Past Issues
Mat, 2005
Keep The Good Ones
Employee Retention Techniques
April, 2005
What We Measure Part III
Why we measure Sociability.
March, 2005
What We Measure Part II
Some perspective on Readjustment.
February, 2005
Are You Being Served?
Profiling in the Restaurant and Hospitality Industry.
What We Measure Part I
A deeper understanding of Ascendency.
Motivating Termites
Selecting the most motivational rewards for job performance.
We Don't Care What Your Think
Because We Measure Behavior Instead.
Of Course It's Legal
To Use Personality Profiling in Hiring.
Do Unto Others (Or Not)
Good Advice for Sales People.
The Paul Principle
Give employees what they need to succeed.
After I'm Gone ...
Using Profiling to sell or buy a business successfully.
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The MRA Team Spirit Newsletter - February, 2005
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Are You Being Served?
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By John Loven
President
MRA Team Spirit
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The question "Are you being served?" became falling-down funny in the hands of the
PBS Britcom of the same name. But the service economy is no joke: Finding the right
employees for your service-oriented business is crucial in a world where customer
satisfaction is everything.
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Servers aren't helpful because you told them to be.
Greeters aren't eager to meet the next customer because the pay is so high.
Trouble-shooters don't go with the flow because of career goals.
Then why do your best workers serve and greet and meet ever-changing customer needs? The
best employees do it because it is their natural response to the job. Intrinsic behavioral
traits lead them to make choices that are good for business.
Service and hospitality jobs are an expanding segment of the working population. The
restaurant industry is the nation's largest private-sector employer with 12 million
employees today, and projected to employ 13.5 million by 2014. The bad news is that
employee turnover is unnecessarily high, and the quality of customer service is often
difficult to maintain.
How do your staff connect with each other and - most importantly - with the customers in
the best way? Can you measure the behavioral traits that will make one server a superstar
and another a flop? Yes you can, if you use the MRA Team Spirit Profiling system. These
behavioral traits are not trainable. We measure what an individual takes satisfaction
in, and what the individual needs to thrive. A bad match between a candidate's traits and
the job description will result in poor service and short tenure because the needs of the
job go against the worker's nature.
What are these traits and how do they play-out in the restaurant and hospitality business? Take
a moment to answer a few questions about what makes a winner on your team. Think through
you most important job descriptions and ask:
The First Question: Do you need a someone who likes to follow the lead of others and
generally seek consensus or do you need a competitive and assertive individual?
In most service situations the customer is always right: workers please customers by
meeting their needs cheerfully and making the customer's satisfaction a personal goal.
We call these individuals Helpers.
In the case of people with management responsibility who have to make a lot of hard
choices about budget and schedule, people who must make and deliver objective performance
evaluations, then you want a Driver. A driver will be focused on upholding standards
and meeting their individual performance goal. Drivers will be less affected by the
momentary ebb and flow of the needs of others.
MRA Team Spirit Profiles can objectively measure which people take the greatest
satisfaction in achieving and exceeding personal goals and those whose natural inclination
is to take time to meet the customers and address the customer's needs in detail.
Our web-based assessment system gives you a quick and scientifically validated
picture of these traits in each individual.
The Second Question: Do you need someone who does the job within strict guidelines or
someone who likes to improvise with the available resources?
Have you ever had a server tell you something like "She wanted scrambled eggs with
Tabasco on the side, instead of a bottle." You say "Grab a little sauce cup and fill it with hot sauce!"
and the Server says "I didn't know we could do that."?
On the other hand you may have serious legal/liability guidelines about when and where
alcohol can be consumed. Individuals stocking and serving alcohol must naturally want to
stay within the guidelines and check with a manager before varying the process.
If you need a server, greeter or maitre d' who can innovate and improvise to turn a
customer into a repeat customer, you want a Ranger: Someone who - after training in the
facts and boundaries - can think creatively and will trust his or her own judgment on the
work floor. If you need a worker who will not exceed boundaries without authorization and
will generally cross check his or her own judgment in any unfamiliar situation you want a
Guardian.
Rangers succeed in some job descriptions and Guardians in others other. Notice that both
Rangers and Guardians would probably fail if they switched jobs. MRA Team Spirit Profiling
can show you an objective measurement of how likely a job candidate will be to go it on his
own versus how likely it is he will constantly check with existing authority and standards.
