ÐßÐßÊÓƵ

Transcript

Introduction
 
Hi everyone. Welcome back to Matt Talks, but this time I'm not alone and you don't have to listen to me talk for thirty minutes. We actually have Naomi joining me, this time around.
 
I thought deeply about one of the challenges that we face in hospitality, which is staffing shortages and staffing turnover. And and they are consistent challenges, but the staffing shortages is definitely a hangover that we've had from the COVID times. But there's also still a lot of turnover that we've always historically seen.
 
And we as a business have been growing dramatically, and and I come out of hospitality. And I thought there was a lot of overlap between what we do as a business as hospitality technology and what we do in hotels. And I wanted to share some of the things that we do, that work really well for us to hire and to retain talent at ÐßÐßÊÓƵ. And some things we we are, you know, just different as a tech company, but some things there's definitely overlap there. So I asked Naomi, who's our chief people officer since two years to join me, and to just talk about how we have approached the scale. We've scaled from about six hundred people when you entered the business to thirteen hundred people today, which is an incredible scale.
 
Thank you for joining me.
 
No worries. It's a pleasure.
 
Do you wanna maybe share what you did before ÐßÐßÊÓƵ?
 
Yes. I worked in technology for, a a scarily long time, since the late nineties. And, when I graduated, so I didn't go to a hotel school.
 
I sort of headed out into the world and and worked in startups. And then I've worked in a variety of technology companies, mainly actually doing commercial work, running sales teams, but also being a product manager and doing all kinds of things.
 
And, I started I moved into being a chief people officer from running a revenue team, for the very first software company I worked for ten years ago. So I've been doing this work for about ten years.
 
And it's the work that I always say I was kind of born to do. I sort of started doing it. I was like, oh, yeah. Yeah. This is this is what everyone has been trying to get me to do when they ask me to deal with the difficult people stuff all these years.
 
And and were you always a chief people officer, or were you a HR director and then at some point shifted? Or is there a difference? Is it just different titling of of of that?
 
It kinda depends on who you ask. I mean, I think the industry the people industry has changed.
 
And so but I have I one of the great opportunities I have been given, and I've turned and luck, I suppose, that I've had in my career is that, people have given me things without me necessarily needing to have been trained in them.
 
And so I haven't progressed up the HR tree. I've done pretty much every job you can imagine apart from coding, and I've never worked in marketing either, in technology.
 
And but so that's given me a kind of fluency, in the language of the businesses that I work in, such that I haven't felt the lack of HR training. So my team are actually far better qualified than me. I've been a chief people officer, VP of people.
 
So I started chief people officer and then did VP of people because it depends on the size of the company and what companies call the role, really. But I've never been an HR director. No.
 
But do you find that directionally, renaming your HR departments to people department is actually quite a a big shift, or it actually doesn't matter?
 
I think words matter hugely just in general, as you know.
 
And, and I think it does matter because, humans are not resources, and, and people matter.
 
And so for me, it matters. And it means that I can talk more authentically about the work that I do and what lies at the heart of the work that I do, which is enabling people to do great work, and and grow businesses, which is what what drives me.
 
Human somehow, human resources is is somehow, very, robotic As actionable as transacts.
 
Transactional. Exactly. And and the work I do is definitely not transactional. It's definitely not transactional.
 
Nice. I'd love to see the answer to that. Yeah. So so what I wanted to do so I I remember coming out of hotels and, having experienced human resource departments.

Chapter
Recruitment and employer branding
 
And as jobs came up, we're like, well, we just put a job ad for it out and hope that someone walks in the door, to working with you and taking a much very different approach to recruitment. And we brought a lot of our recruitment in house. So what I wanted to do is first really talk about recruitment and employer brand and what it was. Because I remember when we started ÐßÐßÊÓƵ and at some point we were fifty people.
 
And I realized that that year we had to hire fifty more people, which is double the company. Yeah. And I thought I know nothing about this area. So I joined, a human resource community, and I started joining their events. And the first topic was employer brand. And I thought, what is employer brand?
 
So I wanted to start with that topic. Then I wanna talk about how do we, retain team members. And then lastly, end on, cultural engagement because I think that's a big
 
aspect of it. But let's start with, hiring strategy, employer brand.
 
And if if we look at, first of all, the industry, hotels, what are some of the challenges that you're seeing in that area?
 
Yeah. My heart goes out to people doing my job in in the hotel industry, really. I think, we're seeing massive volatility. And we've seen massive volatility in the employment market globally anyway as a result of COVID and so on.
 
