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Thursday, July 1, 2010
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Dawn Sweeney: A Shot in the Arm for the NRA
Dawn Sweeney, the head of the National Restaurant Association is not a doctor. Nevertheless she has managed at least one miracle since taking the helm of the NRA in 2007, leading her sole patient, a large and unwieldy monolith, to accept a dose of reality: change or wither.
Sweeney is no newcomer to the Washington industry trade group milieu, having engineered an impressive expansion of membership and revenue at the American Association of Retired Persons. She knows that the way Washington works is that trade groups (including our NRA) dole out direct campaign contributions in the hyper-millions to those members of Congress willing to push a friendly piece of legislation on their patron’s behalf; it is largely due to their bottomless checkbooks that trade groups are able to provide momentum for much of what gets discussed on Capitol Hill and in statehouses as well. That said, it matters who is in charge -- in Congress as well as in the trade groups.
It was with a singular focus, to invoke a “change or wither” mentality on a reluctant audience, that Sweeney agreed to lead the NRA. If not exactly a rock star Ms. Sweeney has shown herself as the classic “change agent”, preferring engagement over inflexibility.
Within a short year of taking NRA’s reins Franchise Times was hailing Sweeney as the “Dawn of a New Era” and NRA board members as well as industry types weighed in on her side. More recently as the pace of political debate has quickened the industry’s political leaders, who take their cues from local membership, are noticing. Jot Condie, the well-connected and influential leader of the California Restaurant Association, has commented on Sweeney’s role in the national healthcare debate, telling Politico.com that if Sweeney hadn’t led the NRA into the debate the alternative would have meant having its “nose pressed against the glass while important discussions are going on in the room.” Earlier this week Patrick Conway who heads up the Pennsylvania Restaurant Association echoed Condie. “ In advocacy work, it can be easier to simply oppose legislation and go down swinging than to get out in front and play a key role in shaping public policy in a way that will actually benefit your members. By being at the table, Dawn Sweeney is able to articulate our industry’s concerns directly …”
How did the NRA Board get religion? To its credit the Board read the proverbial tea leaves during the 2006 midterm elections, when voter rejection of the Bush Administration sent a political tsunami crashing into Washington. Voters sent thirty Republican members of the House packing and ushered Democrats into six formerly Republican chairs in the Senate. The new Democratic majority, savoring its victory, took a huge and symbolic first step, electing Nancy Pelosi as the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House. Shortly thereafter the NRA began seeking new leadership.
Sweeney’s inclusive and collaborative style matches her politically smart tone; as she began her new job, she said that the NRA was going to be transformed, in the words of management guru Jim Collins, from “good to great.” Her insistence on a lean committee structure and her non-stop reaching out across party and philosophical lines are transformational behaviors. Nevertheless Sweeney knows why she’s employed. “The bottom line is, I’m working to protect and preserve this industry.”
It’s fair to say that this is just what Sweeney is doing . By being on the front line of debate – she is currently immersed in helping craft important, business-friendly amendments to the Senate’s healthcare bill -- Dawn Sweeney continues to turn heads in her direction. More importantly, and thanks to an NRA board unafraid of challenge, the restaurant industry under Sweeney’s leadership has become an important voice in our ongoing nationwide dialogue.
Far from withering the NRA is reinvigorated, its past an important but of necessity, less dominant part of its future. Where does the NRA membership stand on whether Sweeney will succeed in transforming the NRA into a powerful force for realistic legislative reform? If remaining a bit unsure about whether all this collaboration and engagement will lead them out of the darkness, members are at least listening, and like Sweeney, they are happy to be participants instead of spectators.
Be honest and be well.
© 2009 by Charles A. Conine and Hospitality HR Solutions, providing HR consulting and educational tools to the hospitality industry, Please send your comments to me here and visit us on the Web at www.hospitalityhrsolutions.com
Sunday, September 20, 2009
The Echo of Lost Civility
While President Obama had hoped his pitch to a joint session of Congress to pass healthcare reform would resonate with lawmakers, it was instead the shouted “you lie” outburst by Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) that appears to have galvanized supporters on both ends of the political spectrum in a way that more modest speech has yet to achieve.
