Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / DAY 287 | How to Recognize Your Travel Agency Team Beyond a Bonus
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K, travel agency owner, helping you to also build a legit travel agency. This ain't no punk. This ain't no you're lucky to make 20-30k, which is shockingly the average wages of a travel advisor. And you might be sitting there arguing with me, well, they only work part-time. Yeah, we still need to change that number. That's still the majority of travel advisors. And this can be a legitimate business. Okay? If you want help making it a legit business, multi-six, seven figures, question mark about eight. I'm working on mine getting eight. That's the dream. Head over to elevate with rachelk.com. Today is day 287. Celebrating's a team. We're gonna talk about team appreciation in a few episodes. no, we're not. Why are my notes so janky? It's fine. So again, the contractors, collaborators, and we've talked about giving them gratitude, but we're gonna talk about celebrating. So it's more than just a dinner out. It's more than a bonus. That's a nice gesture, but it's really what people really remember the most. So if you have a team that's like, even if it's like a contracted VA, so we're gonna go that route in this episode. There's a Gallup poll stuff research in my notes over here on employee engagement, genuine specific recognition. We've talked about this already, is one of the strongest drivers of engagement and retention. We we talk about a lot of the same things over and over again because I wanted to get it your brain. But that often matters more than compensation or bonuses alone. But obviously you want to pay them fairly. You don't want to be like cracking the whip, giving them minimum wage. They'd be like, thanks for all your hard work on that project. I'm just gonna go be a millionaire now. Do-do-do. Which, by the way, the number of people I see in travel agent subs that are like, I am so poorly paid and I've made this other person a multi-millionaire. What do I do to get out of this situation? Like Please pay your employees fairly. Anyway. Specificity. Once again, I brought this up in many, many episodes. Be specific. Be specific. Versus a vague generic praise. Okay. So if you want to do it for like team members. Contractors, employees, whatever. If you name them specifically in public for specific contribution, specific, like appropriately for in public. Don't just like go outside and scream it. but in a way that clearly communicates what they did and why it mattered, rather than a generic thanks for all your support is so wonderful. Okay. Like get specific. Like this person helped me create this and implement this system that has allowed our travel agency to go from only being able to manage 10 trips a week to 100 trips a week. And I cannot thank them enough. And as a thank you and a gratitude, like I'm promoting them to bada position, like executive level position. Invest in their growth, especially if they're employees and you are building out your team. Covering the cost of a training for them, a conference for them to go attend, or like a resource that supports their own development, which could be a course, it could be a book, something, it could be like a coaching call, like a coach that you bring in to help them with whatever it is they do in your organization. That signals that you see and you care about their trajectory, not just their output for you. And this is something I do. Okay, so with my travel agency, I want my agents to be able to leave the nest and go out on their own. With Elevate, I want everyone that makes an investment in it to be able to be like, don't need you anymore. This is great. Like I don't want to keep people sucked in for my own personal output and revenue. Like I can do that. Yeah, I'm fine over here. And so I will make investments Usually at Elevate, I tend to invest a lot more time into people. And same thing with my agents, but I'll also invest in like software updates and like additional trainings for my agents and introduce them to people that can help them grow their business in terms of like supplier BDMs so that they can actually grow. Flexibility is a form of appreciation. Giving them an extra day off. adjust their hours if they are a wage employee, whatever. genuine accommodations for something happening in their life outside of work. This can matter so much more than a financial gesture, particularly for contractors if they're juggling multiple commitments. And I used to do this with my cleaning business because right now I have all ICs. They can text me anytime be like, I help with this. I'm like, Okay, I'm on it. And when I had my cleaning business, you have to be very careful and I had to learn who was being manipulative with this. Flexibility is a form of appreciation and who truly deserved it. And the ones who typically deserve it are the ones who will not ask. But the ones who are like, my life is so hard like I'm not a fan of anyone playing the victim. I'm over that. You play the victim, like no. No. Your life is not that hard. Go out in nature and try to bear grills it for a minute and then come back and tell me that your current life is hard. That's a lie. Like you are lying right now. I don't like the victim mentality, I'm sorry. I'm not sorry, but I'm I I hope I don't offend you, I guess. I don't know. What was I saying? But I had employees back with my cleaning business. Some of would get a little manipulative with it and I'd be like, okay, I'll give you leniency, like, you're pregnant. The thinking of one particular example, one of my first employees. And another one was like, I remember another one, I She was like a a contractor because I just blew up with my business and I was just like, my gosh, I need helpers immediately. And she's like, I'll come help you. And I was like, Okay, and you can join my team as an employee once we get through this rush, but I'm just gonna ten ninety-nine you for now and you come with me to every single job. So we were just like cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. And she started while I was in this rush and I was like clearly suffering. She's like, you know what? I think I wanna go shopping instead, I'm out and I was like, Ugh okay. But she wanted the extra cash, so she would work just enough to get enough extra cash and then she'd dip out at the end of like halfway through the day. And I was like, This is not smart, Rachel. So then I when she showed up one Monday, I was like, Okay, if you want to be an employee, you ready? She's like, Yeah, I'm ready to be an employee 'cause she thought I let her go through that like I just had to survive that rush. So she thought that since I let it go for like two weeks That I would just treat her like that as an employee. And I was like, all right, well, here's my employee