But for hoteliers, that's just been that's amplified. Right? So we've seen wages increase. We've seen demands for increased flexibility.
 
And in a in a in a hotel, that's so much harder to effect than in, than in an office. Right? Because I I just sent everyone home. It was hard, but it wasn't impossible for them to do their jobs.
 
You know? So but but people have come back from COVID and still want flexibility.
 
My god. What what are you supposed to do? You know? They have much higher I call it the social contract. It's the relationship between an organization and its people.
 
And and, what COVID did is it effectively, gave employees much greater leverage. And that's what you have in the hotel industry with with, I don't know, something like eighty percent, seventy, eighty percent of hotels experiencing staffing shortages, which is just an extraordinary number.
 
And and so that gives power to the employee employee.
 
And so you have to expand benefits as well. You have to make where you work much more compelling.
 
And one of the hangovers of old HR and personnel is that the only levers that they had were were pay, benefits, and the hours that you work and the and the rotor the staffing rotor.
 
So I'm seeing that, those challenges. On the other side, I'm also, you know, that it what is forcing is a kind of innovation in this area, I think. So apprenticeship programs, they're not they're not straightforward and they're not perfect, but they're but they're a thing, and they're happening, and they're helping, increased, an increase in the types of visas available, which increases the mobility potential and and hiring potential from different countries.
 
But, you know, business rates are increasing, and and it's a real challenge for hoteliers.
 
So those are some of the some of the push and pull factors Yeah. That I'm seeing.

Chapter
How to solve staff shortages
 
Because what could be some of the benefits that hotels could lean on if we we we only use the lever of, you know, holidays and pay? Are there other things that we could do?
 
Oh my god. I mean, I I think it's the most exciting industry, really, and and particularly for young people who are your target demographic because you can get them in and you can train them. Like, you yourself know, you know, there are careers to be made in in hotels.
 
And I think if you give people interesting work to do with plenty of room to grow and, sort of move around quite literally in some cases, whether that's in terms of a career and job change or in terms of, like, literally moving country.
 
That that's that's what I would tap into if it were me. I think that, And I also think it's really, really important when you're thinking about employer value proposition in any industry to think about what is specific about your place of work.
 
And this touches on every aspect of my job, actually, from onboarding, hiring, everything, l and d. So sell to that point. So are you a luxury hotel? Explain what that means and explain why that's incredible, beyond the obvious it's a beautiful hotel, and explain what it means in the job ads, and talk to people about it and and and get their sense of whether that's something that they might be interested in.
 
Or do you target a super fun youth market? People young people go and work on cruise ships because they love the social life. They get into it. They enjoy it.
 
They do it for a few years. Some of them even come back to it. You, you know, apply that model to to the hotel industry. If you run a youth hostel, then, you know, that's compelling to some people.
 
I mean, it would be my idea of hell because I go to bed at nine thirty. But, but for some people, that's that's fantastic. So I think sell to your strengths. Yeah.
 
That is what you should do. And first, to do that, you need to determine what your strengths are.
 
Yeah. You talked about sorry. I've been off a a call, so I'm coughing through this through this interview.
 
You talked about, creating career paths for people.

Chapter
Skills over titles: career paths
 
And you and I are a big fan of unreasonable hospitality by Wil Gudera Yes.
 
Where he talks about he he wants to be the number one restaurant in the world.
 
And he he he basically talks about creating champions because if you think about a hotel, you go from receptionist to supervisor to front office manager.
 
But actually you can take that in money different directions. And he says, we found this person who was just very passionate about beer. And he said, great. You're gonna be our beer champion.
 
Yeah.
 
Go out there, learn about beers. You build our beer menu. And and this person got so much out of that because suddenly he was a specialist without giving a promotion.
 
Yep.
 
And I think then you tell the stories of these people on your brand on your employer brand website. And that's how you create lots of career paths when you find the passions in people, you get them engaged in the culture, and then ultimately, hopefully, they don't leave you because they they are super engaged.
 
Absolutely. And I'm yeah. Thanks for mentioning that. Because I as I was sort of preparing for this, I was thinking about unreasonable hospitality. And, and I was, very, very lucky to eat at Eleven Madison Park, which is the restaurant in New York, that that he talks about.
 
And, I had this incredible experience with this with this young woman who, sort of ran their hospitality piece. And so her job was essentially to go and make sure that everyone in that restaurant had a really spectacular time. And, obviously, you might say, well, it's easy, isn't it? You know, it's, it's a very fancy restaurant. Of course, it's gonna be a lovely time, but that it's honestly not a given. Yeah. And, and we all know that hospitality can make or break, a a customer's experience.
 