Though a sharply divided House of Representatives voted to express displeasure with Wilson and his clear breach of protocol, there is reason to fear a less obvious outcome of Wilson’s gambit: the weakening of civil discourse in general, and as a means to facilitate debate in particular. Shouting quite clearly gains people’s attention; we now know that when accompanied by coarseness a mere elevation of one’s speech volume can spawn a repeated, lasting echo. It is not the shouting that hurts, we may learn; it is the echo that causes lasting harm.
The recurring memory of an incident from my junior high school days illustrates my point. There we were, my fellow seventh graders and I, riding for the first time on a school bus that would take us to a neighboring town and away from the small elementary school we’d inhabited for the past seven years. The bus route, typical of a rural community, wound up one country road and down another, picking up farm kids who had to pass a gauntlet of us villagers — we, the more privileged, whose parents could afford to live in town and were not consigned to a life of back-breaking planting and harvesting. At one stop, a home, more of a shanty actually, stood none too sturdily, its grimy windows covered in sackcloth, a smelly kerosene stove sending acrid odors skyward.
From the home’s doorway emerged a young girl, I’ll call her Iris, carrying a weather-beaten purse and a paper bag, presumably holding her lunch. As she approached the bus, a tittering erupted amongst us villagers who had spent our elementary school career with Iris as a classmate. We knew her secret: she smelled badly.
As Iris boarded the bus, we — I — looked elsewhere. Fortunately a seat in the front row directly behind the driver was open and Iris quickly slumped into it, the bus doors closed and off we went trundling down yet another country lane.
Even today I suppose I could make a fairly convincing argument that my behavior on the school bus was nothing more than childhood immaturity, much like Joe Wilson has explained that his shout of “you lie” while President Obama was addressing Congress was because he “got caught up in the moment.”
Lapses of civility can occur for very good reasons — shouting out a warning that there’s a fire in the building counts as one — but when they don’t, when we’re just plain wrong in what we said or how we behaved, there’s only one appropriate course of action: make prompt amends just as Congressman Wilson did.
For some, leaving the matter to an apology will be enough; in the case of Joe Wilson, it’s politics that made him do it, some will say, a desire for an “ah ha” moment that would galvanize support for a conservative backlash against the president’s policies.
As I recall, I felt thusly comforted sitting among my childhood friends on the school bus, whispering and holding our noses closed.
© 2009 Charles A. Conine and Hospitality HR Solutions
Though a sharply divided House of Representatives voted to express displeasure with Wilson and his clear breach of protocol, there is reason to fear a less obvious outcome of Wilson’s gambit: the weakening of civil discourse in general, and as a means to facilitate debate in particular. Shouting quite clearly gains people’s attention; we now know that when accompanied by coarseness a mere elevation of one’s speech volume can spawn a repeated, lasting echo. It is not the shouting that hurts, we may learn; it is the echo that causes lasting harm.
The recurring memory of an incident from my junior high school days illustrates my point. There we were, my fellow seventh graders and I, riding for the first time on a school bus that would take us to a neighboring town and away from the small elementary school we’d inhabited for the past seven years. The bus route, typical of a rural community, wound up one country road and down another, picking up farm kids who had to pass a gauntlet of us villagers — we, the more privileged, whose parents could afford to live in town and were not consigned to a life of back-breaking planting and harvesting. At one stop, a home, more of a shanty actually, stood none too sturdily, its grimy windows covered in sackcloth, a smelly kerosene stove sending acrid odors skyward.
From the home’s doorway emerged a young girl, I’ll call her Iris, carrying a weather-beaten purse and a paper bag, presumably holding her lunch. As she approached the bus, a tittering erupted amongst us villagers who had spent our elementary school career with Iris as a classmate. We knew her secret: she smelled badly.
As Iris boarded the bus, we — I — looked elsewhere. Fortunately a seat in the front row directly behind the driver was open and Iris quickly slumped into it, the bus doors closed and off we went trundling down yet another country lane.
Even today I suppose I could make a fairly convincing argument that my behavior on the school bus was nothing more than childhood immaturity, much like Joe Wilson has explained that his shout of “you lie” while President Obama was addressing Congress was because he “got caught up in the moment.”
