HIRING good staff for the hospitality industry is hard, and keeping them is even harder.
At the five-star hotel level the situation is even more acute, as the business needs quality experienced staff to give customers the attention and service they expect.
With that in mind, Debbie Taylor, general manager of the Balmoral, has put in
place a new management development programme for up-and-coming employees.
The year-long scheme is designed to develop supervisors’ skills and to groom employees who show management skills early in their career.
"I have a great passion for being able to develop young people, and seeing them flourish and grow," Ms Taylor says.
"As an industry, we struggle to hire good people because it’s not seen as a good career opportunity with the kind of structured training you get in other industries. And especially in the five-star sector we really want to attract people who are very career driven," she says.
Retention is another key reason for providing training; when you get good people you need to hang on to them, Ms Taylor says.
"At the Balmoral we do have very good retention levels, with established staff with solid experience and also some very enthusiastic young people. With that in mind, we want to look at succession training, to keep those young people," she says.
The course has been designed alongside Edinburgh University, the Edinburgh Business school within the university and Cardiff University. The Cardiff connection came about because Ms Taylor worked there for Rocco Forte, which owns the Balmoral, for four years before transferring to Scotland, and had begun work on developing the course while in Wales.
The course is based around a four-hour study session once a month, plus projects and tasks assigned to each trainee.
The study covers all areas of management skills, including working as a team, team leadership, planning and organisation, developing others and "delivering and exceeding guest expectations". Each trainee will also be given a work-based project to complete.
All of the Balmoral’s management are supportive of the scheme, Ms Taylor says, and will work with trainees, talking to them about what they’ve learned and how they can put it into practice.
"We also expect the trainees to do two or three hours of self study a month and there are six assessments that they have to pass. It is quite a commitment but these are young people hungry for personal development. They’re just pleased to get an opportunity like this, fully funded by us, and with support from managers," Ms Taylor says.
Indeed, not everyone keen on the course gets in.
The Balmoral asked all interested employees to submit a paper on the hospitality industry and their own aims. These were passed to a panel of senior managers, and interviews were then held. At the end of that process, around 60 per cent of the applicants were accepted onto the course; 14 people in all were taken on. Those who were turned down will have a further chance in six months when a new training block will begin.
There’s no requirement for previous experience to gain access to the course. Attitude is much more important, Ms Taylor says.
"A good attitude and the right personality are what’s important, and we can teach them the principles of leadership and management."
Staff do, however, need to have worked at the hotel for at least six months, "so we have time to assess their commitment," and a letter of recommendation from their immediate manager.
Even after just a week, Ms Taylor says the trainees have started to learn more about themselves and their working styles.
Susan Sloan, assistant front office manager at the Balmoral, is part of the first intake to the course. She supervises a team of 11 reception staff, with a particular focus on training new recruits.
Ms Sloan joined the Balmoral after completing a degree in Hotel Management at Dundee University and says she hopes the management development programme will complement what she learned at University. In particular, she says, she is looking forward to the hands-on projects and assessments she will be working on, and hopes to develop her operational experience with a view to becoming a future manager at the Balmoral.
"I am aware this is a very challenging programme," she says. "But I need to gain management experience in order to progress, so I am delighted to be a part of this initiative. I love living in Edinburgh and working at the Balmoral, so I am pleased I am able to work my way up the career ladder without having to leave the city."
Ms Sloan is a perfect example of how the training can work, Ms Taylor says.
"She will definitely be the next front office manager, and the training will help prepare her for that," she says.
Ms Taylor’s interest in training stems from her work in the hospitality industry, and also from her training as a teacher.
"I’ve always worked in travel and tourism, but I studied for a teaching qualification in the evenings. At one point I was going to lecture in travel and tourism. When you work with big teams you really can see the benefits of training in retention, and in succession planning," she says.
Rocco Forte is particularly keen to push staff to higher things, aiming to grow its future management base as the company expands she says. "This is a company that wants to help people grow. I did my masters degree, funded by the company. That was hard, it was open learning and it was hard going back to studying after a while away from it, but it was good to do it," she says.
Training at the Balmoral is not limited to the new management course, Ms Taylor says. Whenever someone moves into a management role, a whole system is put in place to support and teach them.
"There’s a lot of support. There will be weekly meetings with their manager, to talk about how things are going and where they could do things better.
"And at senior management level, too, we do training. We use Edinburgh Business School for that too," she says. Regular strategy meetings are held every month for senior management and, as well as the serious stuff, management training can involve anything from climbing trees to riding quad bikes.
"Anything to help people bond, really," Ms Taylor says.
Hospitality doesn’t really offer any more difficult challenges than other service professions, Ms Taylor says. "Recruitment is difficult, getting the quality of people with the right attitudes. But that just means we have to do what we can to attract people and this is a good recruitment tool. If we can offer flexible hours, good pay rates and training opportunities, we’ll get the right people," she says.
Happy in the Capital but still movingDEBBIE TAYLOR, general manager of the Balmoral, moved to Edinburgh from Cardiff last December to take up her role at the hotel.
Originally from the Wirral, she says her job has seen her move frequently.
"This was a nice career move. I love the Balmoral and Edinburgh, and it was an exciting time to arrive because the hotel had just finished a £7 million refurbishment."
A mother of two, Ms Taylor says motherhood has changed her own management style, as she now consciously makes an effort to be flexible and help out people with young families. Her own long hours are made easier by having a "New Man" for a husband, who has taken on a lot of the childcare duties since the family moved up to Scotland.
Ms Taylor is now focussing on the American market, and is travelling regularly to the United States to talk to potential customers as the American tourism market begins to pick up.
"I’ve been out there quite a lot this year. American clients love to meet the hotel’s general manager. But there is a lot of enthusiasm from people wanting to come back, they’ve got over their concerns about travelling. And they are hugely fond of Scotland." Amercian visitor numbers to the Balmoral are up 11 per cent on last year and will be even stronger next year, she says.
The full article contains 1416 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