So I was talking to this young woman. She came and talked to me, and she asked me if there was any specific reason why I was there. And I said, eventually, after she asked me about five times, I said, well, actually, it's my birthday.
 
And, And you're like, oh my god.
 
They're gonna sing to me loudly.
 
Yeah. I would I didn't want anyone to know. I was sitting there by myself with my book, eating beautiful food, like my idea of heaven.
 
And, so, of course, they brought over the usual birthday cake with a little kennel, and they didn't sing happy birthday to me. Thank God.
 
They're not.
 
You know? But then she said, we'd love to take you, to the kitchen, and we'd love to give you a special dessert, which they made in front of me.
 
And, so I started talking to her, and I said, how long have you worked here for? And she said, oh, I was hired by Danny Mayer in twenty eighteen.
 
I was like, five years. And she said, yeah. I know. And I said, what's kept you here? And she said, every time I've got a bit bored, there's been another opportunity for me. And eventually, they created this job for me.
 
And, and it is just it is just a beautiful story of exactly what people like me have been talking about for years, which is you will never be able to keep up with people's desire for more money and better benefits and, you know, all the transactional stuff. You won't. You can try, but you won't because we don't have endless amounts of money.
 
So what you can do is give people experiences and give people career pathways that tap into their skills and what matters to them. And, I mean, we're moving on to l and d stuff now, but one of the things that we're starting to think about increasingly is not actually job titles, but skills as the building block, because skills are teachable and transferable.
 
And so what that young woman has is lots of different skills, which, you know, Danny saw in her and developed in her and then moved her around.
 
Yeah.
 
And it's it it seems so obvious, but it was like But you can only do that if you know the person.
 
Yes. And and often, we don't deeply know or show an interest in the people.
 
And, and at ÐßÐßÊÓƵ we've introduced performance reviews where we, where we really have regular check ins with people and we get to know them and we, we talk to them about, okay, are you getting the satisfaction out of your job? Or, you know, what are you missing? Or what's something that excites you? And we have to find the thing that excites people because people left us in COVID times, left the industry, and they realized they can get a nine to five job for the same salary. And they're like, I'm not that passionate anymore about hospitality because I actually care about that balance. But our hotels run twenty four seven. So we gotta pull those find people that have a a genuine passion even more than ever before just because of the lack of talent.
 
Yeah. Absolutely. And I think, you know, it's the it's the golden nugget when you're when you're hiring to find those people who are intrinsically motivated Yeah. About the thing that you do.
 
And and and it just comes it requires you to be human in your hiring process, which is one of the reasons that I am a firm advocate for, internal hiring, because I think your people know what will land better than anyone else. I know it's an absolute well, actually, I was gonna say it's a luxury, but it's really not because our cost per hire is significantly lower.
 
We James and I, James, who runs hiring for me, you know, we run a very, very tight ship.
 
And, and that's very, very important. And I report on it all the way up to the board, and that matters. And so but it has a much you know, the money side of it's gray, obviously. But in terms of the value proposition, you know, our our recruiters, know our business inside out, are able to sell our business.
 
And, ultimately, recruitment is a sales game. You know? And especially when you've got eighty percent shortage, you know, you have to put your best foot forward. And your best foot forward, you don't outsource that.
 
Yeah. At least I choose not to outsource it.
 
Because I think a lot of hotels will be thinking, a recruiter is a full time, salary I have to pay. Is that totally worth it? And a lot of them will not make that investment. What would your case be to say, no. Actually, you should have a recruiter on staff.
 
My cost per hire is fifty percent lower than the industry average. Yeah.
 
And I would even this.
 
Because we think so, in, like, when the job opens, we just use an agency, or we just wait until the right person walks in the door. Whereas a recruiter is proactive, so they already know where the gaps are going to be because they should be deeply embedded into the business. They should start pre hiring or pre pipelining talents. Right?
 
Hundred percent. I mean, it's a it's a it's a and that's one of the things. So in in the same way that HR has has changed over the over the years, recruitment has changed over the years, and it is now a significantly important strategic function within any within any fast growth business. Well, within any any business, actually, because people are your greatest asset. So why wouldn't you put, you know, great people on that role?
 
And I think, we put a lot of work into forward planning. So recruitment is no longer a reactive function.
 