Lapses of civility can occur for very good reasons — shouting out a warning that there’s a fire in the building counts as one — but when they don’t, when we’re just plain wrong in what we said or how we behaved, there’s only one appropriate course of action: make prompt amends just as Congressman Wilson did.
For some, leaving the matter to an apology will be enough; in the case of Joe Wilson, it’s politics that made him do it, some will say, a desire for an “ah ha” moment that would galvanize support for a conservative backlash against the president’s policies.
As I recall, I felt thusly comforted sitting among my childhood friends on the school bus, whispering and holding our noses closed.
© 2009 Charles A. Conine and Hospitality HR Solutions
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
The Ostrich Option
There was barely contained anger last week in the offices of the National Retail Federation. Neil Trautwein, VP of NRF, the largest retail lobbying organization worldwide representing companies with some 24 million employees, was seething – “flabbergasted”, he said, over an unsettling article in the Wall St. Journal: Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer had stunned NRF and others by publicly endorsing mandated healthcare for employees. The company’s position was contained in a letter addressed to President Obama and delivered to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. Clearly pleased by this development, Emanuel declared mandates and cost control to be “two sides of the same coin,” phraseology that the Administration and pundits are using to describe so-called “opportunities of crisis”.
NRF’s consternation was undoubtedly further fueled by the oddly juxtaposed pair of players who co-authored Walmart’s letter to Obama: the head of the Service Employees International Union, Andy Stern, and John Podesta, who chairs a liberal think tank and ran President Obama’s transition team. The sight of Podesta, an official from President Clinton’s days, standing shoulder to shoulder with Andy Stern and Walmart, the guardian of free enterprise, must have been nauseating and more than a bit unsettling to the NRF; a “breakaway” employer of Walmart’s size, allied with forces naturally hostile to free-enterprise thinkers, has the power to change the debate on healthcare mandates, and Walmart did just that last week. The NRF had to respond.
Within hours of the WSJ article’s publication Trautwein appeared on the cable business news channel CNBC where at first he blanched, hesitating under the withering, acerbic questioning of commentator Mark Haines who labeled Trautwein – and by inference, NRF and its member companies -- “cheap” for not supporting Wal-Mart’s position. As the four-minute segment progressed, however, Trautwein regained his footing, presenting strong arguments to support the NRF’s position: the marketplace and the government should act in concert, he said, but not in the way envisioned by Walmart, the SEIU and Podesta’s think thank. NRF wants healthcare reform with the marketplace as its fulcrum. Mandates don’t work, Trautwein added; government intervention should be limited to helping to control spiraling healthcare costs and reigning in Medicaid.
NRF has been upstaged before by big retailers, just as going its own way is nothing new for Walmart; the Costco/Starbucks/Whole Foods offer to compromise on the Employee Free Choice Act must have caused a run on antacids at NRF headquarters, and Walmart’s letter to Obama was only the most recent example of how lobbyists’ sense of direction can sometimes be eclipsed by industries they represent. Hurt feelings and differences over strategy and timing aside, however, the common element uniting all of these very public players, including the SEIU’s Andy Stern who shared the stage with Walmart’s healthcare announcement, is that they are engaged in the debate.
And then there’s us. What is it about the prospect of healthcare reform that so immobilizes our industry? You can almost hear our collective mouths clamping shut in defiant passivity. But why? This issue is as important to the hospitality industry as the Employee Free Choice Act, yet few of our industry’s leaders are being engaged to spur debate. Someone like Bill Marriott, for example, whose company has offered a myriad of healthcare options to its employees for more than twenty years could command attention and shape public opinion by going on CNBC and speaking about the market approach to healthcare, a solution the recently reintroduced SHOP Act, supported by the National Restaurant Association, mimics. Is Marriott’s way a way forward? Yes, perhaps it is, at least for some employers. Requiring employees to be insured, the backbone of nearly all the Congressional alternatives under debate could be another.
Timing is everything. It’s inconvenient, to say the least, that we are still mired in recession while talk of $1 trillion healthcare reform is being foisted upon us. That’s too bad, but it’s not an answer. There’s still time to either raise our hands for one of the existing proposals or lend a voice in support of another direction. And to those of us enjoying our summer at the beach, take note: sticking our heads in the proverbial sand is not an option.
