The LIFT Blog

By Ryan Quinn

If you had your pick of jobs, how likely would you be to pick “hotel housekeeper?” My guess is that not many people would–unless, perhaps, they lived in Ephrata, Pennsylvania. My sister, Shauri, and her colleagues at a consulting firm called Root Learning, partnered with Gina Valenti at Hampton to make the video above.* They made this video as part of a larger initiative around positive organizational culture that Gina and her colleagues are leading to show why people love to work for (and stay at) Hampton.

Why Create a Context Where Positive Relationships Can Flourish?

The inn in Ephrata is one of Hampton’s “Lighthouse Hotels,” and it provides a wonderful example of why leaders should work to foster positive relationships in their organizations. In a chapter of the book, Exploring Positive Relationships at Work, Wayne Baker and Jane Dutton** review the research literature on why leaders should try to create a context where positive relationships can flourish: In contexts like these, researchers have seen high levels of

1. Work engagement (like the employees in the Hampton Inn who have “fun” finding out customers’ sports statistics, creating a “guest of the day” award, or making a family whose house burned down feel welcome)
2. Attachment and commitment (like the employees who think of work like their family and the community members who see Hampton as integral to the community)
3. Cooperation and coordination, with more  problems solved, faster (like we see in the work meetings where all of the employees work together to come up with solutions)
4. Individual and project performance (which is part of what makes this Hampton Inn a “Lighthouse Hotel” in their system)
5. Better resource utilization and discovery of new resources (like the washcloths that can now be re-used because the makeup removal problem was addressed)
6. Learning (like the “Jeopardy” games used in training or the community-specific knowledge employees have things like “cheesecake in a jar”)
7. Time savings (from things like work reduction ideas, communication across shifts, or efficient coordination)
8. Cost reduction (from things like new ideas that are introduced, from lower turnover because of attachment to the organization, and so forth)
   
9. Physiological functioning (happier people tend to be healthier people)

How to Create a Context Where Positive Relationships Can Flourish

So how do leaders create contexts where positive relationships can flourish? Much research remains to be done on this topic, but Baker and Dutton find at least seven answers to this question in the existing research literature, some of which we see occurring in Ephrata:

1. Use “social skills” as one your criteria when hiring
2. Involve as many of the employees who will be working with a new hire as possible when hiring
3. Socialize new hires by introducing them to people they need to know, giving them the resources they need to succeed, and rewarding others for helping new hires (We see this in things like the tours of Ephrata, investing resources in good ideas, norms of giving birthday gifts, and so forth.)
4. Rewarding efforts to build and sustain relationships (We see this in the “Spirit of Hampton” award, in the “culture of appreciation,” in the “fun” people have in coming up with ways to personalize the customers’ experiences, and in the free weekly breakfast offered to the community.)
5. Group incentives (The “Lighthouse Hotel” recognition is one example of this)
6. Ensure that meetings are productive and affirming (This happens in Hampton with team meetings in which employees can bring up ideas without fear and management shows a willingness to invest in good ideas.)
7. Use information technology wisely to enhance rather than detract from relationships (Many employees in many companies have become so dependent on their Blackberries and iPhones that their information technology impedes positive relationships. At Hampton, employees use face-to-face meetings for rich communication, mailboxes for simple, efficient communication between shifts, and information technology as a way to keep track of information about customers so that employees will be even better at personalizing customer experiences. Leaders should have a unique, tailored, relationship-sensitive approach to using technologies.)

The importance of practices like these is underscored in stories that I hear from time to time. This weekend, for example, I heard about a man who took an 80% cut in salary to move to a place where he felt he would be happier living and working. A few months ago I met a woman who moved over a hundred miles to work as a waitress in a restaurant that uses practices like the ones listed above. Money and incentives matter–there  is no question about that. In my experience, more leaders understand money and incentives than they do relational practices. Few can create a workplace like the one that Diana Bernardo has helped to create in Ephrata, Pennsylvania.

* Used with permission from Hampton Inn and Root Learning, with special thanks to Gina Valenti and Brian Donovan.

** Baker, W & Dutton, J. E. (2007) “Enabling Positive Social Capital in Organizations.” In Dutton, J. E. & Ragins, B. R. (Eds), Exploring Positive Relationships at Work: Building a Theoretical and Research Foundation (pp. 325-245). Lawrence Erlbaum: Mahwah, NJ.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 8:20 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.