How Viejas Casino and Conrad Hotels Boost Guest Satisfaction With Employee Recognition

At Beekeeper, we’ve worked with many frontline organizations and have seen how employee recognition drives engagement, satisfaction, and productivity.

In our Frontline Survey, we found that both managers and frontline workers are motivated by not only doing great work but being acknowledged and appreciated for their efforts.

How does building a culture of recognition fuel employee engagement? We spoke to two hospitality organizations – Conrad Hotels & Resorts and Viejas Casino & Resort – who have built this culture of recognition and seen significant results.

In our conversation, we covered:

• The impact of digitizing employee recognition programs
• How recognition impacts other company metrics
• How digital tools help build a company-wide culture of recognition

Let’s look at the key ways these two hospitality organizations created, sustained, and saw results from their employee recognition programs.

Digitizing Employee Recognition

For Conrad Hotels New York Midtown, varying what recognition looks and feels like is an important part of their recognition program. The company pays special attention to the variety of demographics working in the hotel. While some may be more comfortable with pen and paper, others are more adept at using technology.

“Curating and varying recognition, and knowing there’s no one-size-fits all solution is very much what our brand stands for.”

– Melissa Lombardo, Conrad Hotels & Resorts

Post-pandemic, Conrad Hotels wanted to breathe new life into its employee recognition program. Before digitizing the program with Beekeeper, Conrad Hotels had a peer-to-peer recognition program in place that involved handing out physical copies of fillable forms.

After implementing Beekeeper, Conrad added another way employees could recognize their colleagues: the Forms feature on the app. Now, employees can fill out and submit a recognition Form from their mobile devices.

The employee recognition program at Conrad was always about giving employees a chance to recognize each other for specific behaviors associated with creating a luxury experience for hotel guests. With Beekeeper, employee recognition is not only more convenient and seamless for frontline workers, but it allows Melissa to analyze results and evaluate the impact on both the employee and guest experience.

“Since implementation of this program, we have seen our communication and engagement metric scores in our team member surveys increase anywhere between two and five points.”

– Melissa Lombardo, Conrad Hotels & Resorts

What Melissa found was that the digitization of the recognition program had a positive impact on both the overall quality of service and the cleanliness of guest rooms.

When the program (INSPIRE) had the highest number of cards submitted, the scores for cleanliness and service were the highest, too.

Creating a Culture of Recognition

Like Conrad Hotels, Viejas Casino & Resort had a formal recognition program done by pen and paper before the company digitized it with Beekeeper. 

Viejas’s service standards are called STYLE, with each letter representing a different standard. On Beekeeper, Viejas created a Stream called “I like your STYLE” where employees can post photos of themselves holding the recognition cards they receive. This way, appreciation isn’t just limited to a peer-to-peer, in-person interaction but becomes a company-wide opportunity for recognition. 

“What has happened that I never would have imagined is the camaraderie that it has built across departments because team members are recognizing other team members in other departments in such an impactful way.”

– Freddie Harmon, Viejas Casino & Resort

The company-wide sharing element that Beekeeper brings to Viejas’s recognition program has created a culture of recognition. 

“The amount of recognition that’s happening on our property on a daily basis has probably quadrupled.”

– Freddie Harmon, Viejas Casino & Resort

Freddie also says that while he has seen employees recognizing managers and vice versa, now he’s seeing more employees recognize other employees in different departments. For a multi-department frontline workforce, this could only be possible with a mobile platform like Beekeeper.

Download the full webinar for more insight into how these hospitality organizations engage their frontline workers.

About the author

Beekeeper