As president of Classic Residence by Hyatt, Randal J. Richardson leads 3,600 people nationwide, so being a people person
comes with the territory. With the belief that happy employees lead to happy residents, Richardson has guided the Chicago-based
luxury senior-living provider to the top of its industry, posting $260 million in annual revenue and serving more than 6,000
retirees in 18 communities nationwide. Smart Business spoke with Richardson about how collaboration leads to satisfaction for
employees and, in turn, for customers.
Develop a collaborative environment. Communication is up to me to begin with, but you
have to have a lot of people who have high
interface and high contact with the broader
employee base in your company.
They need to understand those cultural values and goals that are important to the organization so that they can communicate effectively with all the people they interview with.
As important, it’s up to all of us in those positions to be role models.
People watch what you do, and you need to
make sure to understand that your actions
will be evaluated and interpreted by a larger
audience of employees within an organization, and they’ll take those actions and their
interpretations of those as direction as to
how they might act in a similar situation.
It’s extremely important that people, to the
extent we can, involve people at all levels of
the organization in understanding what our
goals and objectives are. If we can do that,
we’re going to have a better chance of delivering that at the end of the day.
Develop your employees. We’re doing a lot of
development today, and it’s a lot of fun to talk
about a growing organization in that fashion,
but I also talk about our organization growing
in terms of capability. (As) important to us as
expanding, in terms of numbers, is our capability of continuing to improve.
Most of the answers are out there. It’s a
matter of developing an environment that
allows people to contribute, and if they
know what the goals and objectives are,
they’re going to have a much better opportunity to bring solutions to the table around different problems.
Communicate change, and then do it again. The
most important thing that you can do in
a changing environment is to communicate. Do it often and do it much more
than you think you need to.
People want to feel connected to
where the changes are going or where
the company is going, and if you give
them an opportunity to do that, not only
does it reduce the anxiety around the
unknown, it again engages them actively
in helping the company to change as it
might need to.
Work together to make decisions. I involve people
in decision-making, yet I won’t spend a lot
of time overanalyzing things.
I find if you want commitment around
strategy and a particular action, then
involving people that are going to be
responsible for ultimately executing is very
important so you get their buy-in and commitment and you get the desired outcome.
It also helps you come to better solutions.
It’s a style issue, so first of all, you have to
model it and you need to coach people in
leadership positions within the organization to approach their business and their
particular challenges in a similar way. If
you’re involved in a meeting with somebody and you can witness or evaluate their
particular style and how they’re approaching a situation, there’s opportunity then to
perhaps give them coaching lessons.
Hire the right people. That’s one of the things
I try to get at in the hiring process. If I find
they have a style that allows them to
approach their business in that way, they’re
going to be much more successful in this
organization and have a better opportunity
to succeed than somebody who doesn’t.
I don’t know that there’s one thing you
have to look for when hiring. It’s a lot of
things that you put together, and it’s about
trying to understand an individual’s character, discussing how they make decisions,
how they work with people, talking about
some experience they have had that might illustrate the processes they use. It’s information you collect from a lot of different
places.
In the interview process, in particular, it’s
good to have many people involved
because you’ll get many different points of
view and a much more balanced perspective on an individual at the end of the day,
and amongst the interview group, you’ll be
able to find those values you’re looking for
or not.
Bring new hires up to speed. Any time you
have an expanding organization, a couple of things happen. First of all, you
bring people from outside the organization into your company, so in a growing
environment like that, it’s a challenge to
keep your culture intact and developing.
You need to take special care to not only
hire the right people but then to make
sure that they’re indoctrinated appropriately so that they know what kind of
organization they’re working for and they,
too, can step up to the values of the
organization. Our values in our company
are pretty simple.
Our core values of integrity, compassion
and excellence are what we use to talk
about the things that are important to our
organization.
That’s a big part of our vernacular and
a big part of the language we use to communicate with people and develop that
culture.
There have been jobs I’ve had where
I’ve started, and you kind of show up and
start working. I like to give people exposure in a more formal way. You can call
it training or orientation, if you will, but
more formal exposure to the values of
the company — what we’re all about as
an organization, the company history —
so that they have an opportunity to connect with the organization in a deeper
way much quicker.
If you involve people in a rich enough
way in what you’re trying to accomplish
and why, they’ll have an opportunity to
embrace that then and contribute much
more quickly.
HOW TO REACH: Classic Residence by Hyatt, (312) 803-8800
or www.classicresidence.com
