60 seconds with... Andrew Botting Managing Director How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? I am a keen news-watcher and seeing reports coming from China / Far East alerted me to the problems that were on the way. We had already started communication with clients regarding how we would deal with Coronavirus (before the lock down) so when it was announced we were in a strong position to move to the next stage of closing operations and furloughing the teams. Early action has undoubtedly saved us lots of money and means that our clients trust the advice that we give them. How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? Obviously, Government rules mean that we cannot have direct contact with the teams. As such we have encouraged contact to be made via WhatsApp groups / similar and know that regular quizzes / team chats occur. As MD I have kept in direct personal contact with my senior furloughed team players and get them to pass on my best wishes to the teams.
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? It will have major effects particularly in the short term whilst the ‘rules’ are being refined. From limiting numbers in food areas / to actually getting to work and onto the working floors...there will be problems. I see services needing to change – even if there is no scientific rationale for doing so. Buffets and open food will virtually disappear. Another major loss will be customer interaction – hard to do when you have PPI and are behind a screen What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Sadly the main trends (with reference to B&I catering) are mainly negative. The most profound will be that less people will work from ‘the office’ and home working will become more the norm. As demand lowers then cost focus will be higher and sadly I think job losses are inevitable.
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? 3 things. UK Hospitality have been amazing and kept us all focused and informed. The Government I believe has managed the whole crisis in an orderly and positive manner – furloughing has been a game-changer. The final one is a bit of a double-edged sword and that is how easy it is to work from home and tools such as Zoom / Microsoft Teams …just work. I think it will cause B&I catering issues in the future but at the moment it is keeping us ‘afloat’ CORECRUITMENT
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Email broadcasts from the CEO and top management on a weekly basis, coupled with daily appreciation on the WhatsApp group with all the stores, including video messages, have made sure we retain the strong link with team members and keep supporting them, especially during this period. We also carry out all our office meetings on video conferencing platforms with the Head Office team to ensure all departments are working collectively to ensure business continuity. What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way?
Ashwine Dhanuka
Chief Operating Officer How is your Business planning for re-opening? When we started thinking and planning on how we re-open the business, we knew it would never be straightforward. Apart from government regulations and strict social distancing measures, there was a fear in customers to step into any institution which looked crowded. As market leaders, we knew that we had to prove to earn the privilege to remain open; not only to preserve jobs for all our employees, but to also give back to the community and the front line essential workers. We worked closely with the government to retain our carryout and delivery channels. In order to keep these two channels ongoing, we implemented new SOPs that were focused on hand washing, the use of gloves, the use of face masks, recording every employee and customers temperature upon entry into our premises, promoting cashless payments, floor markers, restricting the number of people on our premises, as well as sanitizing the store every 2 hours. As the lock down measures ease in the next few weeks, we continue to work closely with the government by retaining all the previous measures taken, which we feel will become part of the new normal. In addition to these measures, we will be making changes to our seating layouts to comply with social distancing protocols which will reduce the seating capacity in stores and deny entry to any customers who are not wearing a face mask. This will also flow into our head office where the support department and core members of the Leadership Team are based. From a 2-month 100% Work from Home, we will start opening the office with an alternate day schedule to ensure we maintain social distancing and implement additional measures such as daily deep cleaning of the office.
Operating in a country which has a lower internet penetration compared to global standards, as well as low smartphone penetration, our business has been strong in the dine in/carryout sector with the majority of delivery orders coming in through phones. This is despite having a robust e-commerce solution with a better customer journey and being a simpler option than ringing up the store. The high adaptation from customers to place delivery orders, USING our e-commerce platforms during this period has been phenomenal and we have seen these volume's triple from the previous norms! This has helped enforce and remind customers of our delivery strength in the market and building higher trust levels as we see a spike in conversions when customers use our website, which is much simpler than going to the store or ringing up the store. How will social distancing effect your business? We believe that social distancing will modify the pillars of our business. From being a heavy dine-in business, we will see a shift in business structure with carryout and delivery taking lead. Technology always played an important role but will re-define the business as we move to the new normal where meetings that once involved 25 people sitting in a room will now be held through video conferencing applications. This in turn will reduce the need for travel, which means companies will start allocating bigger budgets and attention to technology. What trends are you seeing to come out this time?
I believe technology will play a bigger role in the coming days with companies reducing travel spends with a stronger focus on remote work. Depending on the company’s nature of business, we are also likely to witness more employees working from home which has been proven during the pandemic. This in turn would influence the need for bigger offices which would have a direct impact in the real estate sector. Within the QSR sector, drive-thrus and home delivery channels will see a significant demand which will influence the size of store builds, that would also have a direct impact on the real estate sector. These two outcomes are likely to create nervousness in the real estate sector thereby reducing market rate How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? inflation, giving renters a bigger advantage in lease negotiations. Visiting team members in the field is vital for our team knowing that Malls and shopping centres are likely to suffer in the short term, as they have complete support. Not being able to conduct these visits they are congregators of people, before they normalize in the new world with the help of technology. during this pandemic period has been challenging, but we have maintained our engagement with them using technology.
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60 seconds with... Daniel Spinath Founder How is your business planning for re-opening? Good dose of trial & error in pilot stores to “model” the new normal. Strengthening of takeaway, delivery and creation of e-commerce business. Training of staff on safety, service, NPD. Injection of a good dose of humor to re-engage with staff and customers. “Rebirth” mentality.
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? Zoom Zoom Zoom - on-line music sessions information on state of the business to ensure everyone keeps the faith - issuing of playbooks
How will social distancing effect your business? Certainly negatively, unsure to what extent - but working on the tech to minimise the impact and keep entertainment cues alive (and make them better!) What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Speed, efficiency, service and value will be more important than ever. The great concepts will survive and become stronger over time.
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? The incredible enthusiasm of our staff to get back to work and make a difference!!!
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60 seconds with...
Kamal Mahamdallie Head of Business Development How is your Business planning for re-opening?
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place?
Last week we actually started selling drinks at our venue (Off-Licence style), yet we haven't stopped since lock down - As we've moved our beloved Dabbers Bingo Shows Online, both for public demand and corporate need.
We'll have to adapt from a venue perspective, as a venue like ours Social Distancing would have an impact on our guests experience. The appetite currently for real socialising is huge as people can't wait to see their friends and colleagues in person. So, once we are in a place that we can operate both safely and provide the How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? atmosphere needed for a great night out we are We kept our Team (there was no way we were letting this expecting sell-out shows across the board. talent go!). Everyone has taken and passed an Online Course (I did Account Management & Sales Force What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Design). The Production Team have been working I think the public movement to online entertainment throughout making our Online Shows better. Now the was strong initially, yet faded quite quickly as people Ops Team are serving the finest drinks on Houndsditch spent more and more time on their working on their and preparing our venue, and our Corporate Online computers… and so come the evening or weekend, they Events have brought teams together from across the want to get away from their computers for a bit. globe throughout lock down - Our furthest destination so Gardening, cooking and online learning have developed far was Sao Paulo Brazil, as the beauty of Online Events is a lot. And people are connecting socially with one that it doesn't matter where you are in the world, as long another more frequently on the phone as their pace of life slows and they have more time to think about as you have internet you can join us. others. We think there will be a big bounce back for What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a venues like ours that provide first class entertainment and an opportunity for groups of friends and families to positive way? socialise with one another. Just how quickly we adapted, at Dabbers our thing is modernising the beloved game of Bingo so when we had to close our venue - We had to take our experience Online. We had a meeting and it was like getting the band back together, everyone was in! We saw lots of hidden/unexpected talents in the 10 days we set ourselves for our first Online Event on the 9th April. CORECRUITMENT
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60 seconds with...
