What’s Your Drink?

What the hospitality industry taught me about taking care of your team

“What’s your drink?”

If I had a nickel — truly. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve asked a guest this question, I would be retired, relaxing on a beach with somebody returning the favor.

Bartending was my first career, and it was truly a career for me. I participated in professional organizations and development opportunities. I built and led bar programs for well-established restaurants. I competed on a national level against some really big names in the hospitality industry.

I lived and breathed hospitality for 15 years. I enjoyed it, and if don’t say so myself, I was good at it.

Then one day, one of my regulars, a guy I had known long enough that I didn’t have to ask what he was drinking (Mac 12, always) asked if I’d like to come work for him. It was a little technology startup, something I knew nothing about.

It was a day job, so I didn’t have to quit bartending—I just woke up earlier and went to work. I learned about digital technologies, and I met a few other people in this new (to me) industry.

One of the partners at this startup was simultaneously founding another company, Rocket Code. I got to know this founder (anything whiskey, preferably a Manhattan) and we worked well together.

Eventually, I transitioned to Rocket Code and ultimately left bartending all together.

Agency life was a whole new world to me. I was wide-eyed my first few months at Rocket Code. Acronyms fly around this office at a rate that boggles my mind — I’d gone from mash bills and cocktail builds to QA, UAT, RACI, SCRUM and god only knows what else.

I was fairly sure it was going to take me a long time to adjust, to figure out this new world, its language, its customs and its traditions.

But with each passing week, I came to a startling realization: Agency service is hospitality. Not literally, of course. Rocket Code isn’t a restaurant, I get that. But I can take the lessons learned from my time in restaurants and correlate them so closely to the lessons that Rocket Code is learning as a young agency.

It’s all about taking care of people — and I believe that taking care of people starts at the top.

I worked for a restaurant company at one point whose core philosophy was that they put their associates first. Just that: They put their associates first—not “the guest is always right,” not “service first,” not anything, in fact, to do with the guest.

This company took great care of its employees — they paid well, they honored time off, they offered access to benefits before it was required by law, they invested in training and education, and they treated their employees at every level with respect and dignity. It was a great place to work.

The idea behind the “associates first” mentality is that if a company looks out for its associates, the associates will look out for the guest, and the guest will in turn will take care of the company by becoming a repeat customer.

My guess is that a lot of agencies think they’re taking great care of their people. Many agencies even believe that they’re taking great care of their people.

I can’t give you hard data on the effects of this policy, but I can tell that in my experience as a bartender working for this company, it really worked.

I felt good about going to work and going the extra mile for my guests and teammates. We were a business of regulars, having the honor of taking care of the same guests time after time. Our regulars took great care of our team, and increased the pool of regulars, by bringing their colleagues, clients, friends and families to dine with them.

When I worked for the company, they were comprised of nine different concepts locally, and one concept with three locations nationally. Today, the same company has grown to include 12 different restaurant concepts in Columbus and 13 locations of their national brand across the country. This success is certainly thanks to a variety of factors—but something about putting their employees first is working really well for that business.

So, here’s my question: As an agency, are you putting your people first?

Seriously. Have you put a big focus on HR? Do you do the little things that make people feel appreciated, respected and excited about being at work on a daily basis? Are you providing cool, exciting benefits for your employees? What are you doing to learn more about your employees, to understand what’s important and valuable to them in a benefits program?

In short, do you know what your employees drink?

My guess is that a lot of agencies think they’re taking great care of their people. Many agencies even believe that they’re taking great care of their people.

I would respectfully argue that a lot of those agencies are wrong. Not wrong in their intention, but wrong in their practice.

There’s a difference between providing a fun, play-hard/work-harder environment and genuinely taking care of the people with whom you work. It’s fun to party — nobody appreciates that more than a bartender. It can feel amazing to pick up bar tabs and treat your team to epic nights on the town to celebrate big wins. But are you unintentionally pushing your team toward the dreaded “burnout” by encouraging a lifestyle that promotes burning the candle at both ends?

There was a time when everybody on our team was almost singularly focused on our clients, and we weren’t making the extra effort to put our team first internally.

It’s also cute and trendy to have lavish office spaces — but is this the kind of investment your employees really care about when they have to make the decision between just doing their job and going the extra mile because they feel invested in your business?

I fully acknowledge and understand that creating a culture that puts your employees first is easier said than done—because we are living it at Rocket Code.

We haven’t always put our people first. Don’t get me wrong—Rocket Code has always made a concerted effort to do right by our team. But there was a time when everybody on our team was almost singularly focused on our clients, and we weren’t making the extra effort to put our team first internally.

We used to—and still do—host a retrospective meeting every Friday, in which everyone on the team assigns a letter grade to the week, just like in school: A for an awesome week, F for a failure week. Looking back, this was the time when our average grades were the lowest. Our team was doing incredible work, and lots of it, but aside from the basics, we weren’t taking care of them. They were stressed and tired and various degrees of frustrated, and it was hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Before we started putting our people first, we put the client first and asked our employees to go to the ends of the earth for our clients, when we weren’t going to the ends of the earth for our employees.

We’re changing that. We’re not all the way there, yet, but we’re growing toward the goal of truly putting our employees first. I’d like to think that Rocket Code is leading a charge to put our employees first in a very thoughtful and intentional way.

We’re going above and beyond the industry standards of providing great pay and great health benefits. We’re creating tailored programs informed by our team to promote healthy lifestyles. We’ve taken a survey of our team to find out what would be most intriguing as part of a health and wellness program; we’re compiling that information and building the program to roll out mid-Q2 2016. Our team has expressed an interest in team-based fitness challenges, opportunities to join a gym at a reduced rate and an interest in learning more about nutritious eating — and we’re going to find ways to make all of these things happen in some fashion.

We believe in 20-minute naps, and provide a space for our team to recharge when they need to. We host either an in-office potluck or an out-of-office family dinner once a month. We’re developing activities that get our team out of the office and enjoying each other’s company in fun and interesting environments. We’re going to spend a day on a high ropes challenge course to encourage team development. And we’re taking more than half of our team to Chicago for a full week around the Internet Retailer Conference + Exhibition (IRCE) as part of an incentivized reward. The trip will involve some work, but we’ll also reward our team with awesome activities around the city.

We’re also rolling out programs that will allow our team to contribute to and teach curricula at a local university as a way to earn opportunities to participate in professional development conferences of their choosing around the country. Through these and other efforts, we are putting our employees first.

At the end of the day, in every aspect of your business, it’s all a simple matter of taking care of people. Start with your team, and take really great care of them so that they can focus on taking really great care of your clients.

When your clients are well taken care of, they will take great care of your agency by continuing to work with you and referring new business your way—which will allow you the opportunity to grow and take care of an even bigger team.

Taking care of your team is fundamental—but you can’t stop there. In my next two articles, I’ll be looking at what I learned in the hospitality industry about taking care of your guests — and how agencies can use these insights to build great client relationships.