop and think for a moment: Do employees at your company enjoy this degree of performance transparency? If not, why not?

The Southwest Airlines employee motivation phenomenon is the result of all these factors (and perhaps others) combined.

Bibliography: Kevin Freiberg: Nuts! Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success (Bard Press, Austin, TX: 1996). Jon R. Katzenbach: Peak Performance: Aligning the Hearts and Minds of Your Employees (HBSP, Boston, MA: 2000). Note: this book inspired me to write this article. Lorraine Grubbs-West: Lessons in Loyalty: How Southwest Airlines Does It - An Insider's View (CornerStone Leadership Institute, Dallas, TX: 2005). Jody Hoffer Gittell: The Southwest Airlines Way: Using the Power of Relationships to Achieve High Performance (McGraw-Hill, New York, NY: 2005).