Kieron Summerhayes Director
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? These are testing times for everyone and these were certainly not the conditions we were expecting to launch our new business in! However, our company, its ethos, and our service offering has been a year in the making and we are determined to be ready for when things get better. Our plan before the crisis was to continue working with our clients to deliver their events with a view to launching an event of our own next year. When everything was put on hold, the first thing that we did was to speak to our clients and to ensure that we had paid all of our partners that we had booked advance. We felt it was important to look after the people that that are so key to the success of our business. We then used this time to re-evaluate our business plan and have been using the time to create new event concepts for next year. It has been valuable time, which we probably wouldn’t have had if we were busy delivering the events we had contracted before the pandemic. What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? The level of engagement on social media and the support from our network has been brilliant. Everyone is feeling uncertain at the moment and it has been really good to talk. We have made some new acquaintances and have come up with some really exciting ideas with new partners. The events industry never fails to amaze me with how resilient we are and how well we have all come together to support each other.
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How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place?
We are working remotely as usual throughout the COVID-19 crisis and whilst we haven’t been able to meet clients, we have been using video calls more than ever and this is set to continue at least for the foreseeable future. The biggest change is going to be for the events that we and other organisers run. As everyone knows, at the heart of events is the coming together of people for entertainment, to learn or to do business. Planning events in the future will be significantly different, the industry will need to consider how we minimise person-to-person contact, how we screen people, new cleaning processes and for organisers how we update and distribute timely and accurate emergency communication information. My business partner, Matt Wozniak, sits on the ‘AEO Operations’ team and they have been looking at creating and collating best practice approaches on what event recovery could look like. Only time will tell but we continue to monitor the situation closely. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? The one thing that the COVID-19 crisis has forced business to do, is to (where possible) allow their teams to work from home. In my previous role, people may have worked one day a week from home, but I think this has proved to a lot of businesses that people can work from home effectively and I wonder whether this is going to make companies wonder whether they need expensive offices, it may just have sped up the change. This could create an opportunity for event organisers as the company conference or internal events maybe the only chance to get their teams together. We are also seeing many more virtual events taking place as event organisers look to innovate in challenging times. Events such as Microsoft’s Build Developer conference and The Chelsea Flower Show are both going to be virtual in 2020. Whilst these cannot replace the face-to-face experience, virtual events create new ways of connecting with larger audiences and filling the void left by COVID-19. Is this something that will become part of the event cycle creating another platform and enhancing the main event?
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60 seconds with... Pieter Bas van Litsenburg Regional Manager
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? steps did you take? We had set up a broadly skilled task force to coordinate between the MEININGER Hotels headquarters in Berlin and our 29 hotels throughout Europe, even before the first COVID-19 infections in Europe officially got detected. Operating internationally meant we needed to track continuously changing government directives and restrictions. Especially in the first weeks, information and close cooperation were key.
So many creative initiatives popped up all over our internal channels and social platforms: online pub quizzes and cooking sessions to introduce amazing local dishes and local donation initiatives to support the less fortunate, just to name a few.
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place?
Our clients are families, backpackers, school groups as well as business guests. They form a liked minded community that wants to interact and discover How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? the cities we are in. Obviously, dorm rooms will not The Regional Managers are in daily contact with their be an option for quite a while, and we are working on alternatives to our buffet style breakfast and cosy bars. Operation teams. As I am overlooking the UK, Danish, Belgian and Dutch market, I could support our staff in What trends are you seeing to come out this time? these four countries to ensure their needs were heard and understood right from the beginning. At the The physical distancing is a challenge in a people’s same time, we kept each other informed about business like ours; accommodating people and cultures the measures to face our daily changing reality. We to meet with each other is an essential part of what we worked closely together to accommodate individual do. Everywhere I look, I see hugely creative initiatives needs and secured a safe work as well as home showing the great resilience and true entrepreneurial environment for everyone. Our hotels are all still manned power of our business. with our own people, it is very important that we engage with them not only through modern technology but also face-to-face, be it from a distance. We have regular video call sessions, both informal and work related.
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60 seconds with... Scott Macdonald Managing Director How has your business dealt with the lock down, what What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a steps did you take? positive way? Critically I went into 'parent mode' and made sure our teams were front and centre as a priority, so we acted pretty quickly in furloughing all staff within 48 hours of shuttering the sites. I managed that process myself to make sure all they all felt secure and knew what the process meant (as much as I could!) and to reassure them that I continue to have their backs. I then went into negotiating mode with suppliers 1st and then Landlords, most to be fair have been supportive.
Not a surprise so much, because as an industry we've always (mostly!) been supportive of each other, but the community across the industry in sharing best practice and advice has been nothing short of inspiring.
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place?
We have pivoted our St Pancras site, and in doing so we have pretty much re-written all our Health and safety How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? processes. In terms of effecting, my hope long term not a huge deal as we had a pretty strong grab and business. I send a weekly note out to all the team about what I've What we've implemented recently to support the lost been up to and how the plan is evolving to get to a point sit in trade is a click and collect platform, local delivery of reopening (of sorts) I share links to websites that have platform and a gift card through Toggle. been recommended to give advice on their, mental, financial and physical wellbeing. We also have an internal intranet called The Market Place, we update this What trends are you seeing to come out this time? regularly, all staff can access to give them online shopping discounts, online advice and any free webinars Evolution of the delivery model, dark kitchens, prethey could listen in on. payment apps will now be pivotal.
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60 seconds with... Scott Steenrod Managing Director
How is your business planning for re-opening? Our priority is to re-establish trust with all stakeholder groups, including our clients, guests, team members and shareholders. We are working closely with each group to understand their needs and work in lockstep with our reopening efforts. While it’s not an entirely predictable environment, we are finding that consistent, candid communication has been the key to being as prepared as possible and exceeding expectations. We have prepared a Covid-19 Response playbook for our teams to assist in reopening each of our respective businesses when the time comes and are establishing unit specific critical path action plays 30-60 days out from opening. How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? We have a core group of team members working in our commissaries preparing meals for essential workers, seniors and families in need. So, we stay in close touch with them. Otherwise, we are doing video conference huddles three times per week with our leadership team. We have a micro-site and text capabilities for our furloughed employees where we provide regular updates on the business. Finally, we host monthly virtual town halls for all team members that have been well attended.
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? It will certainly shift the public’s expectations for the foreseeable future, and we expect a reduction in attendance and participation at all of our venues. We also expect business to shift to more pre-order and pickup/take out versus dining in. We are looking to make desk deliveries in our business dining accounts and full capitalize on home delivery in our public facing operations when appropriate. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Technology playing a critical role in managing the preorder and payment process; creative meal kits for delivery at home; micro-weddings and other smaller scale social events in the face of limits on large-group gatherings. Value perception will be more important than ever in light of the economic impact from the crisis.
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? I can’t say it’s a surprise as our team never ceases to amaze me, but their resilience and dedication in the face of as challenging of circumstances we could face as a business have been inspiring beyond words. CORECRUITMENT
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60 seconds with...
Stewart Moss
Group Director of Sales How is your Business planning for re-opening? As a group, the priorities for our collective focus are clear: we have to ensure that we continue to communicate to our clients just how hard we’ve worked to ensure our business operates safely ‘post virus’, and we have to continue to keep our teams fully informed as to ‘what we will look like’ upon their return. We have, therefore, created an extensive amount of collateral ranging from concise operational guidelines, to a studio produced video showing our ‘new’ customer journey. We have also taken this opportunity to revisit all our current collateral, offerings, website design/functionality, and crucially what the new ‘great’ looks like for our commercial team upon their return. No small amount of work. In addition to this, a quick scan of our Social Media will show that we have had a completely different focus during lock down: as a group our sole aim as been to ‘add value’ and, we have added value to natural and new business friends alike. Kindness became our new currency, and this has resulted in some tremendous efforts across all the hotels where we have supported both our communities and one another. We have behaved in a manner that has further highlighted ‘what we are really
about’, and ‘who we really are’ as a group. How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? True to form, we have seen some excellent ideas emerge during the lockdown from across our teams and we were truly proud to see some of those ideas gain press attention. Certainly, the initiatives that arose from ‘kindness being our new currency’ offered up the opportunity to both keep team engagement high and serve our communities, a ‘win’ by anyone’s book. Under this new banner, we have been busy doing everything from dropping care packages off to those in need, to hosting team ‘TikTok’ challenges! We also received a lot of nice attention for operating a complimentary lunch DriveThrough for Emergency Workers and those involved in (safely) handing out the food that afternoon, got to do what we do best: brighten someone’s day.
