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Reflect, Reopen, Rise – the roadmap for hospitality’s recovery and growth

With hospitality gearing up for reopening, employers are getting into the detail of workforce planning. The teams and workplaces they create will drive successful recovery and growth, but what are the essential points for attention? When it comes to people, processes, and cultures, what matters most?

Our recent Reflect, Rise, Reopen webinar, part of Caterer.com’s Leadership Collaborative, saw panel host Esther O’Halloran CEO of HR (Human Resources) in Hospitality joined by inspiring hospitality leaders; Michael BonsorMD of Rosewood LondonGhazala DavidArea Director of Human Resources at Dorsett Hospitality, and Josh LightDirector of People and Culture.

Our panel shared their reflections on the lessons learnt in 2020, the positive takeaways, and how these insights are helping them plan and build for reopening, recovery and future growth.

Bringing hospitality people back to the workplace

Esther started by asking each panellist what stage they were at with their reopening plans.

Ghazala opened the conversation. ‘We began by putting together a roadmap of what was really crucial for a successful reopening. As government guidelines keep changing, we have started planning to ensure that before we reopen our people are fully integrated, and their reboarding is in place.’

‘We want to ensure that they are being nurtured into their jobs and into the workplace. It is going to be very difficult initially because some may not have worked for almost a year. It might take baby steps, slowly bringing our people in, but the training has to be really quite robust, and you can’t put everybody into the same box because everybody’s learning will be different. It’s about flexibility, adaptability, and wellbeing.’

Multiskilling in the ‘new’ workplace

One key change across hospitality businesses is a much more flexible approach to roles.  During lockdown people have taken on many new tasks in new departments, learning new skills.

Picking up on Ghazala’s comments, we asked her about her teams that worked through lockdown.

‘They were doing all sorts of different roles, and they’re also learning new skills. Due to a reduced workforce, they were multitasking as they’re working in so many different departments.’

‘It’s been a real positive as they’re learning about other departments and what’s involved. We have put a lot of different processes in place, looking at how we could bring people back into the workplace, and also talking to HR because we want to make sure everyone is coached back to work in the right way.’

Staying open and learning on the job

Michael’s experience of reopening was different. ‘We waited until September to reopen and have remained open since then. 2020 made us re-evaluate the business because our guest profile changed and, due to Covid regulations, how we interacted with them.’

‘The Rosewood went from our usual 85% occupancy to single digits. It’s really made us stop and reassess the whole business. For many businesses that has been one of the upsides of this situation, in that we’ve had time during lockdown to do this.’

Michael continued, ‘We were lucky, we have incredibly supportive owners who enabled anywhere from 40 to 60 people to continue to work in the business. They’ve been busy, re-evaluating their departments, whether it’s in HR, bringing all of our training online, or tackling all those projects you try and get to when you’re operating normally but never attack because, you know, 85% occupancy sort of gets in the way.’

‘2020 gave us time to develop and plan, whether it’s the sales or the events team cleaning up databases, bars, the finance team stripping out expenses, renegotiating contracts, all of that, all of those things we’ve managed to actually get on top of’.

‘I really feel as we approach the proper reopening that the business has never been in better shape to accept guests back. The really encouraging thing we’ve seen is that when alfresco dining was announced, we have over 1500 reservations in the first five days. We are blessed with a beautiful outdoor courtyard space.’

‘We’re literally removing car parking spaces and creating a theme, and why not? And you know what, regardless of the location, we’re doing things differently already, things that we never thought we could do.’

Seamless re-integration of teams

There’s going to be a fine balancing act to reintroduce people back into the workplace and reintegrate them with colleagues who have been working throughout the lockdowns.

Michael believes that his teams will be experiencing a range of emotions about reopening.  ‘You have to acknowledge the people who have been working full hours for the past year and who are actually quite tired and are looking for a holiday.’