handbook. You need to follow all these policies. You break any of them, you will get written up. And she's like, what? And I was like, yeah. It's called being an employee. You gotta follow all my rules now. She quit on the spot. But thankfully, I already had started hiring other employees. So that's like one person who might manipulate flexibility type. But the ones who are like really, really hardworking and like in it for your mission that you're building, and this is why you need to develop your leadership skills, and this is why you need to have an overall brand story in your business if you want to scale to the point of having staff. You need to be able to have everyone on board with the overall mission of the organization, not just making you money, right? But those people, those are the ones who absolutely you should give flexibility to. If they are putting up the numbers that you need and they are following your directions and they are hard working people, give them an extra day off. Give them half a day off. I used to come to some of my maids and I'd be like I I'd kind of like troll a little bit in the mornings. I'd be like, it's a busy day and I don't care how much of a mood you're in, and they'd be like, Ugh, I feel like crap, but okay. And then they go do their jobs and then I'd be like, Excellent. And then I would show up to one of their jobs. They'd be like, guess what? You I'm gonna help you finish this, or I'll be like, I'm taking over, you're done for the day, you're getting paid for the full day. And they'd be like, my god, and I'm like, You're having a crappy day. But don't think I'm gonna give this to you all the time. Anyway. You could give them handwritten notes, you could send them flowers, you could send them chocolates, you do you. But match the gesture to the person. Don't do a one-size-fits-all policy, okay? So some people are motivated by public recognition. Some prefer private acknowledgement. Some like the flexibility. Some enjoy the growth. Some people might take like your investment in their growth maybe as a criticism the first time you do it. So you need to really sit down and be clear in your mission and clear in your leadership style. If you start actually hiring employees, like I want you to grow. Like there's this is happening. So pay attention to what r resonates with your specific imaginary future staff rather than applying an identical standard gesture to everyone. So think about the what is the movie? Office space? Where they just have the same crappy sheet cake and they have the same happy birthday sign. And go watch Office Space if you haven't seen it. It's a fabulous movie. but it's the same rigmarole for everyone's birthday. Like, don't be that. Don't be that with your form of gratitude. Like, if you're like, I'm not gonna be like that, I'm gonna do public acknowledgement. But what if no b not everyone on your staff down the road likes public acknowledgement? Mm. Okay? And you don't want to just do this at the end of the like the year-end bonus. There's gonna be seasons where you're like in an absolute rush. So if you want to apply this, like I've done a lot of hospitality stuff and a lot of restaurant work. And Places higher end restaurants will typically shut down for like a full week, like the s they what they know to be the slowest week of the year. But that time is like their employee appreciation time. Like they do their final inventory, they have all their numbers in, it's usually around the end of their fiscal year. So like July or January ish. once they have all their numbers in and then There was one place I worked at that would have like limos for every single staff member so they could just get as drunk as possible at the brewery if they wanted to and they get right homes. Some years it was limos, some years it was just calves. But either way, this was before Uber and they'd have it taken care of. But they would also do other things throughout the entire year. Like they would just give people extra cash. They give people that time off if they needed it. they would I'm trying to think of different restaurants. Once you get through the rush season, they would do something like just like buy people a bunch of dinner or something, or just like just little tiny things like that. when I had my cleaning business, I would we had student turns were our biggest nightmare of a season. Student turns was a lot. Student turns was a lot, is all I'm gonna have to say. It would be we had one entire property management company that had they would have a thousand student turns in ninety days, roughly. And then we had that wasn't the only company we worked with. And they were like property managers for like smaller complexes, but they did a lot of the student housing. And then we had another company that owns the majority of the apartment complexes in the metro that this business was in. And all of their property managers and the head of maintenance loved us. So we had like 15 or 20 apartment complexes and a lot of them had college kids, so student turns was a nightmare on top of all of the residential clients we had to serve and also we had some other commercial offices. So it was crazy. Why am I going yeah. So that entire t student turns thing, like some people, including myself, because I was the captain of this ship, I wasn't gonna be like, Well, it's four o'clock, I'm gonna go home now. I would make sure it was as done as we could be for the day, and I would send everybody else home before myself. Like You are the leader. You need to be doing this with your travel business too if you want to be it the leader, right? And I would make sure that they had every single meal paid for because you're just running around the city all day long and you're cleaning and exhausted. So I would let them like go take a break. I'm gonna be doing this. Here's my company card. Go get everybody some Gatorades, you know what I mean? Like get them some snackies, get them some lunch, whatever we needed to do. And I'd be like, okay, let's take a nice little hour break and then get Back to it. I was in the trenches with them, is what I'm saying. I don't know why I'm like recalling all these memories. but anyway. What I'm saying is treat people right all the time and always have gratitude. Gratitude is the attitude. Tomorrow we're gonna talk about The neuroscience for celebrating your wins and the wins of the others in your industry. Community over competition for real, not for play play. This is the travel agency of the year. Have a wonderful day. Thanks for listening to my crazy ramblings of my cleaning business. that's not the end this episode. Gotcha. Shock and all. Surprise. I think that's because that's the last time I was running a business that had actual employees. I mean travel agency. I have one employee but I didn't have like a whole staff. So anyway, have a wonderful day.