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What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? For me, just how commercially agile we have become. I am incredibly fortunate to head up a great team; I can ask them for a complete shift in focus and they will not only realign themselves… they will exceed their mandate - every time. As a result, where we are heading next as a group …I think will surprise people. I am excited for our collective futures. How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? The public's expectations of how hospitality businesses should now operate has dramatically altered, that is a given. Therefore, we will all expect a reduction in both bedroom occupancy and event attendance across our venues and the industry is subsequently poised for a phased return. We would hope to see a strong return in 2021. However, as I have already alluded to - we are going to surprise many with the new foundations we are laying down now; the hotels will still be the safe, hospitable, fun operations they have always been…but as group we’ve a much bigger picture to bring to fruition. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Naturally, the use of contactless technology is becoming more prevalent – I would expect that the operations who find themselves behind the curve on automated check in, key cutting and digital order taking will now be revisiting this. The customer perception of value I think will be more important than ever before, the economic impact of bringing the country to a stand still will be felt for some time – subsequently, we have just created the best value package we’ve ever offered: #TheGreatYorkshireEscape. We wrote an ‘Open Letter’ to the many tourist attractions throughout the county to pool resources on that one, everyone needs to work together now. That much is clear. Outside of this, I really think that the businesses that house those truly great people and their great personalities are going to come out of this the best – we have all by this stage directed our own goodwill towards the businesses in our communities that deserve it. You simply cannot duplicate or centrally replicate ‘personality’, I think this is a mistake many companies have made and we will now see more and more evidence emerge now of how well (or not) many of them have looked after their people. www.coreruitment.com | 1
60 secondes avec... 60 seconds with...
Vincent Bergmann Directeur Général / General Manager Comment votre entreprise prévoit-elle sa réouverture ? Nous travaillons actuellement avec nos cadres pour finaliser notre plan de réouverture en nous focalisant sur 2 axes : 1 - Comment assurer une reprise d’activité dans les meilleures conditions sanitaires à la fois pour nos clients et nos collaborateurs ? 2 - Comment enrichir ou redéfinir nos offres pour les adapter à de nouvelles attentes ?
Comment restez-vous engagé avec votre personnel en ce moment ? Nous maintenons la communication ouverte avec nos équipes et encourageons nos collaborateurs à partager avec nous leurs expériences actuelles et leurs idées pour le futur.
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Quelle a été votre plus grande surprise pour l'entreprise de manière positive? La réaction très constructive et supportive des collaborateurs Comment la distanciation sociale affectera-t-elle votre entreprise ? Ce sera une grande remise en question de nos procédures de fonctionnement. En même temps nous considérons que ce sera une source de changement positif et durable. Quelles tendances voyez-vous apparaître cette foisci ? Une demande renforcée d’authenticité, une recherche de plaisirs simples, une personnalisation marquée.
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60 seconds with...
David Ashington Director of Sales & Hospitality How is your business planning for re-opening? It has been an intense period over the last 10 weeks. During the period of closure, we have been working on a range of areas in our business, not only adopting to the huge operational changes that will come forward when we re-open the full resort from the 1st of July but also our modus operandi of the financial and commercial models. Since our inauguration in 2007 our passion and commitment has always been to deliver a service of excellence. This remains our key objective and our recent period of closure has allowed us to reflect and focus more on new initiatives towards providing the very best guest experience here at Monte Rei. The well-being of our guests and employee’s is a key part of that experience guaranteeing total confidence in our service levels. We are all extremely excited and cannot wait for our first guest arrivals What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? I would have to say it how strong the brand is and how emotionally attached our guests are to Monte Rei. We have guests literally worldwide and have been contacting all our guests through numerous channels. It has been very heartening to hear how affectionate our guests are about Monte Rei and how they cannot wait to enjoy our experiences once more in the future. However, the most touching has been the enquiries towards the well-being of their favourite staff members they have become close to, such as their favourite bar-tender or golf service staff and so on.
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How will social distancing effect your business? Whilst we are a low volume – low density resort we are extremely lucky in the fact that our estate is set across over 1.000 acres which lends itself to cope comfortably with social distancing. The resort has been designed in such a way that our guests can experience the wonderful outdoors of Portugal and the fantastic weather. From an accommodation perspective we have a number of villas and apartments aimed at family members and friends’ enjoyment in their own private setting. Our golf course is easily adaptable to ensure everyone’s safety and the majority of our leisure facilities are also outdoor. All of our restaurants have excellent spacious terraces, and this will allow us to space accordingly with very little impact on guest experiences. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? At least two very notable trends are appearing across the broad spectrum of the tourism industry. Firstly, guests looking into the range and quality of services available on resort which offers a clear indication towards their wishes to spend more time on-site. Secondly, a definite search towards less populated regions is very prominent currently, there seems to be a shift away from the highly populated areas at present.
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60 seconds with...
Gabriel Gonzalez Co-Founder
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take?
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place?
Furloughing everyone was the first thing we did.
The million-dollar question is still the 1m vs 2m. Our sites are not huge, so this will make a big difference. We are evaluating different scenarios but waiting eagerly what the new Guidelines will be.
Then it has been really a case of navigating all the madness to try and take the best decisions for the future of the business with the limited information available and all the different moving targets! From funding to rent, the 2m. vs 1m. question mark. All these points will determine when we will be able to re-open and how. I think everyone is on the same boat.
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? I have a weekly catch up call with my management team, and we connect with the rest of the team on a regular basis via WhatsApp.
What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Acceleration of technology in our space, which we are already seeing change at a fast pace, this will bring changes that are difficult to predict, but these will be here to stay. I also think people's habits will temporarily change to cooking more at home, but I believe people will want to go back to going out on a regular basis to see friends and family. In the end we are social beings!
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? The good and positive attitude of my management team in the face of uncertainty. And our capacity to adapt to extremely hard circumstances
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60 seconds with...
James Sinclair Co-Founder
How is your business planning for re-opening? Pivoting to what we can do now. With plans to reopen we’re waiting on the government to give us permission.
How will social distancing effect your business?
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? We have been doing regular Facebook chats in the closed groups we have and never left the phone!
What trends are you seeing to come out this time?
Hugely. We just can’t make money in leisure with this policy in place.
The death of physical cash. But a return to normal once the restrictions are lifted as always happens. History tells us this.
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? How we have pivoted well and set up 2 new businesses in lock down.
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60 seconds with...
Jennifer Davidson Founder & MD How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? Sleek currently has its Senior Management Team working from home and the remainder of the team on furlough. While lock down has been in place, we have maintained regular contact with all of our clients and suppliers to offer support and that extra bit of virtual, social contact that everyone needs! How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? Engagement with our team has been a large focus for us. Lock down and furlough were never going to be easy, especially for a team like ours where the office is constantly buzzing! We have implemented bi-weekly calls between managers and individual team members, fortnightly team drinks and monthly company updates. For the team members on furlough, we have optional training plans that are led by their individual professional and personal goals. Our main aim was to keep our team motivated and ensure they had guidance on upskilling. What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? The Senior Management Team and I have used this opportunity to reassess a lot of the day-to-day procedures of the business and implemented a more streamlined approach for when the team returns. CORECRUITMENT
We have also used this time to establish pillars of our business along with a business strategy to move Sleek forward. We are also very excited to announce we have used this time to re-brand, which will be launching early July! How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? At the moment we are taking all enquiries case by case, we want to ensure we are following government guidelines and recommendations. As the government assesses what social distancing policies can be applied, we will get a more of an understanding of what the next 6 months looks like and what adjustments to events we may have to make. We are in contact with a lot of venues, looking at what they can offer in terms of social distancing and safety precautions they’re putting in place. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? One of my favourite trends that has appeared has been the online collaboration within the industry. The events industry has really come together to knowledge share best practices, training webinars and more of an open discussion about helping our industry progress. Having so much content and online learning on demand has been a great trend to come out of this.