We are front and center within the strategic planning process, And, we're building out currently a talent intelligence function within our recruitment team, which is sent who are essentially they're some of our strongest recruiters, working within that area. And their their role will be to consult to the business on the hiring decisions that the business wants to make, and then maybe the decisions that the business business should make. Like, oh, I wanna I you know, we hiring managers always wanna hire in, like, San Francisco, which, as any everyone knows, is the most expensive, tech market.
 
What about thinking more broadly?
 
But you need data to drive that that decision. And, actually, that's where talent intelligence comes talent intelligence comes in, and it's an emerging field within within recruitment.
 
So I think, to me, the business case makes itself actually for having internal hiring. That person will pay for themselves very, very quickly.
 
And then there is the long term value that they enable you to move from a reactive function to a strategic function and bring in quality hires that then stay because of the relationship. The relationship that a new hire has with your business starts with that recruitment process.
 
Yeah.
 
And and our recruiters, they get so much kudos and shout outs because people love them.
 
There's only genuine pain in the business. Right? If you've got a job empty for three months, it means someone else has to do that work in addition to their job.
 
And those gaps really hurt, and they hurt the guests experience of the hotel.
 
And I think what we found with recruiters that live inside our culture, they can talk about the culture unlike an external agency that doesn't necessarily sell what life is like at that hotel or at that business.
 
Yes.
 
And these recruiters have been with us for several years because they just ensure Yeah. And that's easy to Yeah. Success of their work.
 
They also know they may not always be able to articulate, but they can sense when someone is gonna be a great candidate. You know?
 
And, and because they've been here themselves, they understand the employee value proposition because they're employees. Yeah. And so, candidates trust them, which, you know and we all know that trust is the bedrock of any long term relationship.
 
So it I I think the business case makes itself, honestly. Yeah.

Chapter
The real truth about employer branding
 
I agree. And and so hotels have a website, but website is not the same as employer brand. Can you explain maybe what an employer brand is?
 
Yeah. So an employer brand is how someone feels about, working for your business, essentially. So it's about, the experience of working for your business. So it's not just about, some pictures.
 
It's about what it feels like on a day to day basis, to be part of that business, to be part of the teams within the business, to do the work, that you're being, that you're being asked to do. So for me, it goes way beyond, a catalog Yeah. And, to to an experience.
 
And it's not, everyone always thinks, oh, god. I have to do a second website with all kinds of custom content. And I don't think it is. Like, we started lite, when we started we knew this.
 
We saw the, hiring numbers go up. I just created a landing page on our website, which is the career page. And then we just started adding content describing what it's like to work at ÐßÐßÊÓƵ and what our culture is like because I think a lot of people assume that they know what it's like to work at a hotel, but the culture in different hotels is very different depending on who's the leader that sets the tone of the culture. And it is important for people to know in advance what they're going to encounter when they walk in the door.

Chapter
Innovative hiring practices
 
And creating content, like video content nowadays, it is so easy to do.
 
Well, I think that's it. Yeah. If you're gonna go so I should have said, really. If you're gonna go beyond the website, sort of metaphorically, but also practically so do you have an Instagram account?
 
When you're hiring people, one of the things that we've been doing quite a lot of recently is sending, videos. So the hiring manager actually records a, like, thirty second video using Loom or whatever whatever mechanism you have, which immediately attracts people. And the other thing that we do is that, one of my recruiters actually wrote to me this week asking, have you been on any podcast recently? So that I can I can tell people, I can share it with candidates Yeah?
 
So they get a sense of what you're about and what you think. And because that's the other thing about an employer brand. It's not just what the organization's like, but it's what what the people are like. And so and what they think and how they think and how they behave.
 
And so you need to burst out of that website and that catalog mentality because no one gets an impression of anything from a website.
 
And I think, the hardest part of our recruitment in the past has always been developers because in the early days, like, everyone wants developers. It's harder to hire developers than hire employees for hotels.
 
So we had to create a sub brand for developers because they actually really care about, you know, what is the code like? And, you know, what are the things we care about as we write code? And then one of the things we found was that a lot of the developers are creating the content for that website and they love that they have a way to express themselves. And then future hires see the talent in how they write it. So it's almost, on the one side, rewarding in house talent because they now have a platform for their personal brand as well. Yeah. So it's kind of a double edged sword.
 
Absolutely. I think, the guy that does that is called Jan, and he does an absolutely amazing amazing job of building out that community.
 
And he's part of that community as well. And so he, it's about going to conferences. It's about having face to face conversations with people, such that they understand something you know, what they're going to belong to. Yeah.
 