Be honest and be well.
Copyright 2008-2009 by Hospitality HR Solutions and Consilium Advisory Services LLC. See us on the Web at http://www.hospitalityhrsolutions.com/. Our newsletter featuring hospitality industry HR news, information and comment is at http://www.hospitalityhrmedia.com/.
NRF’s consternation was undoubtedly further fueled by the oddly juxtaposed pair of players who co-authored Walmart’s letter to Obama: the head of the Service Employees International Union, Andy Stern, and John Podesta, who chairs a liberal think tank and ran President Obama’s transition team. The sight of Podesta, an official from President Clinton’s days, standing shoulder to shoulder with Andy Stern and Walmart, the guardian of free enterprise, must have been nauseating and more than a bit unsettling to the NRF; a “breakaway” employer of Walmart’s size, allied with forces naturally hostile to free-enterprise thinkers, has the power to change the debate on healthcare mandates, and Walmart did just that last week. The NRF had to respond.
Within hours of the WSJ article’s publication Trautwein appeared on the cable business news channel CNBC where at first he blanched, hesitating under the withering, acerbic questioning of commentator Mark Haines who labeled Trautwein – and by inference, NRF and its member companies -- “cheap” for not supporting Wal-Mart’s position. As the four-minute segment progressed, however, Trautwein regained his footing, presenting strong arguments to support the NRF’s position: the marketplace and the government should act in concert, he said, but not in the way envisioned by Walmart, the SEIU and Podesta’s think thank. NRF wants healthcare reform with the marketplace as its fulcrum. Mandates don’t work, Trautwein added; government intervention should be limited to helping to control spiraling healthcare costs and reigning in Medicaid.
NRF has been upstaged before by big retailers, just as going its own way is nothing new for Walmart; the Costco/Starbucks/Whole Foods offer to compromise on the Employee Free Choice Act must have caused a run on antacids at NRF headquarters, and Walmart’s letter to Obama was only the most recent example of how lobbyists’ sense of direction can sometimes be eclipsed by industries they represent. Hurt feelings and differences over strategy and timing aside, however, the common element uniting all of these very public players, including the SEIU’s Andy Stern who shared the stage with Walmart’s healthcare announcement, is that they are engaged in the debate.
And then there’s us. What is it about the prospect of healthcare reform that so immobilizes our industry? You can almost hear our collective mouths clamping shut in defiant passivity. But why? This issue is as important to the hospitality industry as the Employee Free Choice Act, yet few of our industry’s leaders are being engaged to spur debate. Someone like Bill Marriott, for example, whose company has offered a myriad of healthcare options to its employees for more than twenty years could command attention and shape public opinion by going on CNBC and speaking about the market approach to healthcare, a solution the recently reintroduced SHOP Act, supported by the National Restaurant Association, mimics. Is Marriott’s way a way forward? Yes, perhaps it is, at least for some employers. Requiring employees to be insured, the backbone of nearly all the Congressional alternatives under debate could be another.
Timing is everything. It’s inconvenient, to say the least, that we are still mired in recession while talk of $1 trillion healthcare reform is being foisted upon us. That’s too bad, but it’s not an answer. There’s still time to either raise our hands for one of the existing proposals or lend a voice in support of another direction. And to those of us enjoying our summer at the beach, take note: sticking our heads in the proverbial sand is not an option.
Be honest and be well.
Copyright 2008-2009 by Hospitality HR Solutions and Consilium Advisory Services LLC. See us on the Web at http://www.hospitalityhrsolutions.com/. Our newsletter featuring hospitality industry HR news, information and comment is at http://www.hospitalityhrmedia.com/.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
The Problem With Honesty, Er, Transparency
This month while researching an article for Hospitality HR Update entitled “Social Networking: Boon or Bane for Hospitality Employers” I kept coming across strict guidelines for employers who are thinking of developing networking sites to facilitate better communication with all employees and Generation Y in particular.
I can handle the “importance of coming across as non-threatening”. The bit about “everyone appreciates common courtesy” sounded fine too. The admonition against trying to appear too “hip” was right up my alley: for anyone under thirty I’m assuming I fit into the demographic of “old fogey” and that’s just fine. Old is old and trying to be new when you’re old is so, well, old.