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60 seconds with...
Robin Parker
General Manager How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? We have been communicating with clients regularly both one to one and via social media and our website, about the measures we are putting in place. We have reworked all our capacities to allow for social distancing and put new menus and service procedures in place with our caterer. We have in house AV who have everything in place to manage hybrid and virtual events. Hygiene measures will be in place including temperature checks on everyone entering the building. How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? We have daily staff meetings as well as smaller meetings for each department. We have also been holding a weekly quiz on a Friday since lock down began. Some staff are currently furloughed but are able to join the weekly quiz and do some work-related training. The team WhatsApp group is also a constant source of entertainment!
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? Capacities have been reduced to approximately one third. One-way systems have been introduced wherever possible within the building. Separate catering areas. Break times at events will probably be increased and breaks staggered if more than one event is running within the building. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? The majority of clients are keen to still hold their events rather than cancel so are looking at alternative dates either at the end of this year or next year. Currently we are not seeing a huge surge towards hybrid events, clients keen to go ahead with face to face events. We are though getting some very unrealistic enquiries for maximum capacity in September/October this year, which does show that not all clients are considering social distancing.
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? Initially how quickly everyone adapted to the new way of life and work. Everyone has accepted the decisions that have been made and has supported each other throughout. CORECRUITMENT
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60 seconds with...
Adam Rowledge
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? That there are clients who are still being quite positive for the future and placing enquiries and bookings for later this year and into next. Certainly, after the week prior to lockdown and the following week it makes a pleasant change!
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? There will be a lot more of a focus on How has your business dealt with the lock delivering content virtually, either through down, what steps did you take? webinars, at online conferences, downloadable video content as well as one-to-one mentoring. As a conference speaker who also delivers workshops, my business pre- lock down involved What trends are you seeing to come out this being physically present at events and in time? businesses It's been key to review all of the expenditure in the business to become as lean as I'm pleased to see that there's even more possible whilst at the same time putting systems conversation around well being than there was in place to ensure that the business can remain previously, and I hope to see this continuing to functioning with no projects or events. The increase and improve in terms of what support provided by the government has also businesses are doing to support their teams. been very helpful. It's been fantastic to see how the industry has
Managing Director Rowledge Associates
pulled together and supported one another as well as some of the great examples of people and businesses that have either pivoted their operating model and/or done some amazing As I'm essentially a one-man business perhaps it things to support charities, key workers and might be good here to say instead that I've been the vulnerable. supporting a number of former colleagues and friends across a variety of industries as well as delivering free webinars on how to support your teams during these challenging times. How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time?
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60 seconds with...
Alex Brooke Founder / Director
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? I think the speed at which the pandemic evolved, and spread was something that will stick with me forever; to think where the world was only a weeks ago to where we are now is a lot to take in when you think about it. As a very season business with big peaks of trade in summer and winter we were just in the process of getting our teams ready to go operational for what looks to be our busiest ever season, oh and we happened to move office a few days before lock down – so we had our hands full to say the least! as a management team we have had to be very nimble and quick to adapt to all types of situations – both positive and negative. We are problem solvers and used to having to work under a lot of pressure all the time. Serving 70,000 thirsty customers on a warm sunny day is a massive challenge and we have to be fast to react to anything that comes our way. Of course, this crisis is without doubt the biggest challenge almost any business will face in its lifetime, but we still came at it in a measured manner; trying not to make panicked or knee jerk decisions. Our initial steps where to take in as much information about the different schemes and support plans that where being put out into the public domain on a nearly daily basis and see which of these would be relevant in our industry and for the size of business we are – and in truth this is still an evolving space even now. At the same time, we started to run various financial scenarios, ranging from a best case (short lived) situation through to worst case (nothing until next summer). CORECRUITMENT
Whilst doing this we started discussions with our landlords to get a feel of where their heads where at in terms of supporting us (this is our 2nd biggest and least controllable cost base). As we had no idea what the future held we had a lot of planning and wrapping up to be done with both clients and internally on various projects so the whole team continued to work until the end of march when we decided it was best to use the furlough scheme for the majority of the scheme. At the end of the day our people / team are our lifeblood so for us the main goal is to preserve enough cash that we can keep the Peppermint family together until next summer when hopefully there is some work for us to do! Since then myself, Adam my business partner and a couple of other members of the senior management team have been working away to continue to cost cut where we can, produce further financials models which better show our potential cash flow position based on different outcomes in the coming months. We have also been keen to look at new types of events that we can evolve our business model into, as well as keeping engaged with our clients, suppliers and other partners – we are in this together and I feel its key to both get other people’s views on how to plan in this scenario but also check in to see how everyone is in these hard times. Of course, we are now spending our day stuck to various video calls and using slack to its full effect but in reality, working remotely is proving manageable with a reduced team for now. We have never got to use our new office…… hopefully we will be all together again soon. How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? We are trying to keep as engaged as we can – I have been boring the team with a weekly update email, so they are up to date with what myself and Adam are up to and the progress being made on various fronts. We have also been doing various house parties and the like to keep that real face to face engagement going – along with various WhatsApp quizzes and the like! What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? I suppose it’s not a real ‘surprise’ but I think the most positive outcome of so many of the adverse situations we have had to handle over the years has been the positive collaborative relationship we have with other companies in our industry and the way we have come together to brainstorm and collaborate on new ideas and ways of looking to bring in income in the coming months when clearly there will be so few events happening.
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How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? Social distancing will have a deep impact in our sector – the question is for how long. What is public sentiment really going to be when it comes to mass gatherings, how long until people feel safe to carry on as before? Until we get clarity on how the lock down will be eased, it’s hard to really get a feeling of exactly what plans we can implement beyond what I have already stated. When we do go back to work, we will need to deliver as safe a working environment as we can for both customers and staff – with a focus on PPE for front line servers. We will need to look at the environments we work in and how we can ensure they are kept as clean as possible and we will need to look at our workflow and processes to deliver best practice and safety for all. I think there will likely be other changes, such as more cashless bars, less desire to handle cash, potentially more trail of distanced ordering and collection systems to reduce interaction between customers and staff. It’s going to potentially change a lot of the ways we deliver our services in the short term at least. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? I think some of the elements I have listed above; I think people will want to focus on anything that keeps them safe and hygienic and as such I see a real focus on card only payment, pre event ordering and collection services and the like. As ever – those who prepare and listen to the industry and their clients’ needs will be out front when the time comes.
CORECRUITMENT
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How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take?
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place?
We had been discussing COVID-19 as an Exec Team for a few weeks, but I don’t think any of us anticipated the speed and direction that things would move along. The first businesses we had to close were concessions in some larger retail spaces, which decided to close much earlier than we anticipated. Our first action was to mobilise representative from our People and Ops teams to go and address the restaurant teams directly, this was really important, so cue lots of frantic phone calls which started at 6 am that morning. We managed to get to our teams in London, Birmingham and Manchester at the same time and things stepped up pace from there really quickly. We ended up closing the majority of our restaurants that day, primarily as we had concerns about the safety and well-being of our Teams and Guests, and we could see it coming so we wanted to be in control. The rest were forced to close following Government directive. Again, our primary concern was our teams – we have 1600 brilliant people working for us from Aberdeen to Plymouth, so we had to arrange either face to face visits as much as possible, or personal phone calls to explain the situation and lay out our plans. It was probably the toughest week of my career and I think the biggest relief came when Rishi Sunak announced the furlough scheme - I think I sat I front of the TV and cried, a moment in time I will never forget!
