What is your background in HR?
Like a lot of people in HR in this industry, I started off in Operations. During and after university I spent the best part of 10 years in a number of roles, for a variety of high street-branded restaurants and bars. However, when I reached GM level I realised that I wasn’t having the time to work enough on the people side. The training was a happy accident! I was delivering some cocktail training to my bar team at Hard Rock Café, and I had tweaked the session as it was very Americanised and would not have resonated. Unbeknown to me, a very senior leader had snuck in to watch and asked me afterwards why I had changed it. I explained, and then I was asked to roll my session out to all the other UK Café’s. I absolutely loved it! When my passion for operations waned, I knew I wanted to be involved in L&D and began in a role as New Openings trainer for a pub/restaurant chain. Seeing a new starter go from zero knowledge, to confidently serving real guests in 10 days was a huge buzz. I decided to study my CIPD to get technical HR knowledge as I had only touched on it in my degree. I then went on to work as a Training and Development Officer onboard cruise ships, and L&D Manager at world renowned Golf resort, then got my first group Head of L&D role for a hotel management company 8.5 years ago.
What does your role at LGH Hotel Management entail, what are your goals/ targets?
My role is very multifaceted here at LGH which I love. I am responsible for ensuring we have tools and resources in place to make sure every employee can have a development journey that is tailored to them. We ensure our new employees have a great start and this begins at their onboarding stage. Every team member has a 12-week development plan which is then customised further upon the completion of their probationary period. Alongside this, we have operated for many years a management induction every month for new managers that join us. This is a two day face to face event which I run with a member of the People & Development Team, this focuses on the culture of the business, the process and systems we have, the expectations of them as managers and this culminates in them producing a personal 3-month strategy plan for them to achieve during their first few months in the role. They then present this plan to their General Manager so they in turn can be supported in their hotel with the delivery of this plan. We use an e-learning system which has modules and documents that cover all the essential Health and Safety aspects, and it is my job to ensure all the content is in line with current legislation, and our own internal policies. I partner with external training specialists whom I vet to ensure are industry-leading and fit for purpose. These include our apprenticeship partners I am also responsible for the development side of learning, creating programs to grow our supervisors and managers, to ensure we have the skilled workforce we need to drive the business forward. I am constantly reviewing our learning provision, taking into consideration external industry and ensuring our L&D strategy aligns with that of the business.
We have recently completed our annual appraisals, and we take data from the individual development plans to understand our skills gaps, and it is my role to create interventions to develop these gaps.
My personal goal is to be known as a department that provides great service to our internal guests – our learners. We want every single employee to have a tailored development plan, one that considers both linear and lateral progression, and to have the learning mechanisms.
What developments are being made when it comes to people and training at LGH? What approach do you take?
As in many businesses, during Covid learning and development had to take a back seat. This means we have had the opportunity to re-evaluate and re-shape our development offering from the already established programmes we had in place. We have some exciting new initiatives coming up this year, including our new Management Essentials program. It became apparent as our business returned to some type of “normal” that many of our HOD’s had been internally promoted or were new to us and therefore needed greater support to develop their management and leadership skills and ensure their teams were delivering first class service to our guests. Therefore, the People & Development team have created a set of 10 modules, that cover everything a Manager needs to know, from understanding our people systems and policies, how to hire and build a great team, the LGH culture and how to impact both brand and internal company metrics, the aim of the program is to ensure all our managers are fully equipped with all the tools they need to develop and retain their teams whilst ensuring our guests have a fantastic stay, ultimately wanting to return.
