Comments on: Managers are not exempt from serving

By: Steve Curtin

Steve Curtin — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 19:34:00 +0000

Go Broncos! ; )

By: Jeff Toister

Jeff Toister — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:53:00 +0000

I’m with you on disagreement being good, though I don’t disagree with the Cold Stone example. Customers were waiting and the manager should have prioritized their service over paperwork.

And yes, I think we’re in agreement that the challenge is reducing situations where a manager needs to jump in due to a lack of sufficient coverage.

Uh oh, it looks like we need to find something we really disagree on. I’ll get to work on that!!

By: Steve Curtin

Steve Curtin — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 18:26:00 +0000

Jeff, I’m glad we occasionally disagree – lest we be accused of perpetuating a mutual admiration society of customer service lemmings…
I actually think that if managers are working the line, they are MORE available to help associates, manage workflow, or observe performance. Consider the Cold Stone manager’s example from the blog post: By sequestering herself to the back room, she was unavailable to support her employee (and waiting customers), hindered workflow by allowing a bottleneck to form, and was unable to observe her employee’s (harried) performance.
To your point about managers jumping in during peak times, I completely agree. I suppose the challenge is for managers to reduce the frequency with which they HAVE to jump in by scheduling effectively.
As always, thanks for taking the time to read and comment.

By: Jeff Toister

Jeff Toister — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 15:41:00 +0000

Great post, Steve plus some terrific follow-up comments from Bill.

I agree that managers aren’t exempt from serving, and should jump in as needed, especially during peak times. However, this can also create a problem. If a manager is working the line, then he or she isn’t available to help other associates, manage workflow, or observe performance. It’s definitely a delicate balance. From my experience, one of the keys as others have alluded to is the schedule, where mastering the schedule leads to a better balance.

By: Steve Curtin

Steve Curtin — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 02:54:00 +0000

Bill, I have so many opinions about this, I hardly know where to start…
It seems so obvious to invest the time and effort to implement this approach.
Whether you refer to it as lateral service or cross-training/utilization of employees, the benefits far outweigh the costs (E.g., program development/maintenance, cross-training wages, wage differentials, etc.).
To your point, cross-trained employees now have opportunities to recover additional payroll hours outside of the department/job role in which they are primarily coded. This means that, instead of being limited to 28 payroll hours in housekeeping, they can now recover 12 (or more) hours in the restaurant, bringing them to full-time status. In addition to helping employees meet expenses, working full-time preserves their health care benefits—which is crucial for many employees. And employers win by reducing overtime and turnover while increasing employee and customer satisfaction.
Another benefit to the company of cross-training/utilization of employees, is that it avoids expensive buyout labor to cover peak periods for which there is insufficient staff. Buyout labor, in addition to being expensive, tends to lack the technical training (and certainly lacks the cultural training) of existing employees.
Customers do not distinguish between actual employees and buyout labor anymore than they do between facilities that are corporate-managed and those that are franchised.
Bill, the most effective leaders are willing to invest the time and other resources to ensure that employees and customers are well served. The lateral service program that you described is a great example. Bravo!

By: Bill Quiseng

Bill Quiseng — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 20:20:00 +0000

My pleasure, Steve. To follow-up on your point of the value of cross utilization of staff, when I served as GM of The Henry, formerly the Ritz Carlton Dearborn, I found out that the staff had really embraced the concept and called it “lateral service”. Occupancies could fluctuate dramatically week to week given group movements. During peak periods or when an associate went on vacation, rather than hire temporary staff, a person from another department helped to cover the open shifts. We had a maintenance staff cross trained as doorperson, a cook who could serve as restaurant host and server, and a number of housekeeping, bell and front desk staff serving as banquet servers. It goes back to this post on working within the budget. We minimized the overtime while giving others more hours who otherwise would have a lot less than a full work week.

By: Steve Curtin

Steve Curtin — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 15:12:00 +0000

Bill, thank you for your reality-rich comment. Lots of great nuggets there. One thing I’d like to latch onto is the cross-training and cross-utilization of staff.
I’m always amazed whenever I see a line of customers waiting to be served while managers or other employees busy themselves in other ways within view of the waiting customers.
In a retail environment, a line should never form behind a single register when other registers and employees are available to assist.
Albertsons supermarket has a policy in place that commits to open another register whenever a line forms three customers deep.
When the supplemental register opens, it’s rarely staffed by a cashier. Usually, a manager or employee from another part of the store who’s been cross-trained is cross-utilized as a cashier in order to reduce customer wait times.
Apple Store and Nordstrom employees, whose roles blend between consultant and cashier, are even better equipped to serve customers quickly and eliminate lines before they have a chance to form. My last set of purchases at those two retailers was lickety-split due to employees using hand-held payment devices.
Bill, thanks again for your insight and valuable contribution to this post.

By: Bill Quiseng

Bill Quiseng — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 13:10:00 +0000

As a general manager, I’d have more of a problem if I had an FB director who wouldn’t jump in during the peak periods. We actually had in place an IPT process for handling such times. IPT stood for “I Practice Teamwork”. We had a breakfast buffet and between 9 and 10 a.m. we would have more patrons than our scheduled servers and serve assistants could handle. A message went out over voicemail and our two way radios: “IPT: dining room”. Managers and housekeeping supervisors and housekeeping aides would come up and our restaurant manager would delegate tasks like pouring coffee or bussing and resetting tables. We would also use IPT calls for heavy check-ins. Our admin staff were cross trained to serve as resort operators so we could have the operators help the front desk check in guests as IPT needs arose. As much as possible we announced any potential IPT opportunites at staff meetings so that everyone had the heads up. On one occasion we had to turn a meeting room set-up for 500 to a dinner setting within an hour. Everyone from maintenance staff to all managers came in to replace the school room tables with banquet rounds and reset the room for the dinner event. When we hosted sports teams everyone was aware of the IPT need to serve as escorts and elevator operators. In addition to bring all the departments together, it had the benefit of showing our guests and clients that their satisfaction was very important to ALL of us.