We know hospitality is one of the hardest hit industries and is going to be one of the last to bounce back, but we also know we have some of the most innovative, brilliant and creative people working within it, so we will work together, share best practice and carve out a new way forward as a collective. We are looking at our entire business model and how we can really embrace takeaway and delivery, again like most of our friends in the industry. We have very much made the cross over into Retail last year so this is something we will continue to push and build even stronger offers with the major retailers. Of course, restaurants are our heart and we are working hard as a Team to make sure our Teams feel comfortable in coming to work, and our Guests feel comfortable coming for their regular sushi fix! There is a lot to think about, particularly when you operate a sushi conveyor belt and the majority of your dining space is made up of bar stools, but we love a challenge, and all of our brains are working overtime at the moment! We know hospitality is one of the hardest hit industries and is going to be one of the last to bounce back, but we also know we have some of the most innovative, brilliant and creative people working within it, so we will work together, share best practice and carve out a new way forward as a collective. We are looking at our entire business model and how we can really embrace takeaway and delivery, again like most of our friends in the industry. We have very much made the cross over into Retail last year so this is something we will continue to push and build even stronger offers with the major retailers. Of course, restaurants are our heart and we are working hard as a Team to make sure our Teams feel comfortable in coming to work, and our Guests feel comfortable coming for their regular sushi fix! There is a lot to think about, particularly when you operate a sushi conveyor belt and the majority of your dining space is made up of bar stools, but we love a challenge, and all of our brains are working overtime at the moment!
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? We are doing loads of stuff from weekly Zoom calls where our Teams dial in just for a chat or to ask specific questions, to a big Kahoots quiz every Friday to have some fun and end the working week. We have kept the channels of communication open at every avenue and send out a weekly YO! Times newsletter to keep people up to date. We are also utilising our internal comms platform and our Teams are posting great things on there from how they are marking British Tea Day to sharing recipes, volunteering stories and how they are keeping their kids entertained. It’s a cliché but YO! is one big family – we have been going for 23 years and our people are super invested, it’s important they are reminded they are part of that family at every turn. We have even had our CFO call some of our GM’s this week to check if they are okay, I think he surprised quite a few people, but they were genuinely happy to receive that level of communication, plus he always has really useful insights to share. What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? I think it’s been how well we have embraced remote working – probably the same for a lot of people. Managing remote teams is something I am used to leading a field-based People team, but it’s been quite the adjustment for some of the other Heads, but I am thrilled the way they have embraced it. We love being together in an office, after all we are hospitality people and love to be social and collaborative in an office space, but we have definitely identified new ways of working which we will utilise post-Covid. We were rather embarrassingly bad at embracing technology, but we have had to learn fast and it’s actually been really great!
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For HR it’s got to be flexible working, people who have previously been anti-working from home have really seen the benefit of ditching the daily commute, in terms of time, finances and stress. Of course, this needs to be a delicate balance as some people love working in an office, but it will be really interesting to see how it affects commuter life. We saw from our Supermarket Kiosks when the lock down first kicked in that ready to eat food such as sushi was not at the forefront of people’s minds. We know people are cooking so much more at home and actually enjoying it, so we need to keep our product offer fresh, exciting and appealing – luckily for us, the food we specialise in isn’t the easiest thing to craft at home, so we are confident people will be craving a fix of great quality sushi once this is all over -I know I am!
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60 seconds with...
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? Not so much a surprise, but it’s been rewarding just how encouraging my clients have been and we are looking forward to renewing partnerships when we come out the other side. Sure, things will be different, but in business you have to adapt to the environment for standing still is like moving backwards. No one knows what the future holds, but we must do what we can to make ourselves as prepared as we can be for when we get the green light. I think engaging existing teams regularly and treating them like family will be instrumental in navigating a successful next phase. How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place?
Andrew Kemsley Founder/Director How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? After the initial shock, I set about ensuring I remain as strong and as ‘match fit’ as I could, given the circumstances. We will come out of this, whether it be in 3, 6 or 9 months, we will return to do what we love, what we do well and what our guests, customers and clients enjoy us doing. London boasts one of the most admired and respected hospitality and culinary scenes anywhere in the world. We’re not broken, we’re just wounded, and we can survive. But as with all rehabilitation we must be focused, committed and positive. Self-belief is everything, regardless of the size of your business, you have to believe you’ll have a chance to return to former glories. I have reviewed every piece of material I use in my training sessions and taken this time to ask myself, is it good enough to represent me and my brand. How can it be even better, easier to interpret and how can I get my message across to people during the lock down and beyond. Challenging myself to tap into markets that I haven’t considered in the past. They say, do something that scares you every day! How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time?
10 Hospitality thrives in 121 and group training activities and social distancing will be challenging as will hospitality businesses being able to afford the training and development they committed to before this crisis. Zoom conferencing, larger venues (allowing for social distancing) will still allow training. But it’s all a little unknown at this time. But I’m not about to close down my business because we don’t know all the answers yet. But that takes me back to my staring point – believe, never give up and help as many people as you can, with what you have. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Smaller menus, menu simplification, better take away quality, swifter and safer payment with contactless payment or better use of apps. Improved hospitality with great appreciation of every single guest when we return. Better teamwork with appreciation of simple luxuries, such as a face to face conversations with teammates (ever if at a distance). Possible exciting collaborations, two brands with a slightly different offers, both with great quality and values that could come together for the greater good or possibly survival. I think the industries support of one another from CEOs, owners and support agencies has been incredible. The WhatsApp groups, the webinars, the podcasts, the sharing of vital information has been heart-warming and I’m not only proud to be associated with such a fantastic, resilient business, but proud to have the name Hospitality in my company name.
I am engaging with my clients with regular emails, WhatsApp and Zoom calls. I was a source of optimism and inspiration before Covid-19, so I owe it to them to remain positive and encourage their new ideas and approach to business, now and in the future. They have teams, bricks & mortar and big commitments and it must be a frightening time. CORECRUITMENT
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60 seconds with... Ankur Wishart Co-Founder & MD
PERCY & FOUNDERS - THE LIGHTERMAN BOXCAR BAKER & DELI / BOXCAR BUTCHER & GRILL How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? - We were monitoring the situation very closely having seen a very large drop off in function bookings / reservations cancelling / walk-ins dropping and were already reducing team sizes heavily. When Boris announced to the public on the 18th March that they should ‘avoid pubs and restaurants’ we decided that evening to close all venues with immediate effect - a few days before the government enforced closures came. - In absence of any furlough scheme we asked everyone in the business to come forward to volunteer to take unpaid leave for up 3 months which a huge amount of people stepped forward without even having any certainty which was a great testament to the courage and commitment of the team we have - this was the biggest positive surprise and really great to see. At this point we didn’t know what was in store for us in the future, so we needed to act to preserve the businesses with the help of everyone in them. - We did not make a single redundancy and as soon as the furlough scheme was announced we furloughed every single person in the business that qualified including those that had left or were due to leave us to give everyone the chance to have an income still. We have done everything we can to capture all those we could within the scheme How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? I send out a company wide communication every couple of weeks updating them on what our strategy or actions are. The most recent comms included that we have set up a small group of volunteers at The Lighterman to produce hundreds of meals a day for Chelsea & Westminster Hospital with support from Hospitality for Heroes. The whole scheme is funded through charity donations from suppliers and volunteers therefore is cost neutral to the business whilst being able to produce free meals for the staff in the intensive care units. The incentive has been a very positive morale boost, especially for those able to support through volunteering and also to show our desire to help those that need it most. We will continue as long as we can and are looking to expand the operation to further hospitals including St Bart's this weekend and also Royal Free and St Mary's. CORECRUITMENT
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? The more interesting things we see happening as a more long term effect on the industry is another push towards healthy and immunity boosting food and drinks, more care for responsible sourcing and sustainable offerings related to an increased concern for the environment and also more careful spending and care given to ‘value for money’ as a result of a potentially very deep recession. We expect that customers will want, and we will want to give them, a very personal service that is more ‘human’ than ever before and where gratitude and appreciation plays a bigger part in hospitality than it has before. How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? - We are beginning to work on social distancing measures and generally more responsible ways of running our businesses which is yet to be work-shopped but will include ideas from all the senior team members to include anything from payment methods (cashless), furniture layout amendments (increased spacing) and also on the offerings themselves to make them more accessible to people following a potential return to work especially for those that have suffered from unpaid leave or heavily reduced salaries. We are the early stages of planning for all the changes though believe we need to take necessary steps to encourage customers to return rather than waiting for government guidance or relying on others to support us get through this. We heavily endorse campaigns such as the NationalTimeOut one by JD and think businesses in hospitality need to come together more to work together to weather the storm. - The Lighterman itself has large spaces both internally and externally, including large circulation spaces, staircases and bathrooms which I believe are very well placed to benefit from easy social distancing practices. I also believe that external spaces will be more favoured to internal ones so that again is a great benefit if we are able to reopen, particularly in the summer / autumn. ...more on page 2