‘They have colleagues coming back to work after months on furlough and so you have this vast array of feeling and attitudes. As leaders and managers, it’s up to us to identify those feelings and work with our teams to monitor mental health and wellbeing.’

Communicating with empathy and compassion

Esther asked Josh Light, Director of People and Culture about his key learnings from the pandemic.

Josh commented, ‘One of the key things that I found from both my network and personal experience is the value of over-communicating, keeping people informed.’

‘We have to remember that people are feeling very differently, going through different things. Some may have lost loved ones, people have had COVID, and we can’t forget that.

Empathetic leadership has never been so important.’

‘People also communicate in different ways. It’s not all about using tech to reach out to people. We need a flexible approach. It’s about giving people the tools to be able to manage their stress and also be able to say, ‘actually I’m struggling a little bit’.

Facing the pressures of reopening

Josh reflected on the pressure that reopening will put on the hospitality workforce.

‘We’re all under pressure to get the doors open this summer and some people will thrive and absolutely get on with it. Some people will have a very different experience, however. For example, people who were used to being on their feet 24/7 may have been home for nearly a year. That’s going to impact their stamina and energy levels and they’ll need time to get up to speed again.’

‘Reopening is about starting the process early, following the guidelines and putting training in place to get our people prepared and engaged, emotionally and mentally.’

Redefining the workplace

Josh continued, ‘We’ve done 1000s of hours of online training, and all of our management team have completed almost 80% of their training, which they would normally do over the course of a year. It has allowed them to focus on the operational side of reopening.’

‘We’ve been virtually training using Flow, and the Skills Network. There is an amazing mental health awareness course on there, which is really in-depth. I think it’s 14 or 15 modules and so many people signed up to that, which was really encouraging to see.’

‘The only thing we realized we needed to do was really look at our entire workforce, so we got a lot of the departments together. Our food and beverage teams are no longer attached to an individual outlet, they can work all throughout the business because we’re going to need that flexibility and agility when we reopen.’

‘Another thing we’ve all realised is that as an industry we never thought that roles could be done from home.’ Josh said, ‘That’s got me thinking about recruiting in a new way because there are many departments in the hotel where there could be a hybrid working arrangement, so why not see if it is doable?’

Focusing on future success by providing the right support

Ghazala believes that a staged reopening will be the norm as business develops.

‘Our sales teams are looking for different business now and initially bookings will be domestic. The more business comes in, the more we can bring our associates back.’

‘Once people start returning from furlough, we need to be mindful of their mental health. One way to do this is to ensure that there is an employee assistance program in place, and to encourage everyone to use it.’

Ghazala continued, ‘It’s important to start building employees up as they return to work.  Have one-to-one’s and discuss their career paths. People have changed over the past year and goals and objectives may be very different now. Look at how we bring our people back into the workplace – baby steps with coaching to give people time to get back into their routines and lots of the right support and direction.’

‘We can also be mindful of the flexibility working from home has offered to certain roles within hospitality and think about continuing that level of support. It’s something that I would recommend, but in the same breath we have to be careful not to isolate anyone working from home completely, we have to make sure we involve them so that they’re not left completely. They need to be part and parcel of what we are doing within our teams.’

 Workforce planning post lockdown

Caterer.com were interested to find out how each of the panel has approached workforce planning and if it differed from pre-pandemic planning.

Michael and his team have gauged how their employees are feeling about reopening.

‘We wanted to know what was going on with our people and so we did an anonymous survey last week with a 90% response rate. The vast majority are super excited to come back and there were a lot of valid points too.’

‘There were things that we hadn’t thought of and we need to work on as we bring people back. And a lot of that is about sharing everything we are planning and doing. In a lot of situations, we don’t actually have the answer right now because we’re still waiting for the government, but we also need to communicate this to our employees, and that it’s going to be another two weeks before we do. It’s about being transparent and honest and open.’

