Hotels Can Find Prosperous Opportunities Among Local, Diverse Communities

Over the past two years, the pandemic has forced the hospitality industry to reflect and recognize how to make their businesses prosper in times of societal and economic hardship. Hospitality companies across the globe made furloughs to every part of their business - including Human Resources - leaving a skeleton team behind to look after more than hundreds of employees.

As the entire industry was brought to its knees, it's critical to recognize that while hospitality tends to be a wonderfully multicultural place to work, there is still so much room for improvement in terms of diversity within our teams and in our recruitment efforts.

All teams within the Red Carnation Hotel Collection believe unequivocally that luxury hospitality is a fantastic industry to join and work in with opportunities for all – the most inclusive, rewarding, and diverse there is – and it's important to see that with this diversity, there is opportunity.

Taking Strides for Diversity and Equality in Hospitality
In early 2020 before the first lockdown, Red Carnation Hotels took the opportunity to launch an initiative called Inclusivity, Diversity, Equality and Action (IDEA) with its parent company, The Travel Corporation (TTC). IDEA is based on building community, providing support, and contributing to personal and professional development in the work environment.

Though the global situation then changed drastically and was unprecedented - and many of the team not working - it felt like a good time to realign the company's values and ensure that they could come back stronger when the time came. Red Carnation wanted to make sure their workforce was fully represented and that they were recruiting and developing people from all underrepresented groups to reach their full potential.

With the Brexit backdrop, and many people returning home, Red Carnation's UK, Guernsey, and Ireland properties experienced many employees resigning their positions during lockdown and returning home. The landscape was certainly changing from a people perspective, and Red Carnation wanted to make sure that when business returned, their plans were in place and had become the normal way to do things, part of the culture throughout, and that they were attracting and recruiting, developing and growing from all underrepresented groups - not just students that had attended University (though of course they all still had a place in the company) and not just people who applied for jobs on caterer.com or Red Carnation's website directly.

Part of Red Carnation's Human Resources team (called People & Culture) that wasn't furloughed during the pandemic returned to work to commence full consultation meetings that would promote IDEA - not just within the UK and Ireland, but globally.

IDEA now has four co-chairs, a committee of around 50 people, and Identity Circles that regularly meet to discuss areas we can improve around underrepresented individuals and communities: LGBTQ+, Women, Single Parents, Disability, People of Colour, Religion and Culture and Neurodiversity. Our Leadership and Development team brought to life our goals with Diversity & Inclusion training and started the task of mass education on the subject. Red Carnation now has set goals and a 5-year strategy in place with The Travel Corporation (TTC), and most recently held an "IDEA Festival" in September 2021 on a global scale with guest speakers, panel discussions, interactive breakout groups and much more.

To ensure equality and best practice in the workforce, our new goals include many HR best practices which fully align with the United Nations Global Goals and the TreadRight Foundation's Corporate Social Responsibility goals, which includes increasing employee & market sentiment regarding diversity & inclusion. Our Founder and President's son, Brett Tollman, founded the TreadRight Foundation and is also CEO to our parent company, TTC.

Through these combined standards, Red Carnation is attracting those from underrepresented or disadvantaged backgrounds on their recruitment, training to educate their employees, mentoring and being allies to underrepresented employees and managers.

From these 5-year goals, Red Carnation has several actions or tactics that they are working towards. Their first step was to launch the topic and express globally to as many people as they could reach, what they wanted to do. From there they created (through conducting a survey) Identity Circles – to include many underrepresented groups – and chose Women, Single Parents, People of Color, Age, Neurodiversity, Body Positive and LGBTQ+ - as these were the areas many felt were underrepresented.

One area Red Carnation already succeeded quite well was their regard to women – with half the workforce made up of women as well as their senior managers being strongly represented (5 out of 7 senior executives are women; 6 out of Red Carnation's 20 hotels have female General Managers). Additionally, Red Carnation's Founder and President, Beatrice Tollman, and her two daughters who are now directly involved with the collection, are all female – but companies can always improve, even when they are doing well!

Embracing our Youth's Potential

At a time when the negativity around hospitality was growing, it was important to showcase the benefits of the industry to younger generations, who are the key to the future of travel. To inspire and motivate our youth to join the industry, Red Carnation created a "Masterclass" initiative, where People & Culture reached out to lecturers and students studying hospitality, leisure, tourism and hotel management in the UK and Ireland.

After circulating a questionnaire to University contacts on where we could help with online classes, Red Carnation then devised presentations. This was a mammoth task and involved staff of all levels, including General Managers, Executives, Red Carnation's Managing Director, and the People & Culture team, all of whom delivered lectures to students.

In total, Red Carnation reached 1,842 students in 40 lectures across 24 universities and colleges. Lectures covered subjects including Talent Management, Managing Change, International Human Resources, 5-Star Service, Mental Health in the Kitchen and Revenue Management. Red Carnation also delivered lectures on Sustainability, as this is an area high on the students' agenda that particularly resonates across the hotel collection. The feedback was extremely positive, and this led to high levels of engagement from students, many of whom have since been hired for Red Carnation's Management Program. An Oxford Brookes graduate who attended one of Red Carnation's Masterclasses was also hired to the People & Culture team, and 8 students from that Masterclass applied for this role.