But then there was a line about the importance of being transparent. Lacking a better definition I was fairly sure that the sought after transparency was not the legalistic variety that you’d find in, say, a company’s Sarbanes-Oxley policy. Nor would it be the type of sheen delivered by an auto polish, a sparkling lacquer-like coating through which a car’s colors are enhanced and brightened, rubbed to a blinding gloss by the weekend warriors who own 1956 Chevrolets. No, not that kind of transparency.
Then it hit me. Looking again at all of the other ideas for coming up with a nifty social networking policy I could now see where it’s all heading; this new style of communicating, that is. The transparency desired by our Generation Y employees is of the “tell me the truth, and tell me why it’s the truth” department. I could just about hear a twenty-something restaurant manager politely Tweeting a co-worker in the cocktail lounge: “After they tell me the truth, I’ll make up my mind about whether it’s really the true truth. I’ll let you know.” The bar manager’s reply would be: “If it’s the truth I’ll be shocked. Or perhaps a slightly altered riff from Five Easy Pieces: ”They don’t think we can handle the truth.”
Now we see this gaping hole we’ve dug for ourselves with all this cozying up to social networking. The truth must be told about – everything. Everything that was once sacrosanct will be up for discussion. We’ll need to come clean about why employees don’t all earn the same, why seniority isn’t what it used to be. Why some managers are nice and others mean. Why HR gets stuck with explaining a lot of things that really should be explained by the boss.
So, honesty, er, transparency is to be the new norm, eh? Generation Y has served notice: tell us the whole truth, or else nothing you say will be considered important or, worse, trusted. The fancy explanations that don’t really answer employee questions will be called out, dead on arrival. The decisions made in the board room will have to be dissected and explained in ways that we aren’t accustomed to explaining, except to our bankers or external auditors. Ignoring requests? Forget it. Transparency means action and actions are the currency of the Twitter-er .
Oh, and no more saying things like, “We’ll study that and get back with you.” Get back with me now, they’ll be saying to us. “I’m off tomorrow. Just Twitter me.”
Yeah, right. I’ve got major learning to do before I can get back to you. First I have to figure out how to Twitter. Then I need to send some practice messages; you know, to see if I am speaking the Lexicon of the Millennium or falling back on my old ways.
Then there’s that bit about transparency. Ultimately that’s going to be my biggest hurdle. Being an old HR guy I am definitely not used to putting things succinctly. One former boss, often frustrated with my loquacious explanations, put his foot down more often than not: “Get to the point”, he’d say and then I'd have to truncate my thoughts or he'd boot me out of his office.
Ah, but perhaps that’s timely advice after all. Honesty, clarity and brevity. So, exactly how do I say “No” in fewer than the 140 characters Twitter allows?
Be honest and be well.
Copyright 2009 by Charles A. Conine and Hospitality HR SolutionsVisit us on the Internet at www.hospitalityhrsolutions.com View our hospitality industry HR newsletter at www.hospitalityhrmedia.com
I can handle the “importance of coming across as non-threatening”. The bit about “everyone appreciates common courtesy” sounded fine too. The admonition against trying to appear too “hip” was right up my alley: for anyone under thirty I’m assuming I fit into the demographic of “old fogey” and that’s just fine. Old is old and trying to be new when you’re old is so, well, old.
But then there was a line about the importance of being transparent. Lacking a better definition I was fairly sure that the sought after transparency was not the legalistic variety that you’d find in, say, a company’s Sarbanes-Oxley policy. Nor would it be the type of sheen delivered by an auto polish, a sparkling lacquer-like coating through which a car’s colors are enhanced and brightened, rubbed to a blinding gloss by the weekend warriors who own 1956 Chevrolets. No, not that kind of transparency.
Then it hit me. Looking again at all of the other ideas for coming up with a nifty social networking policy I could now see where it’s all heading; this new style of communicating, that is. The transparency desired by our Generation Y employees is of the “tell me the truth, and tell me why it’s the truth” department. I could just about hear a twenty-something restaurant manager politely Tweeting a co-worker in the cocktail lounge: “After they tell me the truth, I’ll make up my mind about whether it’s really the true truth. I’ll let you know.” The bar manager’s reply would be: “If it’s the truth I’ll be shocked. Or perhaps a slightly altered riff from Five Easy Pieces: ”They don’t think we can handle the truth.”
