HoCoSo CONVERSATION
HoCoSo CONVERSATION
A case study: How does agile operations inspire and create “purpose” for employees in the hospitality industry? Part 1
Jonathan Humphries, your host, is in conversation with Jochen Renz. Given the challenges in the hospitality industry around recruitment, retainment, compensation and operating efficiencies, following two years of pandemic related challenges, in this podcast, we showcase a hotel which is operating in an agile way. This discussion is a case study on how it is possible to thing, lead, manage and respond in a post-covid world with constant uncertainty.
How can we better engage our employees in operational effectiveness and deliver a higher quality customer experience?
When this podcast was recorded, Jochen Renz was yet Multi Property Regional Manager for SV Group in the Zurich Area, including the 252-room Renaissance Zurich Tower, on which this case study is based. After this recording was made, Jochen has taken on a new position as AI Vice President Operations Switzerland & Southern Germany at Accor.
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Jonathan [00:00:05] I am your host, Jonathan Humphreys. Welcome to the HoCoSo Conversation. These are unfiltered conversations with people sharing their life journeys and learnings to help us become better versions of ourselves. It is my absolute pleasure to introduce you to my guest today Jochen Rentz Jochen is general manager of the Renaissance Hotel in Zurich. The Renaissance is a 252 room full service hotel listed as a five star in the new business district of HardBrücke. So why are we covering a specific hotel? Because we are looking for solutions on how we can transform hospitality. Jochen has done this through implementing an agile philosophy and mindset within the organization and with his teams. This conversation will be an exploration of why this particular approach and how it works in practice, which we believe could become a case study for other hospitality institutions worldwide. For those of you not familiar with the Renaissance brand, it is one of Marriott International's 30 brands worldwide. And to date, Marriott International is one of the largest hotel companies with over 7000 hotels and 1.4 million rooms and around about 150,000 associates. Jochen's background is in hospitality and sales and marketing with Mövenpick and SV group, which is listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange. He recently completed his executive MBA, where he specialized in Agile operations. So Jochen, for context, these last few years have been pretty challenging for the hospitality sector. It's been one of the most impacted sectors as we know. Tell us about this particular hotel in terms of what happened during this crisis, the opening, the closing, the impact on the operations for the listeners.
Jochen [00:02:03] Thank you very much, Jonathan. First of all, thank you so much for having me here. It's a great pleasure for me to give a bit insights about the Renaissance Swiss Tower Hotel and the way we work the last years was an incredible changing world. I took over the hotel one year ago more a bit more than one year ago when it was closed. So it was having one of the largest five star hotel in a closed situation. Taking over is a bit of a weird situation. It was and I was before also responsible for the courtyard by Marriott which is not a four star hotel in Zurich and which I take the entire COVID journey by myself. So we started to look on all the processes, cutting down all the the processes. What we what you have in place that's, that starts from a night cleaner. That starts from a from a breakfast service person that starts from it from a kitchen. So everything we did, we need to, to rethink and that in a, in quite a fast pace. And that happened to a situation that we came in 2020, which I was the one and only in the hotel. So running all of that processes but that keeps us wake up to really think when you're coming back in a later stage of situation what we need to to implement at what stage and then what's basically a good training which we gave was a good proof on the value chain when we take services, why we are doing that services and what is the impact for the guest? Because the first guest experience, the breakfast was was just one crossaint and we moved up to a full breakfast buffet later on. But the way to get there was kind of the interesting. And today we are running both hotels in Zurich into each them in a way we can say we are we are much more customer oriented and everything we did in our processes is much more on the point of the of the customer then I think that I have done or that we have done it before.
Jonathan [00:03:55] Wonderful. I like this idea in some ways, as tragic as the last few years have been for the hospitality business, opening a hotel again from scratch gave you a clean sheet with which to rethink what was actually possible. And I think you mentioned that when you open the hotel, there was literally yourself and a few staff to start with, is that correct?
Jochen [00:04:21] We started with three people. It was the front office manager. I was one person in the kitchen. I was me and myself running between both of them. And then work on the first 12 guests, that that's how we started in a 300 room hotel, which is basically quite a low number. And then but that was also that the chance we had because starting from scratch, starting from a minimum that allows you to communicate very close to to the team. And that the last year also on a second point to everything you are doing is a journey which you know and the team knows as well that it's going into a right direction, it's moving forward now. And we took that spirit very, very much. And then later on we implemented then into a new way of work.
