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Press Releases & Articles
October 2007 - International Gaming & Wagering Business
Risky Business of
Gaming Fears Taking Risks in Employee Development
By Martin R. Baird
(Print,
PDF)
Experiment or die! I’m sure most people would agree that’s a rather
harsh statement. But it’s one that casino department heads should
take to heart right now as they draft their business plans for 2008.
This is especially important for employee development next year as
it relates to providing outstanding customer service.
The notion behind experiment or die is that we will perish if we
don’t try something new. Microsoft must think there is value in that
philosophy. I recently visited a friend at one of their offices, and
I noticed posters that said “Experiment or Die.” I don’t know what
that means to Microsoft, but I’m wondering what it could mean to
casino managers. If you went to your executive team and told them
they must experiment or die, what would they do? Would they sit in
shock thinking you had flipped? Would they do something crazy like
change from margarine to real butter at a restaurant?
That is not experimenting and, frankly, neither is 95 percent of
what casinos do these days. Some people in gaming like to think they
are innovators, trend setters and visionaries. Please read this
carefully: taking the things you did at your last casino as the
slots guy or the table games director and doing them again at your
new casino is not experimentation or innovation. That is flat out
old-fashioned copying. Look at the cars and trucks that have come
out of Detroit for so many years. They all look and drive the same
because auto industry leaders moved from company to company like
children going house to house at Halloween. Frank Burns on the
“M*A*S*H” television sitcom made my point quite well when he once
said, “I believe in individuality as along as we all do it
together.” So much of what I see in gaming is nothing more than
follow the leader, and that is the slow road to the same place the
leader has already been.
Now back to looking ahead to 2008. I’m sure many of you are already
working on your business plans for next year. You are setting goals
and doing budgets, but what percent of your budget have you set
aside for experimentation? What percent do you want for R&D in your
department? When I participate in trade shows, I see the R&D that
suppliers dump into new games and products. But what about the
casinos? When was the last time a GM or CEO heard the vice president
of human resources say the casino needed to invest $1 million in
researching and developing the property’s people?
I hear it all the time that “our people are our most important
resource.” That sounds great, but it is nothing more than warm,
fluffy air if you don’t back it up with an investment in your
people. If HR is not demanding money to develop the casino’s
employees, the property is losing the battle with its customers.
Your people deliver the service that keeps guests happy. Even
employees who have no direct contact with guests have an impact on
them. The chef must understand that he or she needs to cook the
guest’s steak to order if the casino wants that person to come play
again. I also hear this all too often: “We don’t have money to
invest in our people.” That is sickening! A million bucks is a drop
in the bucket for many casinos, so surely it could be earmarked for
trying something new that can pay dividends down the road.
I don’t want to hear any other excuses, especially the
all-too-common one that the employees will just leave after all the
money has been spent on them. That’s merely a guess. You can’t
possibly know if people will leave after you introduce them to a new
way of training and development. Here’s the hard truth. You’re
afraid of the risk. It’s odd to me that people who are in the
business of risk are afraid to take calculated risks.
I understand the issues surrounding investment in employees and the
granddaddy of them all is return on investment. Department heads and
the chief financial officer usually want to know the ROI on training
employees. You won’t get any argument from me on that point.
Generating an ROI on training and development is a sound business
practice. But ROI is illusive because most casinos just slap a
customer service training program together or buy one at the lowest
price. They can’t measure ROI because employee improvement is as
short lived as a bologna-and-mayonnaise sandwich left in the sun.
This is not experimentation, either.
This approach does not yield an ROI because it isn’t a system that
measures progress and predicts future results for the property. A
system that creates and measures the level of guest and employee
advocates does precisely that and it generates an ROI. Such a system
is also new in gaming. Please don’t say you have a system and hold
up a comment card. Those cards are a waste of paper and ink. The
people who fill them out are either lovers or haters and they give
you no real data to work from. Also, comment cards usually measure
“satisfaction,” which research published by Harvard University shows
is a waste of time and money.
This brings me back to my visit at Microsoft. You many not love
Microsoft but my guess is you know it. Microsoft owns the market in
many categories. People who put presentations together are addicted
to PowerPoint. When was the last time someone used a term other than
Word when describing an electronic text document? Microsoft owns
these areas and, being king of the hill, it could easily question
the need to spend money on developing its people. Why would its
employees need to be forward thinking?
I like Microsoft’s call to “Experiment or Die.” The gaming industry
needs to invest more in experimentation and R&D than it does on bed
linens and flat-panel TVs. Nice rooms are great, but that is not
experimenting. At best, it’s just being current.
As competition increases, the companies that excel will not be the
followers of today. They will be the risk takers!
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Martin R. Baird is chief
executive officer of Robinson & Associates, Inc., a customer service
consulting firm that helps casinos worldwide determine their
Advocate Index, a number that indicates the extent to which
properties have guests who are willing to be advocates, and then
implements its Advocate Development System to create more guest
advocates and generate future growth and profitability. Robinson &
Associates may be reached at
mbaird@casinocustomerservice.com or 480-991-6420. The company
Web sites are
www.advocatedevelopmentsystem.com and
www.casinocustomerservice.com. |