Now we see this gaping hole we’ve dug for ourselves with all this cozying up to social networking. The truth must be told about – everything. Everything that was once sacrosanct will be up for discussion. We’ll need to come clean about why employees don’t all earn the same, why seniority isn’t what it used to be. Why some managers are nice and others mean. Why HR gets stuck with explaining a lot of things that really should be explained by the boss.
So, honesty, er, transparency is to be the new norm, eh? Generation Y has served notice: tell us the whole truth, or else nothing you say will be considered important or, worse, trusted. The fancy explanations that don’t really answer employee questions will be called out, dead on arrival. The decisions made in the board room will have to be dissected and explained in ways that we aren’t accustomed to explaining, except to our bankers or external auditors. Ignoring requests? Forget it. Transparency means action and actions are the currency of the Twitter-er .
Oh, and no more saying things like, “We’ll study that and get back with you.” Get back with me now, they’ll be saying to us. “I’m off tomorrow. Just Twitter me.”
Yeah, right. I’ve got major learning to do before I can get back to you. First I have to figure out how to Twitter. Then I need to send some practice messages; you know, to see if I am speaking the Lexicon of the Millennium or falling back on my old ways.
Then there’s that bit about transparency. Ultimately that’s going to be my biggest hurdle. Being an old HR guy I am definitely not used to putting things succinctly. One former boss, often frustrated with my loquacious explanations, put his foot down more often than not: “Get to the point”, he’d say and then I'd have to truncate my thoughts or he'd boot me out of his office.
Ah, but perhaps that’s timely advice after all. Honesty, clarity and brevity. So, exactly how do I say “No” in fewer than the 140 characters Twitter allows?
Be honest and be well.
Copyright 2009 by Charles A. Conine and Hospitality HR SolutionsVisit us on the Internet at www.hospitalityhrsolutions.com View our hospitality industry HR newsletter at www.hospitalityhrmedia.com
Friday, May 15, 2009
Icon of Icons
In today’s egocentric lexicon the word “icon” is a sought after designation by wannabees of all stripes, its overuse begetting misuse. We hear the word so often that its significance has melted into a puddle of sameness and mediocrity. I mean, how many musical groups, buildings or brands of toothpaste can really be icons?
There is word now that on June 2nd the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration will bestow its inaugural “Icon of the Industry” award. The honoree: J. Willard Marriott, Jr.
The thing about true icons is that our memory of them never fades. Though I’ve spoken with Mr. Marriott only 3-4 times over a forty-year period, he is one of a handful of people who shaped my belief about positive employee relations.
When I was fifteen years old, toiling away at my first summer job, on a grill line at a Marriott Hot Shoppes snack bar on the New York State Thruway, one particularly hot day placed me at the intersection of two important events: the first, a major rush of business, brought about by the arrival at our tiny snack bar of a dozen busloads of hungry tourists headed for Montreal’s Expo’ 67; the second, an announced visit to our outpost by the new president of Marriott Corporation.
Fate intervened. As I was retrieving a soggy cardboard case of J. R. Simplot French fries from a temperamental under-counter freezer stuck on defrost, the door to the grill line swung open and Bill Marriott, accompanied by our manager, strode in. “Meet Mr. Marriott”, I remember our boss saying, just as the French fry box’s weight shifted and the contents of six, five-pound boxes of fries cascaded from the sagging bottom of the case, landing on Bill Marriott’s beautifully polished black shoes. Completely unfazed by this unplanned adornment Mr. Marriott stuck his hand in my direction, uttering the words that many other Marriott associates have heard: “Hi, I’m Bill Marriott”.
Fifteen years later, long after completing my education and while I was well into a labor relations job with Host International, the airport feeder, Marriott bought Host. During a visit to Marriott’s Bethesda, Maryland headquarters I found myself once again mano a mano with the chief executive. He had just stepped from an elevator as our paths crossed. I was wearing my nametag -- a rule for those of us from “the field” visiting Bethesda -- yet Mr. Marriott seemed not to notice. Instead he smiled, looking squarely at me. “Hi, Chuck. How have you been?” Was his legendary memory at work here? I didn’t care; I just felt honored to see him again.
