Why employee motivation and engagement are so important to an organisation

Heather Lishman, Director at Hospitality Assured discusses how we can use the Hospitality Assured framework to help give a structure to ensuring motivated and pro-actively engaged teams

We all know that highly engaged businesses are thriving – why?  Their teams are committed, focussed, and excited to be there.

What does motivation mean?

Internal and external factors that stimulate desire and energy in people to be continually interested and committed to a job role or to strive to attain a goal.

Sounds great, but how do we do it?

Motivation results from the interaction of both conscious and unconscious factors such as:

  • Intensity of desire or need
  • Incentive or reward value of the goal
  • Expectations of the individual and of his/her peers

These factors are the reasons one has for behaving a certain way.

So, is providing reasonable pay and working conditions enough?

The hospitality industry has worked hard to improve the working conditions and pay for many employees, but it does not seem to be enough.  Why is that?

We can look to a couple of well publicised theories to explain this.  Herzberg defined ‘hygiene factors’ as necessary to attain a certain level of engagement.  These include: satisfaction with pay, supervisors and general working conditions.
This is also stated by Maslow in his ‘hierarchy of needs’ – Maslow explains that it is important to feel satisfied with physiological needs and safety before higher levels of motivation can be achieved.  These, however, cover just the basic needs.

How do we ensure our teams are committed, focussed and excited to be there? 

We can use the Hospitality Assured framework to help give a structure to ensuring motivated and pro-actively engaged teams.

  1. Research
  • Have a clear picture of the employee marketplace, who your team members are and where they come from.
  • Have a clear understanding of who your competitors are and what they offer. This provides a basis for comparison and improvement.
  • Have defined methods for continuously gathering information about your employees’ needs and the way this impacts on the service you provide.
  • Evaluate market and economic information to understand existing and future challenges
  1. The Promise
  • Ensure that you clearly identify and communicate your employment offer to all stakeholders and potential stakeholders, including any terms and conditions.
  • Create, deliver and improve engagement opportunities based on employee requirements.
  1. Business Planning
  • Ensure there is a vision to enable the creation of a business plan with clear objectives and targets communicated to all appropriate stakeholders.
  • Include employee and other stakeholder requirements in the business plan.
  • Set and review marketing, financial, human resource and customer service objectives and targets
  • Use employee feedback to help monitor progress against the business plan.
  • Provide leadership that demonstrates and encourages high standards of service performance and develops a culture of excellence.
  1. Operational Planning and Standards of Performance
  • Have a plan that links people to the key responsibilities for the delivery of service and ensures this is communicated to all.
  • Evaluate operational plans to identify critical stages in the delivery of the product and service and their employee resource implications.
  • Have in place processes for monitoring outsourced services, such as; employment agencies, against the agreed standards
  • Implement procedures and standards of performance to comply with current legal, health and safety and environmental regulations.
  1. Resources
  • Have procedures for identifying your resource requirements for people, equipment and facilities to meet the business needs.
  • Make adequate resources available to deliver the standards of service promised to the customer.
  • Manage and use appropriate technology to support improvement.
  1. Training and Development
  • Equip your people with the skills and knowledge to provide the service promised.
  • Review individual performance to identify and agree any training or support required to ensure that current and future needs are met. This includes the identification and development of leadership and management skills.
  • Have procedures in place to measure and improve individual performance through job satisfaction, motivation and development opportunities.
  • Evaluate the effectiveness of training and development activities.
  • Involve and empower your people to encourage innovation, improvement and creativity.
  1. Service Delivery
  • Maintain a process to measure employees’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the service and their level of satisfaction.
  • Provide appropriate feedback and recognition of individual, team and organisation performance in delivering the service promise to the customer.
  • Stimulate and encourage collaboration and team effort in the delivery of service excellence.
  • Have measures in place to identify society’s perception of the organisation, and to improve your performance in relation to this.
  1. Service Recovery
  • Have in place a defined employee feedback procedure which includes informing employees as to the progress and outcome of their issues.
  • Use the information gathered to prevent future failures or to enhance the offer.
  1. Employee Satisfaction Improvement
  • Regularly review your employee offer to confirm that it continues to meet needs and expectations.
  • Seek suggestions for improvement from customers, stakeholders, suppliers and employees before implementing them as appropriate to enhance service.
  • Seek opportunities to review, benchmark, identify and implement best practice.

By structuring your employee engagement in this way, it should be possible to reach the higher levels of the Maslow hierarchy; belonging, esteem and ultimately self-actualisation, which can be defined as the realisation or fulfilment of talents and potential.   In this scenario your teams will be committed, focussed and excited to be at work.  That is the ultimate goal!


About the Author: Heather Lishman

Heather, Director of Hospitality Assured is a Fellow of the Institute of Hospitality (IOH) and currently serves on the IOH Executive Committee. A trained Hospitality Assured Assessor since 2011, Heather has assessed 40 business across the hospitality sector, and she now runs a successful hospitality consultancy.

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