At Innisfree Hotels, our culture underpins our success. We foster a workplace that promotes personal growth and service to humanity. We create opportunities for our employees and associates to participate in the creation of a more civil society and place great value on creativity, collaboration, and innovation. Our culture resonates from our corporate office to our properties, resulting in great experiences for our guests.
Management Style
- Nurturing, encouraging and empowering.
- Intrapreneurial (behaving like an entrepreneur while working within a large organization).
- Consultative. Seeking the input of employees at all levels.
- Servant leadership.
Rules and Customs
Hosting frequent FYIs to share virtues and announcements with team members and using ‘tools’ in Innisfree’s Culture Tool Kit to shape how we interact with each other such as:
Behavior that negatively impacts others, voluntarily name and acknowledge it, explain the reason for it and commit to an alternative course of action in the future.
- Check-in: This is an activity used in small gatherings with the aim of increasing the quality of communication and cooperation among team members, enhancing feelings of recognition, caring and intimacy.
- Cooperative Mode: This is an integrated set of behaviors geared at enhancing communication and increasing intimacy.
Commandments
Every Innisfree Hotels’ employee carries a business sized card with our corporate commandments listed on it at all times – either in their wallet or on their person. On one side is our customer service commandments and on the other is the working together commandments.
10 Customer Service Commandments
- Greet guests immediately
- Know and use guests’ names
- Be knowledgeable and informative
- Make eye contact
- SMILE!
- Listen to the guest. Own the problem. Solve the problem.
- Always say “Yes”
- Answer the phone in 3 rings.
- Thank every guest for their business
- Invite every guest to come again
10 Working Together Commandments
- Start with trust
- Help one another
- Say “Please” and “Thank-You”
- Give ‘strokes’ often
- SMILE!
- Acknowledge each other as human beings
- Communicate
- Work to resolve differences before end of each day
- Treat everyone with respect
- Never say “It’s not my job.”
The Cooperative Mode
The Cooperative Mode is the foundation of Innisfree’s company culture. It assumes an abundance, as opposed to scarcity, and supports cooperation in opposition to competition.
No Power Plays: A power play is attempting to force someone to do something they don’t want to do or are not ready to do, whether subtly or openly.
No Rescues: A rescue is doing something for someone that they can do for themselves or doing something without being asked, or doing more than one’s share.
No Secrets or Lies: Defined as withholding or misrepresenting one’s feelings, motives or position. This discredits the intuition of others who may have guessed the truth of the situation.
Giving of Strokes: Strokes are defined as affirmations, appreciations or acknowledgments. When we recognize another person by looking at, speaking to or touching them, we are giving them a stroke. A positive stroke is any recognition of how you are in the world or how you are as a human being. How you are in the world may be conditional. How you are as a human being is unconditional.
Checking Out Paranoid Fantasies: Checking out a paranoid fantasy is the process of identifying our suspicions about the behavior or intentions of others and checking these out against the truth.
Offering Resentments: Offering resentments is a way of releasing negative feelings. It is the first step in restoring a relationship to a state of mutual love, caring and trust. The individual to whom the resentments are being offered must agree to hear them and understand that a response is optional.
Confidentiality: Confidentiality offers protection that one can express one’s real feelings without the worry they will be used against them at a future time.
Accountability: Accountability means being responsible for one’s actions.