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Storytelling 101: How Wynn Resorts Used This Tactic to Create a Successful Brand

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Employee storytelling has become an effective tactic to increase employee communication and engagement. Collecting these stories can be burdensome and time consuming. However with an employee app platform such as HubEngage, companies are now able to extract the best employees stories on a wide range of subjects such as delivering on exceptional customer service, problem-solving, operational excellence and rewarding and recognizing employees for exceptional performance.

Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution interviewed famous casino and hotel developer Steve Wynn back in 2016 about how he was able to create such a loyal workforce and internal employee brand in the ultra competitive talent workplace environment of casino resorts. Steve Wynn is without a doubt one of the greatest pioneers who turned Las Vegas into what it is today. He did that not only through smart and creative drive, but also through an awareness of his employee brand and the need to relay a sense of providing exceptional customer service to his people, so that the guest experience would remain to a very high standard.

When asked how he did that over the many years he built several successful mega resorts, his answer was very simple. Employee storytelling. He empowered all have his employees at any and every rank to contribute a story where they did something for a resort guest and provided exceptional experiences. He goes on to give an example of a Bellhop that was escorting a guest and her husband to their resort room at the Wynn Las Vegas when it first opened in 2005. The guest, an older lady in her 60’s, panicked because she forgot her medication back home in Los Angeles. She did not know what to do and felt as if she needed to turn around and go home. But this was no ordinary bellhop. He assured her that he would find a way to get her medication to her in time for her next dose which was the next morning. A few phone calls later and a quick drive to that guest’s home and he had her medication at the hotel ready for her by the next morning. (He actually drove from Las Vegas to LA!) So he wrote his story down and submitted it to human resources and that very day the management at the Wynn Las Vegas hotel posted his story on their intranet. Instantly he became a celebrity overnight among his employee peers. He received recognition from Steve Wynn himself and a promotion.

What was the net effect? Well, every employee wanted a “story” of their own that they could share with others. Before they knew it, they had amassed a nice library of wonderful guest experiences and exceptional customers service benchmarks that they could now share across all of their resort properties worldwide to inspire and train others. This was a very effective strategy to get people to contribute and get something in return. Furthermore, and most importantly, they had found a way to successfully create an employee culture centered around the guest experience and also establish proven benchmarks with successful tactics to maintain and grow Steve Wynn’s relentless pursuit of excellence.

Today employee storytelling has become a widely excepted practice inside many companies that want to extract the best and most inspiring experiences where employees excelled at their jobs. Collecting this kind of information is now very easy with employee app platforms such as HubEngage. With instant feedback mechanisms build into the app itself, users can upload photos videos text content and more in order to tell their story. Furthermore internal communication groups and HR management can moderate the content and also reward and recognize instantly in real time.

Do you want to create a employee storytelling mechanism for your people? You can do it with employee app platforms such as HubEngage. Find out how you can easily create a robust employee app that has a employee storytelling component build into it so that your people can use mobile devices to capture the best of what happens every day inside of your organization and share it with everyone else. You can develop your talent pool and and hence your recruiting efforts in very short time using this effective, proven tactic of employee storytelling, just like Steve Wynn did.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Does employee storytelling work?

It sure does! Employee storytelling can be a very effective tactic to increase engagement and knowledge across a company.

What are some employee storytelling tools available?

Using platforms like HubEngage can give you an easy and effective way to collect employee storytelling fast. 

What is the result of effective employee storytelling?

By using employee storytelling as a way have employee voices heard, companies can increase their employer brand by letting their people do all the positive talking for them. 

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