Jonathan [00:05:04] Wonderful. So Jochen, let's talk about Agile to give some more context before we go into how you actually did it. Your introduction to this whole environment and let's talk about VUCA a little bit was partly driven by your executive MBA to a certain extent, but you've always had an interest in this volatility and uncertainty. So maybe just for some context, you know, for the audience, let's talk about VUCA, what it means, and also how you’re introduced to this and how it started to shift your mindset in terms of what could be possible.
Jochen [00:05:45] VUCA itself, I think that when we break it down, it's the world we are living, so we are having changes from one day to another. It's a very uncertain sea which is driven by the business which which keeps us always needs to keep us awake how we do things tomorrow, because they are surely different than we do it today. And that's also a bit of the way we work with each other. So what I learned from the past is hospitality industry by its classical things. You having a strict top down one, you have the power is sitting at the top and you drive it down. That's what we learned and I experienced, especially when I took over the second hotel, that this part of we are communicating or we are working together. It's quite different. And I think when we see VUCA today in our hospitality industry, that's just the pure things. We don't know what it is by tomorrow and we need to be at the heads up to adapt it and all the decisions, things, the decision, trees, what we have done, we need to break it down to the point where the customer sits and it's it's a lot of in the daily operation. So we learn very much from a daily operation today how we use it for our customers for tomorrow.
Jonathan [00:06:53] So let's go back to the operations and let's have the story from your side of how you started to implement this agile thinking and kind of how you brought in some of your theory in applications into the operational environment?
Jochen [00:07:11] When I look on my my own journey, I think I lessons learned I have done it was you need to look back into the days of movenpick I was responsible for the sakes, I had the sales managers just behind me and then I moved to took over later and also the rooms division part. So and that was a quite an interesting experience from my own leadership experience because I had the salesmanship which was very much KPI driven. So you have your numbers right. Then I took over come into a world where you experience that. We have drivers driving a shuttle bus, we have four front desk associates and I experienced on that point very much that it's impossible to lead everyone with the same. I can't lead the driver with KPIs. That's that's impossible so but I still want him to have been motivated and I started there very much to look very much into the people. Who is it, who is driving it? So what's the purpose for it? How can I motivate them? And I think that was a really interesting lesson to look carefully of each and every one to drive it best for the company. And when I took over at the Renaissance Hotel, the only thing we found, as we have also gone very down from the from the numbers, the only thing I was really knowing, I need each and every one into that team to bring that to life and bring it into a good stage. So we need to from the very beginning, we started to look very carefully to each and every one and to try to get them on board into the journey of the Renaissance after the two times closing 11 months dark scenery. And I think to to get those transparency and to having that was the first step we have done we implemented jets everyone has it's a full transparency of what we know today. We started new communication platform which was basically at the beginning WhatsApp where we started to involve everyone. And, and so we came into the one that everyone had from the very beginning of the opening to feeling I'm a part of this journey and a part of this team and also my opinion concept later on, we needed to stop that WhatsApp because it was going poorly abroad. Then you find the new communication flow channel, but at the end it was the first step of going into an each direction with the team.
Jonathan [00:09:25] Yeah, that's, that's really good. It just to talk about the Cynafin model and how this relates to hospitality.
Jochen [00:09:32] A cynafin model describes you a little bit the way of tasks we having in the world. We have easy task, which is putting something from A to B that's very clear for everyone. We have complicated task. It is you know how to do it like building a car, but you need to have a good description on to it and it's not everyone can do it. He needs to be have specific tasks he need to do at a specific time. And then we have on the on the left hand side, we have often a complex situation, like a check-in like conversation with a guest where you don't know at the very beginning who is the mood of the guests and you don't know at the very beginning who is the mood of the of the employee itself. And they need to find themselves by together. So you can't write an SOP for for that moment when people meet each other because every time it's different. Also when we meet today, next time it's a different. And I think especially if you're looking on the same model, I think we need to understand that the way we do is extremely complex and we need to bring to the team to understand the points of communication very, very deep and also bring every time it's learned from this that sometimes our guests would like to have a quick check in. Sometimes they robbed us to spent time when they have a successful day or a bet they can come go in both directions. And we need to bring a team to getting them the power to understand and to adapt it every time at every check-in.
