More than a pat on the back at the Shangri-La

The Life: Human resource personnel at the Shangri-La Hotel in Abu Dhabi not only combing through complaints and looking for ways to improve the customer experience. They are also following what is known as the "guest delight programme".

From left, Leoman Manuel, Zafer Haj Hussein, April Jung and Thushaj Thulasidhran have garnered plenty of positive feedback. Silvia Razgova / The National
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Guests who saunter into the Shangri-La Hotel in Abu Dhabi will often see April Jung's smiling face welcoming them.

The way she greets individuals, shows them to the check-in counter and delivers honeymooners extra amenities all get carefully scrutinised on the comment cards guests fill out during their stay or in the reviews they post online to websites such as TripAdvisor, Booking and Facebook.

Leoman Manuel, a service associate at the Shangri-La's pool bar, also gets reported on through various surveys and evaluations. This might occur after he brings a guest a cold towel, or a free bottle of water, as they lounge outside under the hot desert sun.

"A lot of feedback these days is easily collected," says Marlo Palmiano Jr, a service manager in the training department at the Shangri-La.

Human resource personnel at this luxury hotel are not only combing through complaints and looking for ways to improve the customer experience. They are also following what is known as the "guest delight programme" to motivate employees to provide a little extra care for customers, as well as influence their coworkers to follow suit. "It's very hard to please people and when they get pleased, [employees] need a little bit of encouragement," says Mr Palmiano.

Ms Jung, Mr Manuel and other employees across the Shangri-La and Traders Hotel in Abu Dhabi, which are both located in the Qaryat Al Beri complex, have garnered plenty of positive feedback over the past year. That has meant amassing a collection of silver, gold and diamond stars for providing stellar service, letters from the hotels' general managers, as well as cash rewards.

This year, a new incentive was rolled out - round-trip airline tickets for each of the 13 employees to visit a destination or families back home in countries such as South Korea and Sri Lanka.

But companies both within and outside the hospitality sector are torn between how, exactly, they should motivate workers through reward systems.

One bank in Sweden forgoes individual bonuses for its bankers and, instead, shares cash across its pool of employees if it performs well and has a good fiscal year. Similarly, a retail group in the UK has created a profit-sharing scheme for its workers.

Other companies have chosen to motivate individual workers based on how much they produce in sales, such as in the retail shops.

"Sometimes you think about it from the customer perspective; if it's just based on sales that's not really customer-centric. But from an organisational perspective, if you give an individual award, it can create a 'silo mentality'," warns Billy Turriff, the business leader for data, surveys and technology at Towers Watson Middle East, a consultancy that focuses on employee performance and benefits.

Assuming employers pay a competitive salary already, then offering non-cash incentives, such as airline tickets "definitely works", Mr Turriff says. Yet he suggests asking employees directly about what might motivate them further. "It's important to find out what employees want - whether an iPad, iPhone or airline tickets home."

A survey released last month by Mercer, a human resources consultancy, looked at 17 markets worldwide and found non-financial factors play a greater role in motivating and engaging employees in the Gulf than experts first thought. "This is particularly useful information for employers facing budget constraints in the current economic climate, as it shows money isn't everything when it comes to cultivating a productive workforce," said Larisa Muravska, a partner in Mercer's human capital business.

At the Shangri-La and Traders hotels in Abu Dhabi, committees comprised of department supervisors and managers hold monthly meetings to nominate individuals for a reward based on the comments and feedback they receive from guests. Not all employees come into regular contact with customers, however, such as kitchen staff and IT professionals.

In these cases, employees who hear positive notes from guests can nominate a peer as a so-called "hidden hero", Mr Palmiano says.

"It strengthens the teamwork between the back of the house and the front of the house."

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