Celebrating Achievements for Re-vamping Workforce

With 30+ years of experience in team building, Nate Swanson, with an inspiring creativity, has emerged with expertise as a career mentor, business partner, talent acquisition expert, HR Executive, organisational planner, and engagement strategist.

Can you give me a brief overview of your career journey, and what are your current roles and responsibilities in your current organization?

I started my career as an HR coordinator in the hotel and hospitality industry, about 17 to 18 years ago with Sofitel, a luxury Hotel. Managing around 350 employees, I gradually worked my way up and through the lifestyle and boutique space, working and opening the first Radisson Blue Aqua Hotel, which was part of the upper-scale hotel, Carlson Reservoir, and then moved into Commune Hotels, which was acquired by Two Roads Hospitality, and eventually Hyatt. During that time I was with them for five years all in the Chicago market, and became the director of HR for Hotel Lincoln, and then Thompson, and later oversaw a couple of properties, which were the T Hotel and Thompson Chicago Hotel.

After Hyatt was acquired by Two Roads, I went to Virgin Hotels for a couple of years and subsequently moved to Dallas to open Thompson Chicago, which is part of the Hyatt portfolio. For 14 years I worked as HR on property.

Currently, with Spire Hospitality, a hotel management company, we have over 30 hotels in over 18 states in the United States, with an extensive portfolio of Marriott’s, IHG Hotels and Resorts’, and Hilton’s, plus four to five lifestyle boutique properties.

Working in the HR and hospitality space for over 17 years, I have looked at opportunities that would grow my knowledge and learning within the industry. When I was with Two Roads Hospitality, out of 55 HR directors, I won the award of ‘Keeper of the Culture. It was the highest and most relevant and prestigious award to get within the company.

The property level is a different type of function for executing engaging environments. Being in the lifestyle boutique space for so long, I had a lot of flexibility to come up with my own ideas and thoughts, and the freedom to create and translate the ideas into successful opportunities. Finding ways to incorporate the values and bring it alive within the culture became the focal point. At career fairs, too people wish to learn about the culture of the workplace, rather than the ‘pay’ or the ‘title’ for jobs.

Last year I joined Spire Hospitality with the biggest role of managing three regional directors of HR reporting to me, and roughly 30 HR professionals below them at the property level. I report to the VP of HR of property or for the company.

When it comes to team building, what are the challenges that you came across at the property level or at the corporate level?

At the property level, the key to team building is creating a genuinely fun and engaging work environment, finding ways to recognize team members, and having engaging morning meetings, in all areas of the hotel.

Playing music, laughing, talking to each other, and finding ways to celebrate individuals have become part of a concept that I created on property called ‘on-the-spot recognition’. This includes not just recognizing the accomplishments of departments or positions but also recognizing and celebrating individual achievements, as simple as, someone buying a new house.

The GM and I would show up with a goofy, fun-loving sign and a small treat like M&M chocolates to celebrate together and take pictures. When we create this fun and engaging culture, people are empowered to make choices, and turnover is lower. People want to come and work at our hotels and lifestyle boutiques in Chicago.

At the corporate level, creating ways to do things as a group outside of work has had an amazing and powerful impact. We have connected with our coworkers on a more personal level away from office cubicles while volunteering at 29 Acres. When these bonds grow on a more personal level, it creates teamwork.

Teamwork is built on trust, relationships, and open and transparent communication. On those grounds, we created a kickball league within the community with teams from the corporate office. We had roughly 12 to 15 people on each team that would go out to play a game. Nonplayers like, the CEO and VPs of operations come out and cheer us on. This teamwork has cohesively created a special bond through extracurricular activities that are voluntary and has made us closer-knit than we were a year ago.

Post covid, our industry had to reinvent itself on different levels, from working with remote team members to re[1]vamping the HR aspect of our business. Spire Hospitality’s HR corporate team was small, so a lot of the functions involved maintaining and making sure we were compliant with all the protocols of covid.

Getting back on track, creating a truly immersive and engaging work environment, and recruiting all team members who left the industry became a big focus of my role in the first six months of my job, as I came to this organization about a year ago.

What would be your advice for your fellow peers? How can they effectively use technology and streamline their processes to engage individuals and empower them to come to work, and retain them for a longer duration?

The onboarding process needs to be smooth, seamless, and comforting for new team members, and it should be quick and easy to apply for any position. The hospitality industry tends to be a few years behind other industries when it comes to the workforce. Remote work and having remote team members are still a bit harder for our industry. Our hotels are 24-hour facilities, so we need our team members to be at our place of business to be able to give amazing service.

It’s a delicate situation to navigate when our industry is struggling to attract a workforce, while other industries are offering 50% of their workforce to be remote, it sounds really appealing to candidates.

We are in an organization that just doesn’t have remote opportunities, we need to find ways to retain and get talent that is willing to be part of the customer experience and have customer interactions. It’s a struggle for the industry, but we have to overcome this hurdle.

Activities organized by KITSBY, a California-based company, are very inspiring. They specialize in team-building activities with immersive experiences like cooking, baking, making cool craft cocktails, or making plant-based crafting opportunities like decorative plants in glass with dirt together, with people from across the globe on Zoom.

What would be your advice to your fellow peers in just one line?

Listen to the feedback your team members give you and take action on that feedback. It will change the world, it will build trust, and it’ll help create a more cohesive team and company.