The world of L&D has changed rapidly in the last few years, both technologically, but also in terms of the needs and preferences of our how our learners learn, and our approach reflects that. Management Essentials is a great example of how we have embraced a truly multi-platform training delivery style. Whilst it offers some classroom sessions, the opportunity to include virtual workshops, reflective case studies and on-the-job learning, bespoke to each job role enables us to ensure our training “gets to market” swiftly, efficiently and very importantly cost effectively. This blended and bespoke approach carries through to our external learning partners and in particular our apprentice offering. Launching this year is our Chef Academy, which takes the core Chef Apprentice program, and tailors it to our business and the unique skills required through a set of practical masterclasses. We have added extra sessions on areas such as nailing the guest breakfast, as we know this is super important to our guests! Chef recruitment continues to be very difficult and by working with our Head of Talent we have created a programme that we very much hope will enable us to attract new talent to our business and retain them through progressive self development. In a similar vein, we are considering the launch of a second Maintenance Academy in partnership with an apprenticeship company, which will take the form of a 24-month practical-led program, that will upskill our maintenance teams in all aspects of general maintenance, the first programme some 3 years ago was a great success and with the development in our property and product throughout the portfolio it is essential that we upskill our teams to have the ability to look after the quality of our hotels on an on-going basis. It’s important that we make training accessible for everyone, including traditionally behind-the-scenes roles. When we deliver virtual and classroom sessions, we always ensure we have some that are time-appropriate for our evenings and nights teams. In March I ran Appraisals Skills Sessions at 11pm!
We are also trying to encourage curiosity in learning, getting our team members to seek out learning at every opportunity – the pull learning effect. We have done this through our Summer School program – the business has over the past 7 years had a fantastic approach to L&D by using 3 months over the summer to really focus on great training, guest speakers and aspirational development opportunities. This year we have 56 individual learning sessions, either face-to-face or virtual, on a host of subjects, open to all team members in the business from Sales, Revenue, Interviewing, guest excellence and a new programme focusing on Mental Health and Wellbeing supported by an external speaker. Its really exciting to see a KP sign up to attend a Finance for non-finance team members session, and a Greenkeeper attend a broadcast session on Wellbeing.
Our e-learning system also has a huge library of content that we add to all the time, from the latest articles, to TED Talks, to a five minute video on how to create the perfect martini, we want to make learning accessible to everyone. The system can translate into over 90 languages too, so helps upskill our team who have English as a second language.
How do you attract and keep the best talent? And what investments are you making for the next generation coming through?
We know that engaged employees are more like to stay in a business, and it’s important to engage our teams through learning from the outset. Turnover is at an all-time high in the hospitality sector and whilst financial compensation is very important, engaging with our teams is also a key factor to retaining great people. Showing them that they have the opportunity to develop through multi-channel learning is a key part. We certainly don’t have a one size fits all approach, and research shows that Gen Z employees (those coming through now, and in the future) want visibility of career pathways and a clear guide of how to get there. They are also more likely to want bite-sized or micro-learning, which we support through our shorter virtual trainer-led sessions and our access any time e-learning system which has sessions from 3 minutes to 25 minutes. We are always looking at ways to make learning more accessible and appealing to all learning types, and this means being truly innovative with our learning offering. Our talent team provides great insight to the recruitment market which allows us to have a truly combined approach to setting our plans and strategies not only for this year but for the coming years.
How does this have a wider impact on the service and end users?
Ensuring our teams have all the tools they need to provide the very best guest service is our ultimate goal, the flexibility of our learning opportunities and the focus on every part of the guest journey enables us to retain high levels of guest loyalty in a very difficult market. In our industry, there is the antiquated notion that training is something that “has” to be done, but we need our learners to “want” to do it. You can only drive engagement in something if someone enjoys the user experience and sees the value in it. We are trying to make learning easy and fun, and available to everyone. When you click on a link to watch a Ted talk or see someone making the perfect serve G&T you are learning through engaging content which is enjoyable but also more likely to stick with you. Every programme that one of our team attends triggers a simple feedback process via an on-line link so we can review all comments and suggestions to make sure our activities and approach are what the business needs, what the guest needs and most importantly what our people need.
Any other personal goals or successes?
If I had to say anything its lighting the fire of L&D in the business again, and getting the teams engaged in learning opportunities. In 2021 I won a Springboard Award for Innovation in Training, so bringing an innovative blended approach to all that we do moving forward.
