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| Corporate Cultures |
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| Universal Truths
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While casino cultures differ widely, they’re more
alike than you may think. Employees throughout the industry
share common concerns. If you address these concerns effectively,
you successfully elevate your culture above the crowd.
We conducted comparative analysis of research involving
more than 30,000 employees at two dozen gaming operations
of varying size and structure. The sample included major
Las Vegas properties, emerging markets, and tribal gaming
locations.
Four root concerns appear to plague all gaming cultures
to some degree, greater in some than others. These same
four challenges appear persistently at the top of the
list. They signify big obstacles to developing a strong
unified culture unless you do something to improve them.
Poor Communication.
The single greatest weakness in virtually every casino
culture is that employees feel they don’t know what’s
going on most of the time. It’s significant that
most employees say they rely on the company grapevine
to get the real scoop.
The most common form of “communication” in
casinos is the memo. It’s also probably the worst
way to transmit information. Managers tend to feel they
have “communicated” because they mentioned
something once in Line 4 of Paragraph 6 on Page 3 of a
memo last month.
There are two problems with this. First, you can’t
assume that everybody even reads a memo all the way through
(or at all). Second, people are inundated with bits of
information, so much so that little of it actually registers
in their memories; there’s too much competition.
The first step to improving your connection is to recognize
that communication only happens when an idea actually
completes the journey from your mind to an employee’s
mind. A memo is only a delivery device. It doesn’t
become communication until the employee absorbs and grasps
its meaning.
Be creative in the way you deliver information.
Try unexpected and surprising ways to communicate. Produce
videos to run on the TV monitor in the employee cafeteria.
Create your own closed-circuit TV news network (you can
tie units together via satellite links). Hang posters
in high-traffic employee areas. Make message frames for
bathroom mirrors. Make your company newsletter strategic
and useful instead of a boring, outdated puff that nobody
reads.
Repeat yourself.
Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them,
then tell them what you told them. For a message to stick,
it must be repeated with enough frequency to make an impression
that will last. Once is never enough...ever.
Be open.
Hush-hush secrecy tells employees you don’t trust
them. It also divides the Ins from the Outs, splitting
the culture. When you take employees into your confidence,
you make them partners in your vision, allies in your
purpose.
Communication should be a two-way channel. Talk with your
employees, not at them. You can’t learn anything
about the culture with your mouth open and your ears closed.
Poorly Trained Middle Management
Next to poor communication, the lack of people management
skills among supervisors is the largest contributor to
cultural dysfunction. In casinos, supervisors typically
get promoted from the rank and file because they have
been there longest or have the best functional skills.
Neither are qualifications by themselves to be a good
manager.
Consequently, people become supervisors who have neither
the temperament nor the training for coping with the challenges
of leadership. The fault lies with top management.
Examine your criteria for selecting managers. Make sure
you’re picking the people who can lead. Make sure
they have adequate training for the job. You can’t
expect someone who was a great blackjack dealer automatically
to be a great floor supervisor. More than likely, the
person will simply behave with the same bad habits learned
from previous supervisors.
As a group, middle managers are more often than not a
barrier that blocks your vision from reaching the lower
levels of your organization. Your best intentions can’t
get past the department heads if your middle managers
are incompetent.
Lack of Respect
The computer world’s axiom “garbage in –
garbage out” applies to the issue of how employees
are treated in casinos. You get out of them what you put
into them. Respect flows from the very top and trickles
down to the line level. The research scores on this issue
are proportional to rank; the lowest level employees feel
the least respect. If there is little respect at the top,
none gets to the bottom – the part of your organization
the customer sees and experiences.
When employees feel they are treated with respect, they
are more likely to treat each other and customers respectfully.
Make it clear to your employees that you value them and
the job they do. Live up to your promises to them. Don’t
con them. They know when you’re insincere.
Look at your employees as individuals who each have something
to contribute to your success. They aren’t just
components of the column called “Labor Expense.”
In truth, respect reduces labor expense. Employees who
feel valued are more productive and stay on the job longer,
cutting turnover costs.
Favoritism
In the gaming industry, this trait goes by the distasteful
name of “juice.” When juice is the primary
lubricant that greases a culture, the result is slime.
It breeds organizational incest, rewards brown-nosers,
and undermines quality. When you allow cliques to develop
in a culture, you lose control of it. Cliques mean fragmentation
into factions. Cultural unity is a threat to them.
Promotions, raises, special favors, the best shifts, etc.,
should be awarded on merit, not on personal relationships.
Rewards should be earned based on superior effort, not
“who you know.” A culture built on quality
performance and dedication to the company owns a powerful
advantage over one made slippery with “juice.”
You may be inclined to dismiss these challenges, thinking
they don’t apply to your casino. Think again. Not
a single casino in the research analysis sample was exempt
from these problems. It’s a good bet that yours
is affected, too. It’s also a good bet that you
don’t really know for sure.
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