Enterprise: Culture and Values

Author: Qiang Yihua
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: Corporate Culture and Values
Corporate culture has been a topic of great interest in the hotel industry since it gained popularity several years ago. However, questions about what corporate culture truly is, why it should be established, and what kind of corporate culture hotels should develop have long puzzled managers. In reality, many hotels' corporate culture initiatives are limited to cultural activities, skill competitions, or regular publication of store newspapers. These actions are merely external manifestations of hotel culture and represent only a small portion of it. True hotel culture lies in its core values. As a business, a hotel's ultimate goal is profitability, and its culture must be driven by profit growth. It is an integral part of the hotel's value chain. Therefore, hotel corporate culture is a set of values that the hotel holds, including the mindset derived from these values and the behaviors guided by this mindset.
Meeting various standards can only be considered passing the minimum requirement, but to excel, a hotel must go beyond the standards to achieve individuality. The quality of this individuality and its sustainability must rely on or be rooted in hotel culture, making it difficult for other hotels to imitate and thus losing its uniqueness. A hotel's value is reflected in the behavior of its employees. How can employees provide personalized service to guests? What motivates them? On the surface, employees' service is simply following instructions from superiors, requiring little creativity or flexibility. They just need to follow the instructions and regulations, and if something goes wrong, they bear no responsibility, so no one cares whether the guest's problem is truly resolved or how to make the guest more satisfied. Similarly, team leaders pass the buck to supervisors, and supervisors pass it to managers—everything depends on following superior instructions. Why put in the effort for no reward? Over time, thoughtful employees tend to leave, leaving managers exhausted and constantly patching up loopholes, which naturally leads to guest dissatisfaction.
A hotel's evaluation of employees is not based on their service capabilities but on whether they follow instructions and whether they have made mistakes. For example, in the creation and revision of the "Operations Manual," employees should have a say because they best understand customer needs. They should not be written in a way that is convenient for management but constantly questioned and challenged by customers. Hotels should fully trust the intelligence and judgment of their employees, allow for mistakes, and help employees identify the root causes of errors to prevent similar mistakes in the future. Only when a hotel listens to employees' opinions in evaluations and the formulation of rules and regulations, reflecting a "human-centered" spirit, can it foster a positive and healthy corporate culture.