At that moment I also felt the need to confess. I’d been the one who, many years earlier, had messed up his shoes. Did he remember? Laughing, Bill Marriott said, “Oh yes, but we didn’t hold it against you, did we?”
Of course, icons are not without controversy. Some feel that Marriott is just too big to be “real"; detractors portray its pro-employee stance as mere publicity to mask an anti-union animus. Nevertheless Marriott’s vaunted reputation as an employer of choice – it ranked #72 on Fortune’s 2008 100 Best Companies to Work For – remains a potent non-union weapon.
Self-effacing to his core Bill Marriott no doubt fails to give himself credit for the enormous impact his vision and values have had on others. I predict that, as he begins his remarks at the “Icon of the Industry” event, he will first thank his dad, J. Willard Marriott, Sr. and mom, Alice. He will no doubt say, as I heard him recite at company gatherings, that they deserve the credit we want to send his way; it was they, after all, who taught him the value of hard work and decency. His father also taught him attention to detail; I recall Bill saying that his dad had once interrupted an important phone call to complain to his son, the CEO, about a piece of litter he’d spotted in a hotel’s entryway.
There was yet another potent lesson a young Bill Marriott learned from his dad: always strive to improve performance. “Those who rest on their laurels,” the elder Marriott told his son, “are in danger of moving backward.”
Congratulations, Mr. Marriott. The word “icon” seems a natural synonym for your name.
Be honest and be well.
Copyright 2009 Hospitality HR Solutions
Visit us on the Internet at http://www.hospitalityhrsolutions.com/
There is word now that on June 2nd the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration will bestow its inaugural “Icon of the Industry” award. The honoree: J. Willard Marriott, Jr.
The thing about true icons is that our memory of them never fades. Though I’ve spoken with Mr. Marriott only 3-4 times over a forty-year period, he is one of a handful of people who shaped my belief about positive employee relations.
When I was fifteen years old, toiling away at my first summer job, on a grill line at a Marriott Hot Shoppes snack bar on the New York State Thruway, one particularly hot day placed me at the intersection of two important events: the first, a major rush of business, brought about by the arrival at our tiny snack bar of a dozen busloads of hungry tourists headed for Montreal’s Expo’ 67; the second, an announced visit to our outpost by the new president of Marriott Corporation.
Fate intervened. As I was retrieving a soggy cardboard case of J. R. Simplot French fries from a temperamental under-counter freezer stuck on defrost, the door to the grill line swung open and Bill Marriott, accompanied by our manager, strode in. “Meet Mr. Marriott”, I remember our boss saying, just as the French fry box’s weight shifted and the contents of six, five-pound boxes of fries cascaded from the sagging bottom of the case, landing on Bill Marriott’s beautifully polished black shoes. Completely unfazed by this unplanned adornment Mr. Marriott stuck his hand in my direction, uttering the words that many other Marriott associates have heard: “Hi, I’m Bill Marriott”.
Fifteen years later, long after completing my education and while I was well into a labor relations job with Host International, the airport feeder, Marriott bought Host. During a visit to Marriott’s Bethesda, Maryland headquarters I found myself once again mano a mano with the chief executive. He had just stepped from an elevator as our paths crossed. I was wearing my nametag -- a rule for those of us from “the field” visiting Bethesda -- yet Mr. Marriott seemed not to notice. Instead he smiled, looking squarely at me. “Hi, Chuck. How have you been?” Was his legendary memory at work here? I didn’t care; I just felt honored to see him again.
At that moment I also felt the need to confess. I’d been the one who, many years earlier, had messed up his shoes. Did he remember? Laughing, Bill Marriott said, “Oh yes, but we didn’t hold it against you, did we?”
Of course, icons are not without controversy. Some feel that Marriott is just too big to be “real"; detractors portray its pro-employee stance as mere publicity to mask an anti-union animus. Nevertheless Marriott’s vaunted reputation as an employer of choice – it ranked #72 on Fortune’s 2008 100 Best Companies to Work For – remains a potent non-union weapon.
