{"id":30950,"date":"2013-11-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hyken.com\/exploit-the-unique-talents-of-your-employees\/"},"modified":"2024-01-19T23:16:06","modified_gmt":"2024-01-19T23:16:06","slug":"exploit-unique-talents-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hyken.com\/employee-engagement\/exploit-unique-talents-employees\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploit the Unique Talents of Your Employees"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><a href=\"https:\/\/www.hyken.com\/customer-experience-2\/exploit-unique-talents-employees\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"image-preview-4357\" class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Letting People Do What They Love Shep Hyken CX Exepert\" src=\"http:\/\/www.hyken.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/They-Let-Me-Do-Cartoons-Low-Res.jpg\" alt=\"employee-engagement\" width=\"333\" height=\"400\" \/><\/a>Letting People Do What They Love<\/h2>\r\nThe Kimpton hotel chain continues to impress and amaze me.\u00a0 I just had a wonderful stay at the Alexis Hotel in Seattle.\u00a0 The staff was nothing short of amazing.\u00a0 I did some \u201cmystery shopping\u201d for this article, engaging with several employees to find out a little about their culture.\r\n\r\nOne of the first things that impressed me was the longevity of the employees.\u00a0 One of the front desk people had been there for 13 years.\u00a0 Another since the hotel had opened.\u00a0 The concierge had been with Kimpton for a number of years and had transferred to Seattle.\u00a0 One of the servers at their restaurant, and I\u2019ll get back to him in a moment, had only been there three years but gave me the same answer that the more tenured employees had given me about why they love working at the Kimpton.\r\n\r\nThe general answer the employees gave me is that they love to serve customers.\u00a0 Kimpton has given them the freedom to do so.\u00a0 The lesson here is that Kimpton has created a culture that encourages its employees to meet and exceed their guests\u2019 expectations.\u00a0 Sometimes that means a little extra effort and even spending a little extra money to do so.\u00a0 Service doesn\u2019t always come cheap, but if the result is creating a loyal customer, the investment into the guest\u2019s experience pays off with large dividends.\r\n\r\nCarlos is the server in the restaurant I mentioned above.\u00a0 I overheard one of his colleagues complementing him on a video.\u00a0 I asked him about it.\u00a0 He said he loved to create videos.\u00a0 His manager, Jenne Neptune, encouraged Carlos to create a Kimpton video.\u00a0 She gave him permission to film at the hotel and post it on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCEV2ZLQ-uyjCFS2blLpR4DA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">YouTube<\/a>.\u00a0 Carlos said it meant so much to him that his manager would respect his passion enough to let him use it to serve the hotel.\r\n\r\nThis is the perfect example of a culture that exploits the uniqueness and the talents of its employees.\u00a0 While hired to work in the restaurant, Carlos was given the latitude to use his talents and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hyken.com\/fun-at-work\/1115\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">passion<\/a> as part of his job.\u00a0 As he told me his story, you could tell he was beaming with pride over his video project.\u00a0 As a result, Carlos is more appreciative of his job, has great respect for his manager and has an overall sense of fulfillment.\r\n\r\nLet\u2019s take a lesson from another very cool company, Google.\u00a0 Google wants its engineers to take 20% of their work time \u2013 that\u2019s one day a week \u2013 to focus on company-related projects of their own design.\u00a0 They actually refer to it as \u201c20% Time.\u201d\u00a0 This gives the employees a powerful sense of fulfillment deriving from their leadership role in the new concepts being developed.\u00a0 I\u2019m not suggesting that every employee be allowed to work a certain amount of time on self-chosen projects, but this may be very appropriate for some of the people in your organization.\r\n\r\nThe concept of letting employees do what they love using their unique talents and what they\u2019re good at is powerful.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t have to be 100% of their job, although that would be nice.\u00a0 But there should be a part of everyone\u2019s job that allows them to do what they love to do, exploiting their unique talents along the way.\u00a0 The result is a more engaged workforce that will work for your company and most importantly, your customers.\r\n\r\n<em><a href=\"https:\/\/hyken.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Shep Hyken<\/a>\u00a0is a customer service\/CX expert, award-winning keynote speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. Learn more about Shep\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/hyken.com\/speaking\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">customer service and customer experience keynote speeches<\/a>\u00a0and his\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/hyken.com\/training\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">customer service training workshops<\/a>\u00a0at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.hyken.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">www.Hyken.com<\/a>. Connect with Shep on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/shephyken\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/em>\r\n<em>(Copyright \u00a9MMXIII, Shep Hyken)<\/em>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Letting People Do What They Love The Kimpton hotel chain continues to impress and amaze me.\u00a0 I just had a wonderful stay at the Alexis Hotel in Seattle.\u00a0 The staff was nothing short of amazing.\u00a0 I did some \u201cmystery shopping\u201d for this article, engaging with several employees to find out a little about their culture. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6799],"tags":[4941,4998,4999],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v22.5 (Yoast SEO v22.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Exploit the Unique Talents of Your Employees<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In this article, I discuss the concept of encouraging employees to use their unique talents.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hyken.com\/employee-engagement\/exploit-unique-talents-employees\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Exploit 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