Human permaculture

Building the Ecosystem:

Audition for staff, why interview?

So, you want to be the rate and product leader in your marketplace? Great — most would concur. Then you must be looking for over-achieving employees who are self-motivated. You, therefore, must be ready to embrace opinionated, highly critical, and bottom-up-oriented candidates. (Bottom-up management is the catchphrase many speak to, but few organizations are actually built for it.) Are you ready to be challenged and questioned nearly every day — the tested and proven procedures and practices to be continually revised? Market place leadership is fun, exhilarating, and CREATIVE, a condition one must audition for. You will never get there with one-on-one job interviews.

The Harmony Project recently has coined the term Human Permaculture to recognize that human life is now a significant part of “natural ecosystems.” Vibrant human interconnectivity generates an authentic community, a more compelling definition of traditional (agriculture-based) permaculture.

“Interview for personality and train the technical skill” is a principle we may have heard before. But do we have the procedures and emotional readiness to fully embrace this approach? 

The hospitality industry differs from the Tech Industry, beginning with the requirement that most employees do not need to possess advanced technical degrees and experience. Effective hospitality practitioners desire entry-level staff to have non-technical traits such as a warm personality, authenticity, empathy, and charisma. A powerful filter is required to identify attributes not predicated on technical skills.

The Harmony Project embraces a team approach to assess personality, creativity, and empathy. Stakeholders and future mentors participate in teams. We call for creatives to audition in mass interviews in the labor marketplace. Those who score in written math, language and diagrammatical tests generally above the existing employee community’s median scores are invited to the next audition stage. 

The diagrammatical assessment purposely avoids language, access to education, and means to “integrate” with the dominant culture. The objective is to audition the talent of every viable candidate not framed by privilege, economic advantage, or culture. 

The interview space is filled with acoustical guitars, percussion instruments, colored pencils, drawing papers, coffee/tea, and a comfortable circle of lively members wishing the auditioning candidate to be authentic, themselves, and expressive. Every audition starts with poetry, short stories, dance instruction, music, or drawings. We are lastly interested in technical and previous experience Q&A — at the center is the applicant’s personality, confidence, authenticity, and creativity. If technical expectations are to be assessed, a separate audition is organized — a candidate needing more time and different audition conditions, such as a black box cooking audition or a brochure drafting communication, is invited back for a second round.

The outcome of the described approach is electric, encompassing, and most importantly, the team and mentors are ready to ensure the selected new-hire onboarding is successful and reflective of the existing employee community’s high expectations of each other.

Two recent Harmony Projects utilized the audition interviews process. The video above documents an employee talent show-based festival held shortly after opening Rise Kinkara, Costa Rica, in 2018. Even a traditional horseback game of skill was part of the showcase.

The video below documents the audition and subsequent performances during pre-opening training at The Urban, Zambia, in 2017.

The employee community is talented and self-organizes into musical performance clubs, competitive team athletics, and workgroups. Guests are encouraged to pick up and use available instruments, even joining the staff or the staff joining impromptu guests’ music; impromptu musicality is nurtured and coached. Back of the house regular staff talent shows become a highly anticipated employee community highlight.

The process, in effect, advances the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest, a most appropriate circumstance in the Human Permaculture context — with the expectation of the most robust interconnectivity to advance the mission.

These practices have been tested and perfected in Asia, Africa, and Latin America by The Harmony Project with profitable results and amazing employee and client satisfaction. Typically the hire-to-applicant ratio is 1:40. Guests don’t want to check out because of the awesome experience, and employees resist poaching by other employers.

Effective Workplace Culture:

100 Job DESCRIPTIONS are better than one

Upon recruiting the most creative, confident, and over-achieving staff (note the leadership profiling language), they must be continually challenged to stay ahead of staff expectations, retained, and guided toward leadership. Staff compensation and flexible job description systems are essential tools in a Human Permaculture workplace.

Workplace technical and life-learning opportunities are developed to advance the employee’s job, career, or life goals. It connects compensation with accountability, contributes to the workplace (rather than boilerplate job specification), and encourages life-long learning. Yes, every staff member is considered a leader — after all, that is what we auditioned for. This ultimately promotes staff retention.

A powerful workplace culture occurs with increasing cohesiveness, meaning, and resiliency based on aggressive pre-opening training workshops that continue for all new hires with numerous means to reinforce the desired workplace culture. Quantitative assessments occur based on desirous role-modeling workplace values and employee self-written job descriptions. Scores are objective, based on pre-established goals agreed upon in advance (and written by each employee). There is nothing subjective about this exercise, unlike typical evaluations. 

The video above documents 6-steps to facilitate leadership in every employee at Rise Kinkara, Costa Rica, in 2018. The workplace culture is developed to support Omotanashi in consistent ways with the indigenous culture.

Build a wage system in compliance with local laws, based on two parts: fixed base-wage and monthly allowance linked to assessment scores. Critically, the allowance fluctuates (up or down) after each assessment — each staff member is in control of their compensation — a powerful motivator. The base wage can reflect wage tiers typicality tied to local minimum wage, education and technical qualifications, and proven experience. 

Let us consider an umbrella stand holding umbrellas near the doorway. If the umbrella stand is metaphorically the job function, specifications are typically written, and hires are nearly identical and dropped into the umbrella stand, each holding identical job descriptions. 

Remove the metaphorical umbrella stand (job specification) and consider just the function to anticipate guest expectations and to over-deliver on them working as a team. When organizing the candidate leaders, break the team into a few obvious categories (kitchen, maintenance, and most everything else) and cross-train as much as possible, so everyone knows the basics. 

Now, walk through the doorway threshold….

Critically, each staff member is considered a LEADER, individually accountable for the client or fellow employee expectations, exampling workplace values and strengthening the team every day. The dining room staff are housekeepers, receptionists, concierge, co-leaders, and they take turns in the kitchen as an apprentice for a day when business permits so they can speak knowledgeably in the dining room. Everyone possesses the tools: the POS (point of sale computer) is hand-held and functions as a PMS (check-in/out computer). Oh, just think of the flexibility — during a massive check out “housekeeping,” staff numbers instantly multiply, and the guest rooms are turned in time for the group arrival when front office agents also instantly multiply. The umbrellas begin to unfurl, each a different color hue, filling the space with accountability-grasping over-achieving leaders. 

Clients can approach almost any staff member who in turn “owns” the expectation and handles matters directly or brings a fellow team member into the conversation — never saying “ask Joe at the front desk”. The concierge, front desk, dining room waiter, and housekeeper functions are decentralized — the flexibility is truly liberating!

Job descriptions start with a base to include the mentioned activities and are then augmented self-written by each employee to reflect their passion and interest. Over 100 JD are formulated, one for each employee. Leaders are always paired, building teamwork and redundancy should sudden illness or new passions arise. Autonomous supervisors/leaders and power centers are totally avoided.

Every employee is encouraged to continually update and fortify their JD to remain aligned with self and workplace interests. The motivated employee community remains highly stimulated nimble. Because the organization is composed of flexible, multi-task compliant, over-achieving staff, they are efficient and can generally be compensated above market rate. Staff counts are usually lower. 

Staff is not easily poached with above-competitive wages and dynamic workplace culture. Twice annual Employee Climate Surveys are conducted to proactively assess opportunities and used for remedial follow-up and celebrate improvements. 

In Human Permaculture terms, each metaphorical umbrella opens to its full extent and fills the space as a thoroughly interconnected, interdependent team member.