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60 seconds with... Ankur Wishart
(page 2)
- Percy & Founders also benefits from large spaces so catering for - The break has meant that we are in a stronger position, having social distancing will be easier to manage than our smaller venues not already opened the doors, to reconsider various aspects of our concept as well as our programme in order to pick the right - Boxcar venues are very small and can be adapted to be more time to launch a business of considerable size (20,000 sqft). of a takeaway / collection offering which is likely the future of those venues in the short term given their size. - The impact on the launch programme is hard to predict at present although we expect it to push back a minimum of 4 Generally we expect the return to ‘normality’ to take a long months with a far more staggered opening, minimising the risks time, particularly in the age range considered vulnerable. We on the business to give it the best chance of succeeding. We are expect that it may take 12-18 months to see a full recovery and fortunate to be working with Grosvenor as our Landlords who short term immediate changes are needed to adapt which include: have been very understanding and pragmatic in their approach and have also already offered significant rent waivers to many of o Physical spacing of furniture and introduction of queuing their tenants on the Estate. systems with ground markers for things such as bathrooms or entrances and exits. - In Pantechnicon everyone except myself has been furloughed and communications are same as they are in Open House and o Potentially creating single way routes around venues including Boxcar. separate entrances and exits to prevent congestion points where customers have to cross past others in close contact - For OHP London unfortunately in construction they are having to rely on the self-employment scheme for income support o Screening of certain areas such as bars to create pickup although we are confident our core team will be back to work as points for customers for drinks and food soon as we are able to let them back in – we expect this to be sooner than restaurants. o Limitations to interactions between staff and customers using more technology and also possibly PPE In summary I believe that hospitality is going to struggle PANTECHNICON LONDON LTD significantly with a number of operators unfortunately having to go OHP LONDON LTD (CONSTRUCTION) out of business as a result of the damage this crisis is having on the trade. At the same time I think we need to look at how we can - Our building site in Belgravia as well as White City was well adapt as businesses to emerge stronger. underway with works however, even though there wasn’t an official enforcement to stop works, we found that our supply I believe that employees will need to be incredibly flexible to chains were already suffering setbacks especially as some of our business requirements and everyone will have to ‘muck in’ to do materials were coming from Europe. whatever jobs are necessary as we evolve and reopen venues. We will adapt as well and offer cross training for staff to give them - On the 24th March we decided that we needed to protect our more tools to help the business. building teams and head office teams and shut down our building sites immediately. The same day several builders’ merchants closed which would have prevented works continuing much longer regardless. - As a result of works on site stopping, we have also had to furlough all of our Pantechnicon team who were working towards openhouselondon.com a launch in June.
CORECRUITMENT
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60 Seconds with... Anne Pierce Chief Executive
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take?
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place?
Had to be alert, agile, action orientated; we lost almost half our funding overnight because of impact on hospitality and because most of this income is in March; we had 1,212 beneficiaries that needed urgent support – all from vulnerable backgrounds; and needed to urgently work out how we were going to do this. We immediately called an all Springboard team meeting, explained our predicament and were amazed at what the staff were prepared to do to help – reduced hours, pay cuts, adapt roles etc; we furloughed half the team and the other half transformed our careers, education & employability programmes within weeks to make them available through digital academies, set about an intense bid writing programme to access emergency funding pots, and devise a new business continuity plan. Weekly meetings of Trustees…
in the short term we are adapting all our services so that young people at school can access learning bites at home through our digital education platform; supporting our 1,212 adults from disadvantaged backgrounds or who face challenges access our new Digital Employability Academy – providing access to live and pre-recorded webinar training sessions, 121 support through social channels/phone, access to on-line learning in partnership with FLOW, Diageo Bar Academy and Accenture…in medium term who knows what the post lock-down will mean – but we can combine our previous face to face activity with our new digital options, our programmes are quite small anyway – max 12 people – so we will be able to deliver while observing any 2m and other best practice that is available What trends are you seeing to come out this time?
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? Regular comms through update bulletins, teams meetings, Q&As, phone calls, texting, sending good news stories, programmes on working from home, health & well-being, self development/self help programmes, encouraging exercise, healthy eating, fun quiz sessions What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way?
More people want to volunteer – which is good; people want to hear positive/funny/engaging/true/real stories – more use of technology for meetings, catch ups etc and very effectively too – people also seeing how much can be achieved from home – sadly this might impact on some parts of the hospitality sector in a negative way – but we are a resilient, inventive and entrepreneurial industry – so already expect that businesses are working out how they can adapt, evolve and emerge like triumphant phoenixes post COVID-19
The awesome offers of help from funders, donors, industry, both financial assistance, pro bono support, and random acts of kindness – that call from a friend to check how Springboard is doing and asking what they can do to help – it makes my day and that of my team!
CORECRUITMENT
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60 seconds with...
Barney Burgess Non-Exec Director Partner
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? The Crussh team have done an outstanding job at closing all our stores and furloughing the vast majority of the team. Conserving cash so that we can continue with our payroll runs whilst waiting for CJRS to become active is a key priority. What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? There has been a very collaborative attitude across the sector, whether that is agreeing payment plans with suppliers or rallying around to support initiatives like #FeedNHS - where Crussh delivered 2000 meals to Royal Marsden hospitals last week. How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? I expect we will be one of the last sectors to reopen and when we do there are likely to be ongoing restrictions as well as lingering customer and staff concerns.
CORECRUITMENT
CRUSSH
Hattington Investment Partners
We will ensure that our staff and customers are properly protected, whether that means maintaining distance between people, providing PPE or physical changes like sneeze screens and store layout. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? We need to be prepared for permanently lower demand in our stores, both because people will continue to work more from home and because when they are at work at least some people will prefer to have meals delivered rather than going out to collect food (or eat in restaurants). This will have 2 implications: We need to gear ourselves up to offer the next generation of “delivered” options which are appealing to customers and commercially attractive for us. Rents will have to reset or stores will close. No-one can know what level of demand there will be over the next year so landlords and operators are going to need to find a collaborative approach to share the risk and upside that presents. Turnover rents with no minimum and a lower % when sales are low is one obvious mechanism.
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60 seconds with... Brian Welsh CEO
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? Nido has been rapidly adapting to ensure the safety and wellbeing of all students in the Nido community. The community changed overnight and in this deeply concerning time for all of us, the Nido team have worked tirelessly to ensure our residents remain happy and healthy both physically and mentally throughout this period. Since the beginning of March, a COVID-19 operational and strategic response has been convening daily to identify, implement and communicate key actions and update protocol to ensure our residents and teams are protected and we are taking the necessary steps to resolve the challenges which have arisen, becoming more resilient as a business in the process. We’ve invested in market research early on to ensure we fully understand student sentiment and market shifts and Nido closed its head-office and transitioned to a fully operational, digital, working from home team before the stay at home measures were introduced, with the aim of keeping the team safe, healthy and able to support the business through this process. Our residences remain open and operating safely for our students, and we acted quickly to ensure we were following strict cleaning regimes and taking the necessary precautions for social distancing to keep our residents and our teams safe. Where needed we have been supporting residents individually, dropping off food packages for those self-isolating, allowing students to borrow Nido bikes for their daily exercise and allowing international students to stay beyond their semester contracts when they couldn’t get back home. This will stand us in good stead as we look to the future post COVID-19, as these measures and more which we will continue to implement, will be equally relevant, if not more so as students make decisions on accommodation which provides a good experience, without compromising on their safety and well being. How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? With the shift to working from home for many of our teams, communicating online via email, chat and video conferencing have played a huge role in keeping the team connected and working optimally, despite the change in environment.