Recruitment onto the Management Program shows Red Carnation's standing within the industry still. The positive reputation Red Carnation Hotels has created over many years, through to the Masterclasses presented, highlights the company's determination to bring talent into the industry.

In addition to the Masterclasses, the People & Culture team saw opportunity with volunteer service. People & Culture participated with the National Citizen Service, designed especially for 16 and 17-year-olds, that gives students a clearer idea of what they want from their future. So far, Red Carnation has run 5 sessions across 5 different boroughs in the summer, reaching 60-80 students per session. The sessions involve a presentation on hospitality and industry benefits. It also includes a practical task whereby the students help Red Carnation create new strategies to entice younger people into the industry. In the first session, when asked for a show of hands, initially only 3 people expressed an interest in a career in hospitality, but by the end of the session, this number rose to over 20, with 9 getting in touch to enquire about work experience.

People & Culture also partnered with Women in Travel, a social enterprise dedicated to leveraging the industry and its suppliers to provide disadvantaged women with the opportunity to fulfil their economic and individual potential. The team hosted a careers day for 9 women, many of whom were finding it difficult to get back into work, interviewed them, and offered employment to two.

Keeping Optimism in times of Crisis

Keeping a positive outlook, understanding employees' needs, and maintaining a steady leadership in a time of crisis was a key factor in retaining employment. A key achievement for Red Carnation Hotels was making far fewer redundancies then previously planned – due in part to furlough extension but also by living out family values even in the face of adversity and hardship.

People & Culture kept employees engaged, motivated and continued training people throughout and tried to keep people healthy in mind, body and spirit with well-being, meaningful messages. By doing this, the company received positive feedback from employees, which made everything easier to bear and kept the People & Culture team going.

Good communication became paramount, and all teams throughout the company worked hard to ensure that their messages to employees were informative, timely and truthful. Keeping employees engaged and developed, although they were at home, helped with their return to work. Following training, managers understood how COVID had affected employee's mental health and their home life, which has in turn enabled them to support their teams in a more informed and practical way.

Shortly after the pandemic began, Red Carnation began weekly meetings to help the global People & Culture teams and General Managers understand their relevant job retention schemes and look at ways to support their hotel teams. Help varied as the needs were differing and it was very time consuming and exhausting. Many times, staff were working more than 12-hour days to include all time zones.

Red Carnation also started a weekly well-being initiative – which included, 'Managing Anxiety,' 'Getting Active Your Way,' 'Financial Advice,' 'Lockdown Lessons,' 'Learning Opportunities from Home,' 'Connecting with your Team,' 'How to Stop Negative Thoughts from Spiralling,' and 'Reintegrating Back Into the World After Lockdown.'

Weekly calls to employees, attendance of tea parties and delivering training made the team visible and accessible, and through updating and re-launching the global People & Culture blog, 'Community Life' at Red Carnation, it ensured that employees could find easily accessible information about the company, learning and development, the handbook and the benefits.

Red Carnation's method of devising new online training courses and converting courses from a classroom format to online delivery also ensured that employees were engaged and continuously able to access training allowing employees to be prepared on their return to work. It's also important for companies to keep the fun aspect to work alive, and Red Carnation did this through posting positive messages on Instagram, hosting cooking events with the Executive Chefs and Pastry Chefs, wine tasting online, drawing classes for adults and children, fun quizzes, Escape Room events and even talent competitions.

Leaving the Door Open for All Employees

While making the difficult decision to furlough or let go employees, it's important for Human Resources teams to be well-prepared for their return and, if they don't return, to send a clear message that they are supported and valued in the industry.

During the pandemic, People & Culture held daily calls with General Managers, supporting them with employee queries. They also aided the Finance department by taking over the management of furlough payments and ensuring the relevant paperwork went out, switching from printing documents to sending communication electronically. They reviewed policies, contracts, offer letter templates, return to work documents, etc. to make sure that they matched the needs of the business, creating H&S blueprints for a safe return to work.

Additionally, People & Culture supported employees who were let go from the business and provided them with a wealth of useful information on employment advice, interviewing techniques, where to go to get financial help, how to access Universal credit and jobseekers allowance, and supplied helpful contacts and charities. The People & Culture team also kept the Employee Assistance Helpline open to all for a further year and held a post-employment online seminar to help people plan their futures. Some employees that had to be let go have since returned to the business proving the company supported them well throughout.

Understandably, the pandemic brought many things to light. One of the most encouraging observations to come out of this time has been a showcase of just how resilient, resourceful, and thoughtful Red Carnation's incredible team is, and how other hospitality companies can do the same.

Main Image: Red Carnation's career progression opportunities include exceptional training and development programs in place to help employees swiftly achieve their full potential.