We measure four fundamental traits. Being high or low on the scales does not mean good or
bad. Both high and low can be solid gold in the right job. But which job?
The Third Question: Do you need somebody who likes to get in a groove and stay there, or
somebody who's happy on a rolling log?
If you have a repetitive task list and stable work hours, you'll want your workers to be
Rocks: Those calm steady people who get everything just where they want it and take pride
and satisfaction in keeping it that way. They are happy with repetitive tasks and cherish
stability. Your best workers naturally like keeping the whole process in the groove.
If everything is changing all the time, you want a Roller : Someone who's happy on a
rolling log. These folks require change; it's their nature. If they don't get variety,
they'll cause it. Meeting planning and catering are classic examples. No one would expect
anything but constant changes in the logistics schedule and staffing
Using MRA Team Spirit profiling, you'll get reports that show how each candidate will
react to rapid change in the work situation and what you need to do as a manager to bring
out the best in them. If you put a Rock where a Roller should be, you lose productivity and
(shortly) lose an employee.
How Does it Work?
By asking the job candidate to give honest answers to a set of questions called The
Leadership Matrix, we can measure major behavioral traits. Years of expert analysis have
created reports that show how these traits play out in service- and hospitality-related
jobs. We show you what each candidate needs to succeed:
Strengths
A list of the strongest points of each profile. As a manager, you need to be able to use
these abilities. If "enjoys repetitive tasks" is a strength, then a job in bookkeeping
might be a winner, but a job in catering might be a loser.
Restraints
A list of the points of each profile which can cause conflict or lost productivity. As
a manager you'll want to make sure these don't get in the way. If a restraint is "needs
support in goal setting" then the person will be fine in a highly structured situation
where a manager will set the goals. But a job in which that individual becomes a bottleneck
of indecision would be a poor job-match.
Using the Reports
You can ask a job candidate to go to our web site and take the assessment as part of the
hiring process. Then use the report as part of your interviewing process. Ask the candidate
if the report is accurate. Ask for examples from past work experience that will underscore the
person's strengths and restraints as described in the report. Above all, ask yourself if you
can give what this candidate needs to succeed. A person who has a powerful need to meet, greet
and influence others should not be a warehouse guard on the midnight shift. A goal driven
person who likes to innovate should never be put in a position where they will be micromanaged.
It costs you way too much money to make those kinds of mistakes. With MRA Team Spirit
Profiling you can avoid most of them.
You can also profile your existing work force and see what your highest and lowest performers
have in common. This is a good reality check to see if your assumptions about what makes a top
quality employee are accurate.
Get Real
That brings us to one last key to identifying your star employees and making the most of
your profiling process. Get real. Be honest (with yourself at least) about the job, the job
description and your own management style.
You may tell the world that "We empower our employees to serve you." But if, in
fact, you have very detailed and strict procedures for every task, you want to hire Rocks,
not Rollers. If your menu and floor layout seems stable but you smell merger, acquisition or
market re-alignment coming, know that your work force will be put through a lot of changes.
The process will be a lot easier for Rollers than Rocks.
You may be advertising for "self-starters who want to take control of their future" but
be accurate at hiring time: Can you provide the freedom for Rangers to do their thing or
will you actually manage people very closely so that Guardians will enjoy the job more?
What kind of work attitude really succeeds in your hotels or restaurants? A Driver-type individual who
successfully managed a burger joint all by herself for years might very well fail in a
chain-restaurant environment where most key decisions are made at corporate headquarters.
Conclusion
You can identify top-performing hospitality and restaurant workers with a painless and
scientifically objective MRA Team Spirit Profile. Visit our website at www.MRATeamSpirit.com
and take advantage of the offer to be profiled at no charge. We'll send you your Interview Reports
and you can see for yourself how accurate the reports are. Ask yourself "Would I want this
same information about my staff? Would I want this information in my hand when I interview
a job candidate? The answer will be "Yes!"
Then you can sign up to use our very affordable web-based system to find the superstars
for your team starting tomorrow! Via the internet, you'll get reports instantly and be
able to see what hires and non-hires have in common so you can refine your hiring process.
Get profiled at no cost today and learn how to identify your dream staff.
John Loven
President
MRA Team Spirit
Questions or Comments? Let Me Know.
Copyright © 2005 John Loven
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