Listen To Your Employees’ Needs
When we consider selling a hotel room, a restaurant meal, a leadership development program, or even hiring a new employee, it is paramount that we identify the guests' needs.
Yes, the employee is as much your guest as everyone else in the room. Consider what they need from you. Some need pay, others friendship, still others self-actualization. Abraham Maslow, and before him the Indigenous people of the Blackfoot Nation, identified these characteristics. We all seek work for different reasons. We stay at our jobs for different reasons. We change careers for different reasons
As employers we have to know why a person is walking in the door to go to work every day, just as we must know why a guest is walking in the door and paying for our services everyday. If you think about it, when a person comes to work they are exchanging time for all or some fulfillment of their needs.
In this article from Hotels, LLC, the editors suggest that hiring is a Business-To-Consumer (B2C) transaction. I would disagree. It is more accurately a Business-To-Business (B2B) transaction. We are all independent businesses. If the recent years have taught us nothing it is that we are all working as independent contractors. Many of us have started our own businesses. I did.
People must be respected and valued for the work they bring to the table. Listen to your employees' needs!
“Consider every employee, and yes even yourself, as an independent business. Partner with each employee to help them meet their needs this week. When in doubt ask them what their needs are.”
