The Ritz Carlton’s Gold Standards, Hilton’s award-winning culture, Marriott’s core values, and FourSeasons’ service culture are just a few company culture examples that are recognized around the world. What’s so special about these hotels and their company cultures? By establishing a unique set of values, beliefs, goals, workplace environments, and attitudes, these corporate cultures accurately reflect the most important aspects by which each hotel operates in order to create a gratifying environment for guests and employees alike.
Company Culture Means More than Just Sharing the Same Vision
As the owner or manager of a small vacation rental business, you probably wonder whether you should also cultivate a workplace culture. Considering that the greatest assets of a lodging business are its philosophy and employees, and that the workplace culture is an integral part of any small or large business, creating your own company culture is imperative in order to ensure that everyone is working toward the same goal: achieving guest satisfaction.
A workplace culture takes time to develop. As well, changing a company’s culture is one of the most difficult leadership challenges. Thus, the sooner you establish a workplace culture that is aligned with your business mission and values, the better it is. Why? For starters, company culture will help you make your brand identity more consistent from the very beginning. Because a consistent brand provides clarity, projects professionalism, establishes authenticity, and builds trust, it can help you attract a higher number of guests.
Additionally, as your business grows, you’ll need to hire more employees. Having a workplace culture will allow you to recruit and select only the candidates who share your business’s beliefs. Rejecting an applicant who isn’t a cultural fit can save everyone’s time and resources.
Building a Strong Workplace Culture
Although there are many different ways to build a remarkable company culture, the most important thing to remember is that it must align with your target audience’ values. Not only should you incorporate those values into your company’s culture; they should also become the most important part of everything you and your employees do. Here are a few important elements you should consider when building your workplace culture.
Authenticity
When it comes to developing a workplace culture, authenticity is one of the most important drivers to address. Creating a company culture of authenticity simply means offering your guests and employees a sense that you’re honest about your business and yourself. Since authenticity goes hand-in-hand with trust, a company culture of authenticity usually leads to a genuine sense of commitment, belonging, and satisfaction among employees and guests. What does this mean? On the one hand, authenticity has a significant positive impact on employee engagement, performance, and job satisfaction. On the other hand, authenticity will help you build and maintain guest loyalty, which is critically important for any lodging business. Not only will loyal guests keep coming back; they’ll also recommend your business to others.
A Unified Vision
A unified vision is the backbone of a lodging business because it’s one of the few elements that can make employees feel united in their purpose, and having a clear and unified vision and mission will help your business compete more successfully in the market. After all, your vision and mission will serve as guidelines for how employees are expected to behave and communicate with your guests. Achieving a company culture with a unified vision and mission isn’t too difficult. In short, the secret lies in tying your business goals to your company’s values.
Diversity and inclusion
Creating a diverse and inclusive workplace can be a challenge for a small company. However, your small lodging business can benefit greatly from a workplace culture that focuses on these two concepts. That’s because diversity and inclusion typically lead to better retention rates, higher engagement, and stronger performance among employees. Engaged employees also tend to be happier and therefore provide better services to their colleagues and guests, so diversity and inclusion could translate into more happy guests and revenue for your business.
On the downside, it can be quite problematic to develop and implement a diversity and inclusion strategy in a small business. While hiring employees who bring different backgrounds and perspectives to the table may not be too difficult, recognizing their special talents and making them feel valued, respected, and included is the hardest part.
In addition to all these, practicing positive reinforcement—whose role is to clearly communicate the desired behaviors and help you build great relationships with your employees—is one of the most efficient ways to motivate your employees to act in accordance with your company’s culture and values.
Whatever size your lodging business is and whatever it is that you want to achieve, cultivating an extraordinary company culture will help you build and maintain a strong team, increase brand awareness, improve guest satisfaction, and increase retention rates, which ultimately translate into more bookings and revenue for your business. For more detailed information on how to boost your revenue and profit, call our friendly professionals today at +1 (385) 334-5398!