Worldspan Group

A Hungarian Sojourn

After more than forty years in the event business, it takes something special to get you motivated and a traditional wedding in Hungary did just that. Never having visited the country before, Pauline and I jumped at the opportunity. The wedding itself was taking place in Szeged, in the south, over a two day period and we elected to stay at the Four Seasons in Budapest for a couple of nights on either side. It takes a lot to surpass the sheer high standards of service that this chain achieves worldwide, but in Budapest we received such attentive and courteous service from all of their team that we felt privileged to be there.

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To Lead or Engage Staff – That is The Question

Often we are asked by the leadership of organisations to help them engage their staff for a number of reasons such as low morale, poor staff retention, weak communication, uncertainty over culture changes or unsatisfactory overall business performance.  In doing so, some of these organisations can fall into the trap of treating leadership and employee engagement as two mutually exclusive objectives – be that due to lack of skill or confidence. They feel that perhaps running a series of workshops around staff conversations will address the engagement issue but without the presence, wholehearted support and face to face involvement of the leadership team within that process – the value of the activity has limited impact on organisational change or progress. It can’t be stressed enough that the most successful companies on this planet have been built on cultures that see leadership and effective employee engagement as synonymous. You simply can’t have one without the other.

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The Dopamine Effect

Some companies see reward and recognition as a ‘nice to have’ when it comes to improving employee performance at work, a fluffy HR strategy that requires investment and resource to implement but is unlikely to make a huge difference on the bottom line. However, it is a biological fact that when displaying gratitude and rewarding or praising someone for a job well done, a neurotransmitter called Dopamine is released within the brain producing positive feelings of satisfaction and enjoyment.  But the effect can be short-lived, so it’s important to the human brain to maintain a regular supply of these ‘hits’ and therefore an individual is encouraged to seek out or repeat whatever behaviours produced the desired effect in the first place.
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