Jonathan [00:10:56] I think was interesting around the industry today is that there is a drive for more flexibility within the operations, there's a drive for more profitability from the owners. There's also a war for talent. And also that means is a challenge finding the talent, attracting them to the sector, because historically the sector has really been pretty tough place to work. It's very, very demanding. It hasn't had the best reputation for pay. And then we've got the move into technology, which is this opportunity to kind of automate a lot of processes. Now, going back to this whole complex situation at the moment, we have in many instances we have and to, let's say, two individuals, we have a guest and we have an employee. And depending on what happens in the last hour or 2 hours or 3 hours of their day, it can significantly affect that interaction to make it highly complex. It can go very well. Or it can. Maybe not go so well because both of those two characters in this particular interaction are bringing with them their own human elements. Yeah. Now, obviously, with the move of technology and automating process, you could potentially eliminate, let's say, the employee interaction. And then the customer would just interact with technology. It would make it less complex, but they were moving towards an environment. So what is hospitality? Hospitality is ultimately the interaction with two humans. So therefore we want to keep the interaction with human beings because that's what creates the experiences for us as human beings. But we want to also make sure that those employees are in the best possible position and state that they can interact with the guest in the best possible way. And we know today that these guests are arriving. We don't know what frame of mind they're going to be in that, you know, they could be extremely stressed because of the travel and all the regulations and then the challenges with all the certifications and tests and the uncertainties of being away from home. The stress levels of guests today are, I would argue, a lot higher than they have been in the past. And that compounded with the challenges that the employees are having in their own environments at home, creates an additional level stress. You got kind of two stressed, potentially human beings interacting with each other, which can create a high impact on the service element. So what I like about what you're doing here is you're creating an environment, a work environment, which is essentially open in terms of communication and allows the employees to really feel part of something that gives them a higher purpose in their work. It's not just the job. I'd like to explore this a little bit further. There are at least the way I perceive it. There are three different elements and three different, let's call them tiers about how we can all think about our on a work environment. And the first is it's a job, right? I come to work, I do what I'm told and I deliver and I go home and I get some money. Right?
Jochen [00:14:19] That's right. Yeah.
Jonathan [00:14:20] That's a job. Yeah. The second element is, well, there are opportunities for me and if I do, well, maybe I progress to those opportunities. Okay.
Jochen [00:14:29] Yeah.
Jonathan [00:14:30] And the third and arguably the best is really my purpose. I have a purpose here. It's actually fulfilling and I can really contribute to something that is greater in this particular instance. It's the whole customer and guest experience, but it's also the employee experience whilst they're at work. So I know that that is a question that you've been asking yourself, how you can address that within your teams. It's about Why am I here? This is what I'm sure the employees. Why, why am I here? Why am I bothering to come to work? What is my purpose, you know, within my work environment? And what am I feeling? Yeah, and how does that apply in terms of my interactions with my colleagues and the customers? So I was wondering if we could kind of go into that direction because this whole agile philosophy allows for some of these questions to be answered.
Jochen [00:15:23] The first of the three things is the number three. If you wonder around the fthree to see everything is starting with your leadership, you need to have the true point that you think that everyone and everyone comes to work with his highest motivation. Yeah, you need to believe in to your team that they really want to to make the difference and that they are able to do that. And then you need to if you have that feeling and you don't think about it, just come to work. And I just paid in into salary. If you have the feeling they are part of it and they really want to bring themselves into a right direction, I think that's the first stage how you need to view the people. And what we have done is we started then into a process where we said, okay, we have different scenarios and different settings. We need to change the organization, let's say from hierarchical, organic, and we say to the team, we are not working hierarchical. You're working as a football team. And especially on that point, we have two shift meetings where everyone comes to work and they meet in the morning or behind the reception and they put their picture on a wall and they are part of that football team in that morning and if you have a problem, it's not that they should call the manager and he's calling another manager and they're calling down, they know who is playing next to them and how could address them? So if the reception is has a queue, they do not call the manager, they call maybe the restaurant which is also trained for check in and check out. And when you're doing that, you're creating a a team spirit which is on the floor, which is very close, working together and what we say there is a second step, from every shift. We’re having a football team plate. We want to have, let's say, a shift report or a team. How was it how what what was your subjective experience on that day and how did you experience the situation from the guest the mood in the hotel. Did you have some shortages or did we have some improvement ideas and and we triggered that this was was a bit work at the beginning to get that every day from every shift to get really their opinion of the team. And we have seen that this was running when the team have seen oh there is a what's in it for me and the what's in it for me. I can make you an example on that. We had a, let's say an evening shift, which was really we have maybe a bit short self, we have complicated guests than we reported that into the shift report. We have seen three or four hours later to early shift breakfast chat tool which we using technology quite quite strong. And I have noted down the guest I have reserved the specific table for them to to make a special moment and they experience that this is is into the benefit of the guests because the guest was like, wow, I had a complaint yesterday evening. It was was not well. And they recognized 5 hours later at breakfast, I mentioned, look, we have not done it right yesterday, but we doing better today. And that was like the team experience. And it's great because they're the reason why we are here is we like nice moments. Hospitality is creating moments which is memorable and it's very easy and we find a way of communication using technology and putting the team into a into a new context that we can we can make that moments in a structured way and allows us to adapt extremely fast, which is the basis of our is succeeding. It adapted. And when we're coming later and what week later and we maybe still get the negative comment, we know it by a 90% who wants it? What what's it and what have we done already in advance? Because if you looking into the past, you're looking for some reviews. Two weeks later you ask, oh, what's, what's there? It was not good. Okay, what, what can we do there? And if you are on the side to implement or change something, it's four weeks later which are much faster. Another example we had the breakfast lady. She noted that at 630 the group was already at breakfast and we had the group for three days and she requested to change to the opening hours for the breakfast for a day or two, two days later on the same stage. And we switched it immediately at the point. So and it was not a management decision. This was from a, from a waiter at the service who just was open enough and took the responsibility to check it now. And when you have those internal view, we can adapt very, very fast on that point into the favor of all employees and the guests.