And I think one of the things that we do well, and there's no reason that any other business, including hotels, can't do this, is sell the concept, sell how exciting it is to be part of the gang. Like, everyone wants to belong, and, and you need to sell what it feels like to belong. Yeah. And so ÐßÐßÊÓƵ is a place where people are very curious.
 
Curiosity is very much part of our, our sort of lifeblood. And so, appearing on podcasts, talking on LinkedIn about the books that we've read, you know, writing blog posts about about our lives, about how we think, how we work, what matters to us, about our constitution, these are things that give a much a far more, granular, understanding of what it's like to be a ÐßÐßÊÓƵer than, you know, a picture of an office.
 
Yeah. So we've since you went to the business, we went from six hundred to thirteen hundred people. That's seven hundred people, but probably we have some attrition. So I'm going to go close to a thousand people we've hired.
 
Meaning, for any interview, you do at least four other interviews. So four thousand interviews, I would guess, we've done. What would you say, is what are your tips for a hotel, a hotelier that's doing lots of interviews? How can you find the right candidate?
 
What are you focused on?
 
I think you have to define that for yourself.
 
I think actually creating a hiring process is really important. I know it sounds very tedious, but actually, you need to, get clear on what you're looking for from from the start, and create a process around that. And then that process becomes replicable.
 
So, you know, I think that when you want to speed up a hiring process, people often the first thing people think to sacrifice is quality. Instead, what I double down on is the quality of the interview process. So I would I would audit what works, and what doesn't at each stage of your hiring process and aim for incremental gains because presumably you don't have endless resources. We don't, so I'm sure you don't.
 
So but look at the data. So, for example, is your conversion rate from interview to hire low? Why is that? Is that interview quality?
 
Maybe your offer acceptance is right. Offer acceptance rate is low. Why is that? Do you need to train your interviewers?
 
So get your process right, and then engage with your hiring managers to understand what it is that they're looking for when they're looking for candidates. And not just what technical skills you want, but also what, behaviors you want to see.
 
It's very easy. And then encourage them to understand how to what questions they're going to ask in order to establish whether someone has those, has those skills or not. And so I can't tell anyone what they're looking for. My job is to go and understand deeply what they're looking for and help them create a process by which they find that person, and then hold them accountable for that actually as well because I think it's very easy for hiring, as I said, for quality to slip, when when you're just desperately trying to get people through the door.
 
Don't let quality slip because you will regret it because people will leave. Yeah. Or they won't be the people that you want. So sorry.
 
I didn't quite We'll see now if, like, if you are not genuinely excited, it's better to just not do it because the people you feel in your heart of heart are the right people are much more likely to succeed long term than thinking I have a short term problem that I need to plug a hole.
 
That just isn't the right long term thinking. And I know it's hard because you've got a gap to fill at the, at the reception desk, for example, but you're building a long term business and it's a cultural thing you're doing. And if you're injecting people that don't just don't fit the culture, there's this erosion that will happen over time.
 
Absolutely. And that's when I think, you know, it it doesn't just stop either when you've hired someone.
 
So, we place a huge emphasis on onboarding people, and getting that relationship off to a really good start.
 
And so you create a cohort of new starters.
 
You, you know, you do the welcome drinks on the first night. We take we bring everyone to Prague because that's where our home is. That's where we started, and it's a three day event with all the usual components, introduction to leadership team and so on and so forth. But I would also encourage, hotels to think again about what is specific about them.
 
Maybe you have a beautiful restaurant, and so you incorporate into your onboarding process a dinner or a lunch in that restaurant, or maybe you have a beautiful spa, or maybe you have beautiful grounds. Take everyone for a walk. You know? Whatever it is, it doesn't have to cost a huge amount of money, but it has to be experiential.
 
Yeah.
 
Because One of the things we did, were I thought our new hire orientation was, like, just people sitting in a room all day, and then they go home.
 
And at some point, we thought, actually, we should have a fun element to this. And we said, right, let's give them a small budget and saying, you're now like, as a surprise saying, in two hours, you are organizing an event for the whole of ÐßÐßÊÓƵ. Whoever's in the office, we're having a, a, an aperitif or something, and you get a budget of two hundred euros, you've got two hours, go. And one, it creates a team bond between the new hires, but at the same time, you've got a way for them to interact with the existing team members.
 
And in a hotel, you could do the same thing saying, you know, you could have them organize breakfast or something. Yes. In the canteen and set up a special event. Just, you know, start the day getting to know your colleagues.
 
And there are little things that you can do to move from a very boring new hire orientation. I have have done some very dry, boring hotel new hire orientations to just suddenly making it a very social and impactful event that they'll remember.
 
