Advice From My Father

I look at the growing number of unemployed people in the U.S. and it makes me sad as an American and optimistic as an employer. The number of recently unemployed Americans in January was in the neighborhood of 3.7 million. We have to assume that at least 25% of those laid off were good at their jobs and simply victims of the economy. With this assumption, we have 925,000 good employees out there looking for work. Maybe 10% of those employees would be interested in working in the hotel industry. So, we have 92,500 good workers out there who would love to work in our hotels.

Our company currently operates 222 hotels. If we figure that the average hotel has 20 employees then we employ about 4,440 people. I would like to think that 9 out of 10 people we choose to employ are great at their job. This means we may have about 444 employees across the company that aren't in that top 90%.

I grew up in a house where my father owned and ran his own business. As kids, my brothers, sisters and I learned a lot about the time and effort it takes to run a successful business. We also learned a lot about how to find and treat good employees. I recall a time when my father was discussing his decision to hire someone even though he did not have a position open for him. He simply said, "If you have the opportunity to hire a great employee, do it and then make room." His thought was that if someone walked in the door who was better than the weakest link on staff, it's time to replace that weakest link. Maybe the silver lining in this cloud is that we have an opportunity to strengthen our hotel staffs?

With the quick math outlined above, we could have 92,500 good employees out there interested in working harder than 444 people we have on staff in our hotels. Maybe it is time to look at who we employ and make sure we get closer to 10 out of 10 great employees?