Michael continued, ‘Everyone seemed pretty excited to come back and get started again, especially the food and beverage teams because they saw success during September, October and November, and it was so sad in December when everything was cut short in one of the busiest weeks of the year.’

The future of hospitality talent, post-Covid

The pandemic has been tough on hospitality with redundancies and closures. Add in the impact of Brexit and are we looking at a return to hospitality talent shortages?

Josh shared his thoughts.  ‘As we reopen, it’s about holding on to the talent you’ve already got and looking for the talent that fits your culture and values.’

‘Hospitality is about people and so many have had a tough time recently. We want them back and our industry leaders and managers have an opportunity to help these people to fall back in love with hospitality and bring these talents back into our businesses.’

‘There are great people out there and, despite Covid and Brexit, they want to work in the sector. We’ve demonstrated compassion and shared great stories, and attracting talent is also about coming together and saying, ‘actually, we are a great place to work. a great diverse environment.’

Creating a secure, safe and healthy workplace

The news that bookings have surged since the announcement of reopening is great for the sector but will inevitably place stresses on both venues and people.

Esther asked Michael what he saw as the main considerations as we move closer to a full reopening of the sector. ‘For me, the emphasis is security, health and safety. I think this is something we all have in place but is definitely something we’re looking to strengthen as we move forward.’

‘The general public has shown how much they appreciate hospitality. To meet their needs, we have to be realistic about what the sector will go through during the rest of 2021. What sorts of planning and training should be in place for the business and our teams?’

Ghazala agrees, ‘we’ve got that clear roadmap that lifts people’s minds and spirits. As leaders, we are spending time making sure that all of our teams are fully aware of the steps we are taking to keep them safe and secure.’

Josh added: “It’s very interesting. I’ve spoken to people over the last few weeks who have said they’re now integrating happiness officers within their people teams. It’s that person’s sole responsibility to check in with colleagues and make sure they’re happy, they’re engaged, and their mental health is good.’

The future of talent-spotting in a digital age

Zoom, Teams and WhatsApp have become the ‘go-to’ communication channels, so does this mean the end of ‘face to face’ recruitment for the sector?

‘Hospitality has always lagged behind other industries when it comes to digitalisation, Michael said. ‘I hope we embrace this form of communication and that it stays. Our workforce is quite young, so they actually appreciate that they can access training, job opportunities and information on their phones wherever they are. We really wanted to keep it that way for sustainability reasons.’

‘Briefings and operational matters still need to happen in person, but we’ve got to look at the moments we come together. I’m not sure that will happen for training anytime soon, at least not this year.’

Continuing the discussion around the impact of digitisation in hospitality, Josh said ‘I’m a massive believer in using systems that free up admin time so that we can spend more time working with people, it’s fundamental and has never been more important than now.’

‘With training and development there has to be a balance. Blended learning is definitely still important but not everyone gets on board with that.’

‘One of the biggest challenges is around training managers or finding systems that give managers the skills and ability to be able to have conversations with employees. They may not be skilled or comfortable to do this naturally and as an industry we have to work with managers and leaders to develop those skills.’

Panel Top Tips for a successful workforce reopening

Michael’s top tip: ‘We need to stop and think about how we can do things, whether it’s a request from a colleague or a client.  We actually need to think far outside the box now and ask ourselves, ‘how can we make that work?’  And I think that’s going to be a mantra for the rest of this year.’

Ghazala’s top tip: Never to say…  ‘can’t do it, don’t know how to do it, never heard of it, how do I do it?’ 2021 and onwards will be about ‘can do’ attitudes and really engaging with customers and guests.  Making them feel that they are part of our team, and that we are excited to have them back.

Josh’s top tip: ‘Hospitality leaders who have been working all the way through the pandemic are knackered, they’re a bit exhausted and now their focus is getting the operation open. Yes, it’s going to be fun, but let’s remember that compassionate leadership goes a really long way. Let’s reopen with confidence and decency.’

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