Yeah. Absolutely. And I think it it it creates, it creates those points of connection at a very at the moment someone walks through the door. Because it can be really intimidating, especially if you join in a fairly big cohort, and you're joining a company that's growing all the time and there's millions of people. So you need to create that sense of belonging from a very early stage. And then you build on that with employee resource groups or communities or or whatever whatever it is.

Chapter
How to retain people
 
But but it it starts it starts immediately, I think.
 
So so we've seen, obviously, we talked about bringing people into the room, through retention and through an employer brand. But how do we get them to stay? How do we get them excited about the mission that we're on as a hotel? Have you seen any of our customers do something really special that that that kinda stuck?
 
Yeah. Absolutely. So, there's a, we have a we have a customer called UDS who are a Japanese management company. They've got sixteen hotels.
 
And they were very keen to build learning and development, into their their proposition into their sort of management toolkit. What they did is they ended up increasing their talent pool by making their system easy to use and training people on it so that people who they hired didn't necessarily need to have come from, the hotel industry. So they actually increased their potential talent pool by a hundred percent, with fifty percent of their employees not have new employees not having come from the hotel industry, which I have now read that case study.
 
Must. Like and I have learned hoteling in endorsed at Blue Screen. Oh, yeah. And it took me two weeks in a training room to get educated on the system before I could do a check-in, create group blocks. It was very complex.
 
And because these legacy systems are abundant in our industry still today, normally when you hire someone for reception, you're primarily looking for that experience with the legacy system. Secondly, it would be nice if they're nice as well to customers. Whereas actually, you wanna kind of hire for people that are deeply passionate about customers and everything else we could teach you.
 
Yes. Yes. No. Absolutely. And I think that goes back to the question about hiring, right, and and thinking about the kind of behaviors that you want.
 
Don't miss that step. Yeah. Because we all wanna work with good humans. And how but how you understand who a good human is and what you define as good, you know, really needs to be taken into account.
 
But I think the UDS model is really interesting because they streamlined everything. So they they got a double benefit, right, because they streamlined their systems as well, which meant that their staff were then able to do much more interesting work. So they also, saw zero turnover in year one, which, you know, that's a nice metric. Yeah.
 
That is a nice metric and, with twenty five hours a week, saved in overtime. You know? So these are these are these are pretty compelling data points, really.
 
And, presumably, they make more money as well as a result of this. So it's, you know, it's it's kind of everybody everybody wins, I think, when that when that happens.
 
Learning and development.
 
Yes. What do you think? Do else should they invest in it, or just regular on the job training is good enough?
 
I mean, you know what I think.
 
Leading you on.
 
Yeah. And I actually think, we are starting to think beyond learning and development because learning and development is often quite transactional.
 
You know, it it it's often reduced to when's my next pay rise and when's my next promotion. And, you know, as those of us who are slightly older know, that isn't how careers are built. Careers are built using skills.
 
Careers are built, using, a long term vision of where you want to get to. Now you don't need to be absolutely precise about what that that role is, but you do need to have a sense of what it feels like. Yeah. And so having those where do you wanna be in ten years conversations is is absolutely critical. And for me, it's at the cornerstone of learning and development, particularly now with what skills asking the questions of, of hiring managers and and sorry, managers in general. What skills do you need to work in your team to succeed in your team?
 
And then making sure that we've got training programs that support those skills. And also, actually, making sure that we've got training programs that, support managers in having those conversations.
 
Because often, managers, I think regardless of industry, honestly, are put into a management position without any training. So we have a future manager program for people who are moving towards management. And it's just it gives me such joy. It's so well, it's every so many people sign up for it because it's aspirational.
 
And for me, learning and development programs are they they become exciting when they tap into people's aspirations, not when they tap into their need.
 
And, yeah, it's interesting. You see people it's very, very different. You know, if people they aspire to be better managers, you are more likely to get them engaged in your learning and development program, your your manager training program, than if you're teaching them how to use, you know, the HR system.
 
And that that is transactional. I'm not interested in transactional. And in what?
 
Just seeing the engagement on that, manager training is just off the charts. We're always oversubscribed on this training. And in hotels, we often promote too early or we don't provide enough support to young supervisors because we have a lack of them, so we just promote. And we often promote individual contributors into a manager role who don't necessarily know that that is very, very different.
 
How do you feel about, going from individual contributor to manager and making the right decision to Yeah.
 
Well promotions. Like I said, I think training before you do it is is really advisable.
 