Jonathan [00:19:24] I think that's a really good example. I think there's a couple of elements here. One is there's a shift from the individual as in I'm alone and I've got to do my job to I'm part of a team and it's all about performance. Exactly right. So I'm part of a collective and I've got a role within the team. But at the same time, we can shift positions within the team to fulfill the overall needs of the guests that particular day or even that particular shift. Right, because we're working together. So I think that element is very powerful because also then what you also get is within that individuals by themselves, they may not be feeling great when they turn up for work, but they know that they're going to be part of a team and they can also communicate that to each other and say, look, this has been pretty tough. I'm probably going to be in a difficult situation today. I need some backup or in another situation. Maybe there's pressure within one particular area of the operations and other areas of the operations are completely. Nothing's happening, right? They're just kind of sitting there waiting for something to happen. And I'm sure that that element plays out as well, where there is just then the dynamic switch, even from one department to another to help support each other, because it's this collective team attitude of We just got to perform. Have you seen this come through as well?
Jochen [00:20:52] Yeah. And you mentioned at the very beginning also those very important points. The performance of in a profit and loss statement is because when you're looking into a normal way, you see everyone is scheduling his team plus to cover also the rush times. And when you are having all the teams together like like a football team, you cover the rush times completely different because normally you have, let's say for 200 check-ins, you would have five at the front desk, you would have five at the restaurant X-Y-Z . And when you're looking into a team on that point, you're looking at how much do I need to cover the peaks you're looking, how do I shift myself and how is the flow of the guests? So for example, when you're having from 5 to 7, we have a queue at the reception we can of course send from from the restaurant someone there to cover that particular peak and that what's in it for me, for those person moving from the restaurant to the front desk for those 2 hours and going later on is basically also that moment with the guest. If you check in one at 5:00 and you see him later at the restaurant, of course, you have already a personal connection. I say everything fine with the room that you feel comfortable and most probably and what we have seen extremely is people who have those experience and create this connection. They are very generous to our team members and maybe they give you a little bit more at the end of the restaurant visits like you had before. On the other perspective, also, what you mentioned on that point is when you're having a shift, reporting to the team is very honest on that. So they also write you down when they are not satisfied. And we had the beginning when we when we started to implement to insist of having subjective feedback because you're getting also subjective feedback from the guests every day. So we need to allow the team also to keep a subjective feedback. How did they experience then? We have seen we have come to a moment that they are starting to criticize. That's okay. And then we have department heads to say look how hard he was writing to my department at X-Y-Z and we need to find a way there because they are not allowed to do that. It's exactly now the time you need to moderate that. That's how the team on the other side, if your guest is writing you, I make an example. The food is not good. You accept it from the guest. If an employee is writing you the food was not good because then then you're starting now in the conversation with me and say we need to to insist there and that was the strongest change of the leadership team to allow also feedback from the bottom up use it as a benefit and go into a conversation with them. They looked with each and every team member how we can make it better and they committed themselves to adapt it for the next time. And that was sometimes I will be there in the evening by myself to see it by myself. And that's the best example of how you can see that the team is then. Yes, from a management perspective, you can be very strong, committed to the team as we can see, and they can see also what we are doing with their feedback. I think that's a that's a great benefit we have.
Jonathan [00:23:48] Thank you for listening to the focus our conversation. We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please do share us with your friends and community. Take a look at our previous episodes and look out for our next ones. We look forward to you joining us on this unique exploratory journey.