By Professor Peter Jones MBE FCGI FIH FRACA: For each and every hospitality business, and the industry, culture matters.
I always judge business events by what I take away from them, was I stimulated, and did the event provoke further thought on the matters being discussed and debated. Following a recent roundtable at The Dorchester that I took part in, much thought was provoked and I have taken pen to paper to air my thoughts.
Why should culture matter when the current priority for the hospitality and catering industry is survival?
Survival always focuses on business economics where people are a cost, but those very people are also the invaluable resource that can ensure survival. That may sound rather trite, easy to say, but not as easy to do, especially when you’re facing increasing costs, people shortages, and the impact of the loss of customer confidence through inflationary and recessionary pressures.
Much has been talked about, and said on the ‘headwinds’ facing the industry, but not as much on how we maintain the essential skills resource of the people that the industry will need in the future. The headwinds will in time both change direction and reduce in strength and intensity.
The industry has post-pandemic, faced economic uncertainty that has led to a review of operating sustainability and the basic questioning of some business models. We are all aware of businesses which have decided that the only option is to close the doors, and those where they have reduced the scale and nature of the operations to match resources, the finances available, and customer demand.
There is a longing to return to a level of stability and whatever used to pass for ‘normal’.
Rather than returning we need to be looking towards the future and look to understand what a successful hospitality business will look like. Not just in terms of the operating model or the finance, but the very culture of the organisation and how that culture influences outcomes, not just for the business but for the industry as a whole.
Any organisation, especially hospitality organisations, have many of the characteristics of living beings and they can be recognised by the way they behave in much the same way as we recognise people’s behaviour.
That behaviour is governed and influenced by the values of the leaders and those values shape the organisation’s culture.
How organisations behave is obvious to those working inside them, to the customers that use it, to its suppliers and the public at large. From the way it behaves comes the reputation, either good, bland, or bad.
Hospitality has its share of bad actors, whose reputations and public perceptions impact on the public view as the industry as a whole. Last Novembers’ Which Travel survey named Britannia Hotels as the U.K.’s worst hotel chain for the 10th year in a row. Premier Inn was the best performing chain. One of the significant differences between the worst and the best is reputation and how that reputation originates is from the organisational culture. That is why culture matters.
The illustration above is an attempt to identify the characteristics that contribute to a successful organisation. The vision, culture and beliefs are the outer circle that provides the guiding principles, the parameters and frameworks of how the organisation should behave. The inner circle is how it actually behaves focussing on the people who are the organisation. The culture and reputation of the organisation is demonstrated by how its people at all levels are seen to actually behave.
This starts with creating rewarding, quality employment that recognises the need to offer flexible opportunities to meet the changing needs of the current and more importantly potential hospitality workforce. This requires an organisation prepared to offer professional career opportunities and to nurture individuals to meet their potential through continuing development. Organisations need to be able to demonstrate their own high levels of professional behaviour and to have a vision that’s aspirational and engaging.
People enjoy belonging to organisations that share their values and reject those that do not. Clubs, societies and even political parties only have members who share those values. Hospitality businesses need to be able to demonstrate their values in an honest and transparent way in order to be able to attract those individuals who would share those values.
Recruiting and retaining high-quality team members is not just a marketing exercise. It is an exercise in self-belief and reputation. It is about demonstrating the values of the individual businesses, but more importantly of the industry itself.
It has to offer aspirational, engaging, quality career opportunities that value and recognise the contributions of individuals as individuals. If the industry is going to succeed and become more resilient in the future, it needs; public recognition of its value to society, political recognition of the contribution and reach it makes, not just in financial terms, but in the human terms of providing a service to the communities it serves. This is all about reputation. Delivering a positive professional reputation is about demonstrating how the culture of the individual businesses and the industry as a whole, really matter.
A good start would be that as an industry that provides hospitality to guests it is equally as hospitable to all members of its team.
If you want to take a look at the roundtable at The Dorchester that stimulated this article, here it is, with an interviewer speaking with some of the delegates, including myself.