Buddying is also really, really helpful. But also, I think it's really important to say at this stage that not everyone is cut out to be a manager, and that is okay. And so the other thing that we have done is we have two tracks, and you can proceed as an individual contributor.
 
And if you it's something that's very common in in tech companies, and I'm sure it's less common, in in hotels.
 
But often the most senior person has the least line management responsibility, you know, because I mean, and you don't expect to be, for example, line managing me, technically day to day at all, really.
 
It would be there would be something wrong with this picture if you were. And you and I both have a lot of other work to be doing.
 
And so creating that that pathway, which isn't dependent on management, is important. However, I do love management training programs, and I adore being a manager. I think that and how I think about it is that man but management isn't a transactional process. It is a practice, and you have to work at it. And I don't care how many years you've been doing it for. You can always learn more. So I for example, I've just we have this our remarkable manager program, and I've just asked all of my managers in the people team.
 
I said, we're gonna run a cohort of training of our core four modules for the people team managers and me, and we're all going to attend it, because I don't think anyone is above learning how to be a better manager.
 
And and, ultimately, if you care about the people in your business, then you have to care about the managers, and you have to enable the managers.
 
So what would your advice be to a hotel that's a smaller hotel that might not have a budget to hire a learning and development manager, which I can totally imagine? What would you recommend that they do to make sure that there is a learning program for their teams?
 
Yeah. So the first thing I would do is I would say, what are the five skills that you want to make sure that all of your employees have?
 
I like that.
 
Four or three. Like, what what are they? Maybe it's communication.
 
Maybe it's, kindness.
 
Maybe it's, financial management. I don't know. Like, it could be anything.
 
And then I would actually I would actually either use ChatGPT or the Internet and say, create me a free training program.
 
And, you will be staggered by the amount of free resources there are available. And then if you were small, what I would probably do to make it more exciting, because I think often e learning, people do in their bedrooms and they don't really engage, I would probably create a little workshop around it. So I'd create a little learning group, and, once a week or once a month, whatever cadence you feel is appropriate, I'd say, right, we're gonna get together, consume these resources, whether it's read this blog or read this or watch this podcast or watch this TV program or whatever. And then we're gonna get together, and we're gonna talk about it. And we're gonna talk about what it means in terms of management at, our hotel.

Chapter
Best ways to train
 
Is that the similar to what you do in the think Think Club?
 
Oh, yeah. ThinkClub. Yeah. It is. ThinkClub is even more abstract because I have the great luxury that I have a manager training program, so I don't have to be overly prescriptive.
 
But, so, for if you include this, people that are listening, Think Club is, it it's a it's a group of book nerds, really.
 
People who really love learning and just want to throughout the day, maybe, you don't actually want to be thinking about the things that are specific to your job, and you believe that you can learn from other industries or learn from other fields, ideas that might you might be able to apply to your own work. And so you, we share them with each other, and we discuss them. And it's very open and very, non agenda led.
 
Which sometimes is a nice thing.
 
I think so. Yeah. I think so. So so agendas are great. I'm quite an efficient person, and I try to get a lot done. But, there's something nice. It's
 
a very expansive space, and it and it costs nothing.
 
I don't I don't bring in I don't pay for anything to think club. I run it, people. Sometimes I don't run it. You know?
 
It's very, very, fluid. But I think thinking beyond, I must have a training program, and I have to go on LinkedIn, and I have to you know, these providers will try and sell you, like, a load of stuff. And I'm very, very, very picky and skeptical about that kind of thing because you know your business best. You know the skills that you want to develop in your people, and the Internet is an amazing thing, it turns out.
 
It actually is. And and I sometimes think, oh, I need to run this training. And then I go and chat GPT and say, I've got a one hour training, and the topic is this topic. There's twenty people in the room. I've got a big whiteboard.
 
Give me a recommendation of how I'd run that training, and chat GPT will literally give you several options easily of how you would conduct that training.
 
And previously that just wasn't available. You'd have to go through endless websites to find this, and now it just gives you the answer.
 
So I I do totally agree that we should all be leading into AI to kind of help us. If you're not a training specialist, but you are a manager, it is expected of you that you are conducting trainings, and AI will help you become a trainer.
 
Yeah. Absolutely. And and I think, you know, I also think, you know, whenever I'm asked, what's your opinion about, like, where should I go and learn about? My advice is often includes read a book. Yeah.
 
And so I think this book sorry.
 
I know that I'm hoping I don't get any commission from it.
 
I send this to people, this unreasonable hospitality book. I think it's one of the best hospitality books, because this is just a guy that worked at a restaurant who made it the number one restaurant in the world from just a restaurant.
 
