Page 146 - How America's Best Places to Work Inspire Extra Effort in Extraordinary Times

The Real Job of Managers C133

awards, parties, consulting services, and employee travel. To gauge
employees’ feelings about all these losses and to answer any ques-
tions, senior leaders became highly visible, managing by walking the
floors and engaging employees in conversation. All this was going on
just one month before Winchester staff were resurveyed for the latest
Best-Places-to-Work competition. Lang worried that employee opinion
might have been soured by all that had gone on. As it turned out, her
fears were unfounded. Winchester employees once again rated the
hospital as the Best Place to Work in its size category, the first time an
employer in the greater Boston area had won the award two years in a
row. “Considering all that’s gone on this last year,” Lang said, “this award
meant more to us than the first one.”

: HOW ONE COMPANY DRIVES ENGAGEMENT BY ALIGNING
ORGANIZATION AND EMPLOYEE GOALS

Just as for Winchester Hospital, we also see evidence that leaders and
managers at other winning companies are going out of their way to
make sure employees are engaged and aligned. Gaylord Palms Hotel
and Resort, Orlando, Florida, which we have referred to in previous
chapters, once again serves as a case in point.
We spoke with Kemp Gallineau, general manager of the prop-
erty, and Emily Ellis, vice president of training and corporate culture,
about dealing with poor managers to ensure corporate alignment:

Q: Most organizations have managers that are less than effective
or who violate company values of honesty or respect. How do
you deal with those situations?
Gallineau: We are committed to honesty and integrity and have had
to terminate managers for violating that value. We have to cut our
losses if we get a bad leader . . . and do it quickly. We had to let a
restaurant manager go who said he had scheduled an employee in
a certain way and we found out it wasn’t true. It was the second