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Nido have started multiple initiatives to keep our people happy, healthy & connected, launching a comprehensive programme of virtual events including yoga, meditation, art classes music classes, cooking events and more. We’re working closely with brand partners to expand our event offering and we’ve been creating and sharing Nido quarantine playlists, recording podcasts, creating and facilitating volunteering opportunities, charity initiatives and more for everyone in the Nido community – residents and employees. Our HR team have also worked on initiatives like swapping out the coveted employee of the month prize for a take-away voucher for the whole Nido team on the first Friday with stay-athome measures, sending little gifts directly to employees homes to keep them motivated, helping the team organise virtual drinks on a Friday and quizzes for the whole company. Perhaps the most important initiative has been the employee well being platform, rolled out in just two short weeks, a personalised platform covering themes of health, community & achievement is available to everyone. The platform will offer webinars, on demand 1-1 consultations, health checks, training and information. What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? The best surprise has been for me to see the resilience of the business through the ability of the Nido team to confront this challenge with energy and positivity, adapting our processes and protocols quickly and efficiently, ensuring our buildings can operate safely, revising our marketing channels and activities creatively, and communicating effectively with our stakeholders to ensure we can still deliver the best possible Nido experience to our students. How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? We will be considering how we can return to our office safely and the measures we may have to put in place to ensure we can adhere to guidelines. However, it’s been amazing to see how well everyone across the business has adapted to working from home. We have already implemented social distancing measures in our residences for our teams and students, and these are working effectively. And by focusing on how we communicate online through the use of social media, the website, virtual events, tours, open days, video conferencing etc. we are able to ensure business continuity. www.coreruitment.com | 1
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? The key topic in this new landscape is digitalisation. Technology is evolving faster than ever, students are tech-savvy, a generation of digital natives who quickly adapt to shifts in the way technology is used and consumed. Nido is communicating digitally with its residents more than ever, with regular, updated content via a number of channels to ensure we can spread positive messages, community updates and new ideas and ways of staying connected to keep residents knitted into the community. Ensuring this content and communication is relevant and streamlined will stand businesses in good stead now, but also going forward. All of us are spending an increasing amount of time online, and students more so. We have responded with our own virtual & video tours, virtual open days with live Q&A sessions via Instagram, digital brochures, video chats with residents and online events. Nido is already re-imagining how students will consume media moving forward as their behaviour continues to change and will evolve at a faster rate in the current landscape. Our community are comfortable in the digital world and we will continue to find ways to support them using the platforms they like best. New building design will evolve to incorporate learnings from this pandemic, and we could see a shift to more businesses continuing to allow employees to work from home. This will mean homes will have to be designed to incorporate a home office, but also space to workout, access to outside space, integration of tech and high speed WiFi and use of smart materials which have microbial treatments amongst other things. For Nido Student we will continue to evolve our building design to ensure our values of community, well being, sustainability and design and tech are integrated from the outset. We already ensure that our buildings have high speed internet access, and are designed with well being in mind, however we know that health, safety and cleanliness will be extremely important to our students and their parents, and foresee that the new normal will be for a high frequency of cleaning, contactless entry, sanitisation stations and virtual services.
60 seconds with... Chris Stagg
Operations Director
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? steps did you take? We have regular Zooms with the teams, from the senior Our first priority was safety, safety of the team, safety weekly Friday evening wine o'clock zoom, to a Monday of the guest and safety (survival) of the company. We morning pub team, "Hi, how are you doing?" Zoom. We also have a weekly update where we share via email, firmly believe that on the other side of this, we will be internal social media, stories from the pub hubs, birthday judged on how we looked after our people and what we celebrations, exercise regimes and news on re opening. did for the community during this crisis. But, without We also have a weekly Frazer (one of the partners) posh being the socially conscious pub co. that went bust! pub foodie quiz and we have a weekly house virtual house We did some modelling on cash flow, planned support party (DJ, that’s me!) for the live-in teams, Staggies house from the bank and then worked out, that we could keep parties. All just a bit of fun and some engagement for the paying the team in full for the first month. This way we teams. could ensure folk could plan, as we told them we would What plans do you have in place for a reopening? be furloughing at 80% in 4 weeks. We then created the Peach Hardship fund; this is to help team members that If only we knew!!! We are planning now what the offer were going to struggle with a reduction of income. looks like in terms of menu size and food to go. While we Directors contributed into this and many GM's and have no clue on a date, we are planning for the end of July, head Chefs offered cash into the scheme. Finally, when which we can of course move back if we need to. We have we did furlough, we topped up the higher earners to lost of a few of the transient team, but we have enough team members to run the business. We will be running the 80% of salary. Then we created the Pub Hubs social enterprise. This is re-opening along the same lines as a re-launch of a a community shop, with food and drink to go, a not for refurbished pub. profit organisation, separate from peach that raises cash to support local charities and the NHS, we are delivering thousands of meals to the charities and NHS, which is great and gives the team a real sense of purpose. What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? The way the teams have pulled together. We have had team members that had resigned for pastures new, actually reverse their decision and stay after the way we have gone about this crisis. Also, the amount of GMs offering salary cuts to be put into the hardship fund has been humbling to see. Not to mention the amount of charity volunteers we have had to support the charities and NHS. CORECRUITMENT
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60 seconds with... Christophe,C.O.O. Marie Blachère US
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? Besides taking care of my team, goal #1 was to make sure we’re showing that life continues and we’re ready to fight this enemy. We are tough in New York! We immediately pivoted the business to a digital model, contactless pick up, ordering and delivery. We added stringent sanitation procedures on top of our already vigorous procedures Communication to our guests- hitting all digital channels- the trifecta- website, review sites and social. Reduction in staff for their safety and our guests Really staying connected to our local communities Retained a PR firm. We are an essential business and we know people are having a hard time finding food necessities, so this was our way of being to reach guests broadly and quickly. How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? This was my number 1 priority. Maintaining as many team members in payroll and being as supportive as I could with the others. We decided not to lay off anyone. Building a team is not easy and when you have a A team, you need to protect them. We maintain constant communication with our team members on furlough through a communication messaging tool. Every few days we are checking in, chatting one on one or as a group. We continue our normal business practices from monthly newsletters to normally our monthly birthday and anniversary celebration. Naturally we moved this to a zoom party with fun virtual backgrounds welcomed! We have a fund set up that allows us to give tangibles to our teams on the bench and on the frontlines whether it be groceries sent to their homes or a quick pick up at the bakery so they have fresh bread and supplies for their families. What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? Our guest loyalty! It is amazing to see the same faces day after day joining us virtually for a delivery order or stopping by for their contactless pick up orders. Operationally. I think we even surprised ourselves at how quickly we were able to pivot to an online business while driving revenues and guest retention. CORECRUITMENT
Challenging ourselves to maintain and grow a business during this unprecedented time and having the support of our entire team behind us as well as our global leadership is the fuel to our success at this moment. It really makes us feel that we can do anything- especially when you have the right leadership and support team in place. How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? Immediately even before the state laws came down, we were preparing our business to transition to a social distancing model. Operationally, we closed down our counter service and transitioned to a digital model with kiosks for ordering, online ordering through our website and third party delivery services. We of course had to reduce our staff for the sake of our P&L and because we knew we had to take care of our team first which meant reducing their risk of exposure as much as possible. Thankfully, we re having a very strong support from our French Head Quarter What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Technology! We are truly in a technological renaissance. Sanitation procedures and laws. Restaurant industry model as a whole as well as labor. I think many businesses including myself are taking a long hard look at what "operating lean" really means and how that will look post Covid-19. Additionally, it really feels like the end and beginning of restaurants everywhere from fine dining to fast casual. Its as if someone just wiped the board clean and we are starting from the ground up. Real estate boom – sadly, lot of chapter 7 will put many prime location on the market.
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60 seconds with...
