Client Overview
As a premier operator of high-end eco-lodges across Southern Africa, Wilderness Safaris delivers unforgettable guest experiences in some of the most remote locations on the continent. But behind the exceptional guest journeys is a workforce that includes seasonal staff, field-based teams, and rotating personnel, each facing unique challenges in training, communication, and morale.
Wilderness Safaris needed a structured and sustainable way to monitor employee sentiment, team engagement, and internal service performance, especially in remote environments where staff turnover and isolation can quickly impact service quality.
The Challenge
Wilderness needed a light weight, agile solution that could work in diverse settings, from tented camps in the Okavango to luxury lodges in Namibia, and still produce structured, actionable insight.
Wilderness faced several operational and cultural EX challenges:
- Limited visibility into team morale, especially among seasonal or rotating staff.
- Inconsistent feedback channels for employees in remote or offline environments.
- Gaps in training, onboarding, and team communication.
- A need to align employee performance with the brand’s luxury service standards.
Our Approach
MRM worked closely with Wilderness Safaris to design and deploy an Employee Relationship Index(ERI) program tailored to the unique rhythms of the lodge environment. The goal was to create a consistent pulse on employee sentiment while enabling leadership to act on feedback before it affected guests.
- Questionnaires tailored to capture insights on morale, training satisfaction, leadership, and wellbeing.
- Multilingual, anonymous and structured formats to ensure candid feedback across job levels,
- Tools localized in multiple African languages to improve accessibility and response rates.
- Surveys scheduled around team shifts and regional time zones.
- EX Dashboards & Leadership Reports segmented by lodge, region, and staff category.
The Impact
- Providing senior management with in-depth insight into the experience of staff across the continent, in the remotest of places.
- Enabled lodge managers to spot and resolve staff morale issues early.
- Identified key gaps in seasonal onboarding and support, leading to updated induction materials.
- Contributed to a reduction in guest complaints, as team experience improved overall job satisfaction.
- Embedded EX as a standing agenda item in monthly operational reviews.
- Happier teams, stronger service, and smarter leadership decisions
