How We Improved Employee Satisfaction From 2.5 to 4.7/5 on Glassdoor - James Ferguson, Wurzak Hotel Group

James: So the last time that we met was about a year ago. I had just started in this role as Director of Culture with Wurzak Hotel Group. At that time, we were really just assessing what we needed, where we needed to take action, and what the best strategic approach to do that was. Fast forward to today, you look at some of the things that we all kind of measure ourselves on, which is what the voice of the employee is saying. And Glassdoor is a great program that lets you get that data firsthand. And I feel very fortunate we checked it today. We went from the beginning of my time in this role at a kind of from worst to first. We went from 2.5 to 4.2 now overall. And in the Philly region, where I would say I put most of my energy, we're at a 4.7 out of 5. So sometimes, it's hard to quantify what we're doing and the impact of it. But when you look at that alone, it's a very profound example of the impact we're having as a company by focusing on this area and making sure our employees have a great experience.

Josiah: That's a huge jump! Congratulations. It is the result of a lot of work and a lot of coordination. As you mentioned, you can and should track employee satisfaction internally, but externally, a platform like Glassdoor is so important because as people are looking at where they're going to work, they're considering a job opportunity, a lot of them are going to end up on Glassdoor, they're going to see what is the experience of other people that have been working there. they hit your page now, they're seeing all these people that are so happy, so glad to be involved in the work that you're doing. So it's really important for recruiting, as well as just a great external validator of the success of what you've built.

James: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that's kind of something that's grown with my role as well, in that I've gotten a little bit more into recruiting and employer branding and all that stuff. And you're right, it really does support the story that we're trying to share. And as you said, it's just like TripAdvisor for our operators. We need to, you know, our guests look at that to find out where they want to stay. It's the same thing for our future employees. They need to know that it's the right place, that they're going to feel like they belong, and that their work matters and it's going to contribute to the greater good. And that's really what we've tried to focus on and enhance and encompass in what we're doing to make sure that our team members tell that story so that others can know it and we want to be part of it.

Josiah: So let's dig into the story because the numbers speak for themselves. I'd love to hear from you, James. You are spending every day with your teams, building culture, getting people fired up, making them feel engaged. If you think about over the past year, how would you describe the journey that you've led to help the organization and the teams that you work with get to this place of feeling very happy, very engaged?

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