Self-effacing to his core Bill Marriott no doubt fails to give himself credit for the enormous impact his vision and values have had on others. I predict that, as he begins his remarks at the “Icon of the Industry” event, he will first thank his dad, J. Willard Marriott, Sr. and mom, Alice. He will no doubt say, as I heard him recite at company gatherings, that they deserve the credit we want to send his way; it was they, after all, who taught him the value of hard work and decency. His father also taught him attention to detail; I recall Bill saying that his dad had once interrupted an important phone call to complain to his son, the CEO, about a piece of litter he’d spotted in a hotel’s entryway.
There was yet another potent lesson a young Bill Marriott learned from his dad: always strive to improve performance. “Those who rest on their laurels,” the elder Marriott told his son, “are in danger of moving backward.”
Congratulations, Mr. Marriott. The word “icon” seems a natural synonym for your name.
Be honest and be well.
Copyright 2009 Hospitality HR Solutions
Visit us on the Internet at http://www.hospitalityhrsolutions.com/
Saturday, April 11, 2009
The Ultimate Union Buster: A Personality Test?
Dr. Lewis Hollweg, head of the respected firm Batrus Hollweg International which does management behavior consulting and pre-hire testing in the hospitality industry, was recently interviewed in Nation’s Restaurant News by its editor for human resources, Dina Berta. In the brief article, Root Out Pro-Union Staff With Smart Hiring Process[1],Hollweg references pre-hire personality profiles as a tool to predict future employee behavior. Such tests have been in place for decades and used with increasing sophistication, mostly to keep the societal-maladjusted among us -- petty thieves, sexual deviants and harassers, egoists, tyrants and Oedipuses, representing the “cream of the crop” in organizational misfits -- from infecting an otherwise well-run company.
Citing a “wonderful” study conducted on a company in the United Kingdom Hollweg notes cheerily that after the dissected organization became unionized, there was nevertheless a happy ending of sorts, owing chiefly to the fact that the company “happened to have” on hand results of personality testing it had conducted sometime earlier. Following the union election the company used the test results to learn “who had voted for the union and who didn’t.” How? Though he doesn’t say exactly Hollweg references “common denominators” that apparently paint a virtual red arm band on union supporters; they are, he says, “more likely to be unengaged, pessimistic, negative, fault finding and attribute control to other people.” And, he adds, “they also tend to be more extroverted.”
What’s missing from the NRN article? For one, the tests are not foolproof. As an HR practitioner I remember being told that test results can vary based on a variety of factors, even the test taker’s mood; is this true? Employers should also be told of other potentially negative consequences to the use of personality profiles (e.g., if hiring rates of women and/or minorities drop once tests are administered, is that a problem?). Also, what might result if an employer subject to the National Labor Relations Act finds itself in possession of information concerning ‘who voted for the union and who didn’t?’” A future article might feature an employment lawyer qualified to answer these questions. In the meantime, I confess a curiosity to know how the UK company cited by Dr. Hollweg, despite having tested its employees, was nevertheless unionized? How did all those “negative” and “pessimistic” people get hired in the first place?
While pre-hire testing can and should be considered for some jobs, I’m old fashioned, I guess, believing instead that a competent interviewer, whether from operations or HR, can conduct even the briefest of interviews, scan an employment application, spot missing information and other problem areas, and predict with regularity the stuff of which most applicants are made. In this case, test results could confirm otherwise good hires, for me a better measure of their worth.
Of course, even reasonably written, balanced and fairly scored tests come to naught if the people who lead the enterprise are not tuned in to the pulse of their workforce. As well, accepting test results as valid without corroborating evidence such as interview results and reference checks is unwise.
Whether it’s a union vote gone bad or a sexual harassment case we wish we’d averted, where companies continue to struggle is learning too late of an employee’s propensity to mistreat coworkers or subordinates. Never fear, however; those drawers full of psychological profiles still have one final use -- serving as litigation exhibits to help prove what miserable people we tend to hire.
Be honest and be well.
Copyright 2009 by Charles A. Conine and Hospitality HR Solutions
Visit us on the Web at www.hospitalityhrsolutions.com
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