3 min read

Hospitality Skills Planning – featuring: Klaudia Mitura, Sally Prescott & Adam Harwood – Recruiting in Hospitality podcast

In our recent episode of ‘Recruiting in Hospitality’, Lancelot Narayan spoke to Klaudia Mitura, Learning & Development Specialist and host the ‘& Happiness’ podcast, Sally Prescott, Director of Zest for Life and Adam Harwood, Head of Learning & Development at D&D London.

Still image of our podcast guests; Sally Prescott - Director of Zest for Life, Adam Harwood - Head of L&D at D&D London and Klaudia Mitura - L&D specialist and host of &Happiness podcast

They explored skills planning in hospitality and the challenges employers are facing post-covid. What gaps have appeared in the fallout, not just from the pandemic, but also the implementation of Brexit. With all these hurdles, what skills will be required to rebuild a strong workforce and how important is it that employers address this issue now?

What’s really absolutely important right now is reskilling. Team members have been off for and it’s so important we get them back up to speed. Once that’s in place, we can look at upskilling, finding the future managers of tomorrow.” – Adam Harwood D&D London.

Diverse backgrounds, diverse experience

All guests were in agreement that the hospitality landscape had changed long term. “Hiring Managers need to shift their mindsets,” Klaudia said. “The times of hiring for ‘Culture fit’ are gone. They have to start hiring for ‘Culture add,’ and they’ll find their pool of people will increase.” Klaudia explained that if recruitment departments were looking for people who will 100% fit company culture, they’ll struggle. ” Think about people from diverse backgrounds, diverse experience, people who can actually add to your culture. I think that’s very important,” This will only develop and expand an employer brand and will ultimately make your company more attractive to candidates.

Adam Harwood stressed that in the run-up to coming out of lockdown, managers and team members went above and beyond in changing their normal day-to-day habits to embrace the new post-covid picture, but that they can’t afford to let up now, “They almost had to unlearn what they knew, what was embedded in them,” he said. Moving forward, Adam felt that leaders have to be clear in directing their teams, “It’s so important to help people with clarity. What do you need of them when they come back to work? Don’t give people content which will get them lost and confused and create ambiguity. It’s important you create context for the role and the organization you’re working in,” Adam said.

How to set your teams up for success

In addressing next steps, learning and development is a key component, not just in readying teams for the future, but making roles more attractive for prospective candidates. “From a leadership point of view, and with emotional intelligence, it’s our role as leaders to really take care of our teams and make sure they’re feeling confident and set up for success. I think it’s more important than ever before,” said Sally Prescott. “We have to be able to show them what success looks like to enable them to achieve it.

“Hospitality is a really great industry and if we’re going keep hold of talent, we have to make it attractive and this is where L&D comes in, we have to get serious about it.”