Happy Employees Equal Happy Customers

By Rick Dacri, Dacri & Associates

Everybody knows that the cleaning crew is at the bottom of the corporate food chain—everybody except Maureen Regan at Seaside Vacation Rentals. And maybe that’s why she is able to recruit and retain critical workers while others struggle in a tight labor market. Regan proves that to keep your workforce intact you have to be a bit counterculture and be willing to look at and do things differently. She calls it her “reverse pyramid.”

“Most companies treat their cleaning crew like an unwanted stepchild”, she says. It is not the most prestigious or pleasant job—who wants to clean some else’s toilet? —so many pay them lousy wages and regularly recruit low-end workers who are forced to accept that this is all they can expect to get for performing menial labor. But now imagine that you’re on vacation and you just spent good money on a nice hotel. You enter this oceanfront resort room and you find the room dirty. That experience colors your entire time there. Your holiday should never be focused on hygiene—you should always expect not just cleanliness, but a sanitized, immaculate, pleasant room. Regan, being a smart businessperson knows this and also realizes that the key to a clean room is a loyal, dedicated and happy cleaning crew who is willing to do the hard work. So for her, the cleaning crew is her most important department and she knows she must do everything she can to take care of these people—and that means great pay, flexible scheduling, and respect. Doing things differently makes good business sense.

They do things differently at The Lincoln Home too. Most managers know that to ensure employee harmony you have to treat everyone exactly the same, whether it is with pay, schedules, or favors. No one should be given preferential treatment and the last thing a manager wants to do is to set a precedent by doing something for one employee and not for another. But at the Lincoln Home they don’t buy that argument, and maybe that’s why hiring and retaining nurses and aides is not a problem for them, even while the rest of the health care industry is plagued by high turnover and nursing shortages.

At the Lincoln Home they realize that people decisions may not always be initially perceived as fair and equitable. They understand that an employee with a sick child may need extra time off and that others may occasionally have to pick up the slack. They also know that their residents expect to see the same nurse and aide every day. They shouldn’t have to regularly deal with new nurses who are unfamiliar with the care they need. Therefore The Home must have a stable workforce. To achieve this, their priority has been to be a great place to work by meeting their employee’s varied needs. But, everybody’s needs are not the same. So at The Lincoln Home, equity for all does not mean everyone gets the same. They believe that and their employees do too.

There has been a profound shift amongst America’s workers. No longer do they rigidly adhere to a philosophy of “treat everyone the same.” What has emerged is a need for individualism where workers want to be treated differently. They want their boss to recognize that their needs may be different from their co-workers and that their satisfaction and loyalty is predicated upon those needs being met.

Conventional wisdom would indicate that Seaside Rentals and The Lincoln Home’s approach to running their respective businesses is misguided—and that would be wrong. Turning the corporate hierarchy upside down or treating people differently is the new wisdom. It puts the individual first, and by doing so it ensures that the business runs efficiently. Their employees are happy. Everyone knows that there are no businesses that have unhappy employees and happy customers. By doing things differently, these two organizations have built a loyal workforces, and everybody knows that makes good business sense.

Rick Dacri is an organizational development consultant, coach and featured speaker at regional and national conferences. Since 1995 his firm, Dacri & Associates has focused on improving the performance of individuals and organizations. Rick can be reached at 1-800-892-9828, or rick@dacri.com