Robb Webb, chief human resources officer of the Hyatt Hotels Corporation—
which was founded in 1957 and, as of December 2013, had 549 properties globally, including the brands Park Hyatt, Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Place, and Hyatt House—spoke with us about the highly personalized ways Hyatt is dealing with generational issues, and what the company sees as both opportunities and challenges:
Traditionally, companies used to think of the workforce—such as the ninety
thousand employees of Hyatt—as this homogenous group of people that we expect to react exactly the same way, regardless of age. It’s interesting that we have all of these management tools that were built for a homogenous workforce
—whether it was or wasn’t—and we keep using them even if we can see that they may not be as useful as we’ve come to believe.
For example, Hyatt is a company blessed with very long tenure, great loyalty, and a phenomenal workforce. We celebrate tenure and we celebrate anniversaries, but there’s a big part of the workforce that might not think that’s such a great thing. We want to keep good workers, but we also want to be empathetic to changing attitudes about work and people’s individual, not generational, situations.
Webb found that there is a lot of baggage to unload in the traditional view of generations, and much of it concerns a set of preconceived notions about the behaviors and attitudes that come with a generational label—most of which are popularized stereotypes that we buy into.
The problem seems to be that many people make the same mistake talking about generations that they once did in talking about gender. Well, I don’t know about you but I’ve determined that neither men nor women are all exactly alike. The same holds true for Millennials. We seem to keep saying to them, “This is how we expect you to behave; you’re not supposed to want to work anywhere longer than two years; you’re supposed to be inwardly focused; you’re supposed to feel entitled.” With all of these stereotypes we’re doing people a disservice because, while there are general traits of generations and the impact of the environment they grew up in, they’re still individuals and they react differently.
It’s not enough to simply state that treating generations as a one-dimensional stereotype is a problem. You also need to figure out how to go about giving people tools to help them break free of these expectations.
At Hyatt, they’ve turned to using empathetic interviewing, a technique borrowed from “design thinking”—a toolbox that concentrates on an anthropologically focused approach to observing people in real scenarios in order to understand how to design better products, experiences, and environments. This is in contrast to the typical design approach, which often just wraps a pretty bow around a product that has already been designed by engineers.
Design thinking has its roots in firms such as IDEO and Continuum, but it’s
being applied outside product design to organizations around the world and in a variety of industries. Hyatt’s journey in this area came about from a partnership with Stanford University’s d.school, which was formed in 2005 as a creativity- focused business school, intended as the left-brain version of the traditional, quantified, numbers-driven, right-brain-focused business school. According to Webb:
One of the most interesting things we’ve done is become involved with the d.school. Their design thinking approach—which we’ve taken to heart as “Hyatt Thinking”—has taught us to practice and teach empathetic interviewing, which is hugely important when you’re dealing with guests or people from different backgrounds and generations. Through empathetic listening and interviewing—
where you don’t guess at what someone wants or likes because they are a certain age—you simply ask and observe. It’s one of the few approaches that will give you the opportunity to reach beyond your own experience and preconceptions to learn more about your customers or employees.
“Hyatt Thinking” is a very different way for us to interact with guests and each other, and really empathize with people, put yourself in their shoes, and understand what they’re going through. I think it’s an especially valuable tool as we’re interacting across generations because you’re being taught to use this process to go in and ask very open questions and not “lead the witness,” if you will. For me, this has been eye opening.
At Hyatt we focus obsessively on the guest experience. By listening more directly to our customers’ needs, we have many opportunities to recognize where we and the industry as a whole are failing to provide the best possible experience and meet customers on their own terms—regardless of predefined generational boundaries.
We’re moving beyond concerns about Millennials or Boomers. That’s not how I want to live my life—in a generational bucket—and that’s not what we want at Hyatt.
If you really care for somebody, then you’ll find out what’s important to them.
I think that transcends generations because I can’t say that there’s a generation that doesn’t want to be cared about.
Webb has a passion for transcending generational fiction, refusing to let it stand in the way of working to engage 100 percent of Hyatt’s customers and its workforce, regardless of age. Instead, he and the team at Hyatt approach employees in ways that are focused on the employees’ needs, not on what may
be easy for the company as a one-size-fits-all policy. This attitude is embodied in one of the many stories Webb shared with us about the importance of being empathetic.
Fortune magazine recently named Hyatt one of the 100 best companies to work for.
I was flipping through the Fortune issue and I came across the advertisement we ran and, sure enough, there’s our bellman Antonio, from the Park Hyatt in Chicago. I really admire him and wanted to celebrate his appearance in the magazine.
I found out that we had made a big poster-size version of the ad. I grabbed it and the magazine and I called over to the Park Hyatt to make sure Antonio was working. I drove over to the hotel, pulled up, and as Antonio came out to greet me I said, “Hey, check this out,” as I unrolled this poster to show him.
He just looked at it in disbelief and said, “Are you kidding me?” Then a husband and wife, who were guests, came out of the hotel, looked at the poster I was holding and then looked at Antonio; they did a double take and said, “Is that you? Oh, congratulations.” And both shook his hand. He was a bit embarrassed.
I said, “This poster is for your dad. I’ve got a magazine for you, but I have another in my office and I want you to autograph it.”
Three days went by and I thought, “I really need to go back to have Antonio autograph this magazine.”
I didn’t think it was a big deal; Antonio had likely forgotten about it, but I wanted to show him that I cared. When I arrived at the Park Hyatt the first thing Antonio said to me was, “Did you bring it?” I snapped back, “I’ve got it right here.”
He reached into his pocket for what I thought was a pen to autograph the magazine, and instead pulled out a piece of neatly folded paper and showed it to me, saying, “I’ve been practicing what I want to say.”
I looked at the paper in disbelief. He had all of this stuff he’d crossed out and then rewritten, over and over—I could tell how much thought went into it. My first thought was, thank God I went back over because asking for the autograph could have been a throwaway comment. My second thought was, “This is why we take Hyatt Thinking so seriously. We all deserve moments like this.”
Honestly, I’m not sure which one of us was more moved by the experience.
That may seem like a pretty simple act of just caring for somebody else that you work with and trying to put yourself in their shoes, but that’s what Hyatt Thinking is about. You’re not a generation, an age, a category; you’re a person,
and we all want to be understood as people, not labels. And you know what?
That one act made me feel better than I felt all year.
I have had dozens of those sorts of experiences. My advice, from what I’ve learned, is give it up, and don’t look at people through a predetermined lens;
nobody benefits.
That same focus that Hyatt brings to understanding employees seems to be working with customers as well. Since the recession of 2008 to the second quarter of 2014 (when this book was written), Hyatt’s market cap doubled, while it was also named recipient of the 2014 Gallup Great Workplace Award for the third consecutive year. Clearly, mastering the ability to engage both customers and employees is rewarding the company handsomely.