Travel and Tourism
People first
How making your employees the center of your world helps your business
By Kristy J. O'Hara
Smart Business Chicago | July 2008
Page 1 of 2
Robert Habeeb
President and COO, First Hospitality Group Inc.
“You have no idea how much I appreciate
being heard.”
Robert Habeeb read this line
from a note he received from an
employee in Ohio, and it
touched him. As president and
chief operating officer of the
$165 million hotel management
company First Hospitality Group
Inc., he could easily spend all of
his time in fancy boardrooms in
important meetings, but instead, he relishes being out among his
3,000 employees, all of whom
he says have stories worth listening to.
He recognizes that when leaders take the time to learn where
people are from, ask about their
families and find out what their
aspirations are, it creates loyalty and trust. And relationships
that are built on these casual
interactions create stock no
leader can buy.
Smart Business spoke with
Habeeb about how focusing
on employees strengthens
your company.
Talk to people. The closer you
stay to the front lines, the better informed you’ll be as to
what’s really go on in your
business. If you get out on the
front line where the interaction between the company and
the customer takes place and
you listen to those folks, you’ll
get a great picture of what’s
happening in your business.
If you stay in the office and
go from meeting to meeting,
dealing with executives and
expect you’re going to get the
full picture of what’s happening in your company, you’re
probably mistaken.
If you don’t discipline yourself to put a big black line on
the calendar and say, ‘I’m not in
the office on this day or during
these hours,’ and get out, it’ll
never happen because your
time will always be hijacked by
some other priority.
You get to chat with people
and learn a lot about your
product and customer. The
more that you’re close to your
product and the people on the
front line, the more that the
keeping it real comes naturally
rather than it’s a mission.
Find a way to help your employees.We started an employee Web
site. When we first rolled it
out, we had an all-staff meeting and talked about the site.
At the end of the meeting,
the first question was, ‘I don’t
have a computer — do you
know where I could get one?’
A lot of the people that work
for us at entry level didn’t have
the resources to buy a computer, so we came back and
found a company that would
co-op with us on helping people buy their first computer.
Anything we can do to help
them navigate, people cheer for.
It creates loyalty. We want people to be cheerful and
friendly, and it certainly contributes to them going to work
and making it easy to be
cheerful and friendly.
It’s probably the difference in
where you have your heart in
what you do versus just going
through the functions.