And I think that's the exciting journey that this book takes you on. And then that's the starting point. And then if you want more recommendations we have, and as far as the recommendation that I definitely that's the way to start.
 
There was a book I was gonna mention, actually, which I actually, quoted in my interview, for my job at ÐßÐßÊÓƵ.
 
For this?
 
It was how great companies get their mojo from Maslow.
 
Why is it all written that still?
 
It's written by a guy called Chip Conley who, started the Joie de Vivre hotels, which are now owned by Hyatt.
 
And this book is actually about how it's relevant to what we're talking about. It's how to transform an employee experience for hoteliers.
 
And, but it's widely relevant, which is why he turned it into a book, Beyond Beyond the Hotel Industry. But it's got some lovely stories about how he he essentially it was an economic downturn, and he realized that he wanted to continue his to run his business. There are great hotels in San Francisco.
 
He thought, how am I going to create a transformative experience, which, obviously, transformation is the top of Maslow's Triangle. How am I gonna create this transformative experience for, my customers? And he realized that that you do that by starting with your with your people.
 
Yeah.
 
And what we're trying to do what I'm trying to do is create a differentiated people experience at ÐßÐßÊÓƵ, by running a differentiated experience at ÐßÐßÊÓƵ, by running a differentiated people team in a company that is also trying to differentiate itself. So it really I thought it was a perfect, reference point.
 
It's very readable. But, again, you can go and get a summary on chat g p t.
 
I just don't believe in the summaries. I I I, you know No.
 
I don't think so.
 
Blinkist, at some moment that everyone was reading the Blinkist.
 
If you distill a book to fifteen minutes and it just give you the theory of it, but it's the stories in between that make it gel. And I've just struggled with those summaries because they they just don't stick. And I remember the stories that he tells in unreasonable hostility that link back to the theory that makes it real for me.
 
No. Absolutely. And and and some of the stories in in the Chip Conley book are great. And and I think if it comes from having really lived the life of a hotel Yeah.
 
And and also lived the life of a hotel. You know, there there's a reason there there are books written fiction books written about hotels. They are they are Magic. They are magic.
 
You know? They are they are little cities.
 
Bizarre. Magic in sometimes bizarre.
 
But they're they're little cities. Right? They're microcosms of the world.
 
And, so I do think that we have stuff to learn from from hoteliers as well as things to share.
 
But, yeah, I love Chip Conley, and I love this idea of transforming, transforming, the world for your customers always starts with the people, your people.

Chapter
Key advice for hoteliers
 
If you had to distill our last forty six minutes to kind of one piece of advice you'd tell hoteliers about people management, what would it be? You can hear me too as well.
 
Ask great questions.
 
I like that. What's a great question you would ask?
 
In what way?
 
Conversation going with a team member to to really get to the core of a team member instead of just staying on the surface.
 
What's holding you back?
 
Oh, I like that. That's a great question.
 
One great interview question that we started asking recently, to candidates is what's the legacy you've left behind at your last job? Because it tells you something about whether people were just in the job or whether they made an impact in their role. And it's one of the questions that I think we all now do love asking because it just tells you so much about the person.
 
I ask my favorite interview question is, and and it's a little contentious in some ways, but it's, what, what do people you don't get on with say about you?
 
Woah.
 
And the reason I like it is because I like to hire people who are self aware.
 
And, people who are not self aware say, well, I get on with everyone, really. It's like, you don't. I hate you.
 
Well, I don't.
 
You may be the loveliest person in the world, but someone will find that irritating, I'm afraid.
 
And so actually asking people to talk about their level of self awareness.
 
Because if you ask someone if they're self aware, they're gonna say yes. Yeah. Whereas if you ask them a question like that, it's it's quite interesting. But often, the reason I like the block it question is because people tend to know their the answer to most questions. Yeah. They tend to know the answer to most problems. And I am someone who deals with in people's problems, and I could I could solve it for them, but more often than not, they know the answer.
 
Nice. Thank you so much. This was supposed to be thirty minutes, but as you, as you can all tell, me and Naomi, we end up talking most Fridays afternoons for very long time, just catching up on the weekend. It's because we're very aligned on how we feel about, people, culture and driving, driving that.
 
And, so we have a lot of the same passions in that way. Whilst we're also very different. Like whilst I live my life on TikTok in the weekends, Naomi actually reads books most weekends, which is much smarter way to spend your time. Thank you, Naomi.
 
You're most welcome. Thanks for having me.