Author: Mel Kleiman
FM Issue: Safety and Security 2014
When it comes to employee hiring responsibilities, venue managers worldwide face the daunting task of balancing the venue’s distinctly different, but paramount priorities: safety and customer service.
While many venue employees’ primary responsibilities seem to fall squarely into one camp or the other (i.e, box office being customer-focused while maintenance personnel need to be safety-oriented), the ideal is for every new hire to innately possess both of these crucial attitudes. That way, everyone on staff would work together to ensure guests always have a safe, seamless, enjoyable experience.
In fact, no matter the industry or particular job, attitudes are, by far, more important than either skills or experience. A Harvard Business School study determined that of the four factors critical to success in any job (information, intelligence, skill, and attitude), that attitude accounts for 93 percent of a person’s success. (This is why savvy hiring managers make it a practice to: “Hire for attitude and train for skills.”)
Unfortunately, most employers still hire for skills and experience first. Their, seemingly logical, rationale is that they’ll save training time and expense, but this is no way to build a world-class team.
The ideal venue team would be comprised of employees who rate highly on safety and customer service attitudes. Here are a few ideas about how to find out if a job applicant really has what it takes.
- Know What You’re Looking For: If you focus on attitudes, you won’t be tempted to hire an experienced person who will never tell you that he really thinks the rules are for novices or who is disdainful of “the general public.” Actual on the job behaviors and performance are driven by attitudes, not by experience, training programs, or rules and regulations.
- Consider Using Pre-Employment Attitude Evaluations: These relatively inexpensive, online tools can save hiring managers countless hours spent in interviews with people who are not well-suited to the job. They measure not only safety and service mindsets, but other traits like reliability, honesty, teamwork, and initiative.
- Conduct a Focused Interview: Ask customer service and safety questions of every applicant no matter what the position. Possibilities include:
- Situational Questions (If this happened, what would you do?)
- Behavioral Questions (What was the worst safety/customer service problem you’ve ever encountered and what did you do?)
- Opinion/Philosophy Questions (What did you think of your last employer’s safety rules?)
- Past Performance Questions (On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate yourself as a [job title]? What would it take for you to be the next higher number? How would your last supervisor rate you? Can you provide me with a copy of your last Performance Review?)
- Use Reference, Background, Credit, and Criminal Checks (as appropriate): As you’re well aware, public safety is paramount, and failure to run the needed checks could well result in a negligent hiring lawsuit on top of any personal injury liabilities that are caused by an employee’s mistake or misconduct.
Once hired, you can train your safety- and customer service-minded people in the skills it takes to do their particular jobs. You can also anticipate and proactively train them how to handle and respond to situations when safety concerns may cause customers to be inconvenienced. Because your new hires’ attitudes comply highly with your top-two priorities, you can be confident they’ll handle these kinds of difficult situations in the best possible way. FM