David Barber
And of course, we’ve been pouring effort into helping restaurateurs managing their way through this new landscape, with menu support, packaging needs, delivery options to accommodate their new operating models, and much more. Our team has also been determined to not miss a beat in our commitment to service, with a continued emphasis on on-time delivery and filled orders. Despite the crisis of this pandemic, our goal remains to be on time and order complete, as promised. How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place?
Vice President Canada Broadline Distribution
We’ve been responding with a range of best practices based on the scientific guidance of the Public Health Agency of Canada and other official sources, as well as the industryspecific measures that have been put forward by IFDA How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps (International Foodservice Distributors Association) and other respected business groups. These include limiting did you take? access to our facilities, health screenings for team members, The safety of our team members and our customers and spacing measures in our facilities, face coverings, one driver business partners has been priority one and a consistent focus. per truck, and a full array of further personal conduct As events first began to unfold, beginning in early February, guidelines to help ensure our people’s safety and that of our we quickly emphasized the personal hygiene protocols we’re customers and business partners. all so very familiar with now. We adopted aggressive cleaning strategies in all our facilities, implemented travel restrictions, What trends are you seeing to come out this time? asked team members to stay home at the sign of any illness, The implications and influences on consumers’ behavior, required self-quarantine in the event of close contact with both near and longer-term, are still unfolding, but clearly we international travellers, etc. are seeing a range of important trends. Those preventive measures continued to grow, as we barred There’s a blurring of distribution channels as our food supply all non-essential visitors in our facilities, and then more adapts to meet the needs of consumers. Some foodservice recently have added PPE where appropriate in our operations. distributors, like ourselves, are working with grocers to We have implemented questionnaires, temperature checks, alleviate the strain in their channel, while also selling directly and social distancing measures to help further secure our to consumers, and of course, working with restaurateurs in people from risk. In every case, we’re looking to adopt the adjusting their business models to be both effective in established best practices available and ensure full compliance curbside and delivery and ready to support dine-in as with the directions provided by civil and health authorities. conditions allow. Local sourcing is another area that’s getting greater attention How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? as we have experienced logistical challenges for items Food service is, of course, among the essential services - so our traditionally procured elsewhere. team members are actively helping to feed our communities, And finally, of course, there are a host of considerations for whether that be vulnerable populations in hospitals and senior restaurant operators in terms of health and safety, living facilities, or a favorite local restaurant providing takeout accessibility and seating, menu design, digital and social or delivery service. This critically important role has kept our visibility, and promotion. As an example of our work to team highly motivated and fully engaged, with many great support them, we’ve been working with Relish Works, our stories of people stepping up in big and small ways to help innovation team at Gordon Food Service, who have make a difference. developed a terrific set of publicly available tools and resources at eat.news What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a It’s the most challenging time any of us can recall, but I’m positive way? inspired by our industry’s response and the support that we’ve seen from so many in the public. Going forward, the The innovation and creativity and can-do spirit of our team people of Gordon Food Service are fully committed to doing have been wonderful. Things like “pop-up stores” that our part as the country continues on a path for a smart and welcome the public to our facilities to purchase groceries, or safe reopening of the economy. efforts to get product to food banks and other worthy institutions rather than seeing it go to waste. CORECRUITMENT
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60 seconds with... David Davies VP Property & Facilities, Europe
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take?
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place?
Like many, taking care of our own is our priority in these unique times. We have used all the technological means available to us to keep our crew informed. This approach has been lead from the top with our CEO addressing employees regularly and dealing the issues of the day.
It will have a fundamental effect on our business until either a vaccine, or acceptable therapeutics are available with the numbers attending shows reduced. The knockon effects of social distancing will change the customer experience from the point of arrival, the location of ones seat through to departure. Then you through in the prospect of testing and it becomes easy to see how the changes will impact the concert going experience.
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? Across the estate we have seen GM’s use a wide range of techniques to keep folk engaged. The vast majority of engagement is through a constant flow of information on a regular basis. On a practical level once you get past the obvious redecoration and maintenance the alternatives become a little predicable, so as a management group we need to be imaginative. One of the best examples I have seen is in the Asian market where one of our venues set time aside to improve their knowledge of English.
What trends are you seeing to come out this time? The key message coming back to us is the thirst for the live experience and that has not dimmed as we have travelled this rocky path.
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? The feedback from ticket buyers around the globe has been overwhelmingly prepared to resume concert going once the virus abates.
CORECRUITMENT
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How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time?
60 seconds with... David R Good Vice President Operations
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? It was of course a major adjustment and learning curve for us all, despite many of us having experienced several other serious business challenges in our careers. We quickly adopted and introduced new procedures and protocols in hotels to screen guests and staff, including temperature checks, wearing of masks and placing self-dispensing sanitizing hand gels throughout all key points of the hotels. We then were forced to close hotels as business reduced to negligible numbers. Now we have most hotels closed and we are using the time as best we can to undertake preventative maintenance of our assets and provide online learning opportunities to our staff. For the few remaining hotels in operation we have introduced food delivery promotions and in some cases we are housing medical workers where opportunities exist to do so. Our company has also donated medical supplies to local hospitals.
CORECRUITMENT
All executives are encouraged to stay in touch with their respective team members regularly and also share with them updated news on the situation, as well as providing online learning courses, arranged both in-house and by accessing other free online webinars. What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? I think how well so many people in Administrative positions have adopted WFH as a new work practice and become familiar with new communication tools. Plus despite these being very trying times for us all, how positive people are still generally and how much people are really looking forward to being back at work in the hotels and serving guests again. How will social distancing affect your business, what plans do you have in place? Like everyone else we are still looking into this and what the new norm of doing business will be; But yes we believe there will have to be multiple meal times in restaurants and more spaced out seating. No buffets for the near future of course and gearing up for an increase in in-room dining demand. Perhaps less densely packed sunbeds at the pools and limited number of guests using the gym at any given time plus more spaced out gym equipment. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? More WFH practices embedded in the way we work in future; more direct bookings and communication with future guests as they want to know about our enhanced hygiene and sanitation procedures etc. www.coreruitment.com |   1
60 seconds with...
Dustin Mills Operations Manager
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? I look after our sites in Paris, Berlin & Barcelona, which were the first regions to be hit in our company. We took the decision to close the sites as quickly as possible when we realised the scale of the crisis, to ensure our staff and guests would be as safe as possible. We implemented the equivalent of furlough across my region and communicated all the information to the team, to give them peace of mind. Luckily as an organisation we implemented Facebook Workplace over a year ago, and so we already had an established strong channel of instant communication to keep in touch with all our people right to the front line, even when not within the business. This really helps to keep everyone informed as to what is going on and to understand the fast-paced changes our business is responding to.
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? Personally I have been really impressed with the even stronger sense of community everyone has shown during the crisis. I hope that when this is all over we keep this going & create a more caring world. How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? The million-dollar question! We expect that international travel will have significant disruption for the next 18 months or so, so our focus will have to be on local travel & our bar operations. Whilst the outlook is scary, we know our customers are avid travellers who will want to come back to a St. Christopher’s as soon as we can host them, so we will do everything we can to get back up and running as soon as possible. Having said that we don’t want to open until we know we can deliver our experience. Serving food in masks and checking people in behind a shield is something we would really like to avoid and will work towards opening when it’s safe to do so and our customers are ready to join us.
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time?
What trends are you seeing to come out this time?
Our team stays in touch with each other on site WhatsApp groups & we utilise Facebook Workplaceto run yoga sessions, mental health workshops, regular workouts, poker games & a DJ set weekly as well as competitions and voluntary training. We have a core operations team who have a conference call daily to ensure we are all up to date on local happenings.
I hope that we come out of this with a more caring society, that we respect each other’s time a little more, that we appreciate time spent with loved ones. Personally I don’t enjoy the conference call culture developing, so I hope that reduces when we get back to some form of normality.
CORECRUITMENT
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60 seconds with...
Edward Poland Co-founder, COO HIRE SPACE
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? We quickly re-modelled our cash flow scenarios to reflect a huge (90%) decrease in inbound business. Our goal was to keep the team together, and to communicate clearly in everything we did. Inbound sales teams were put onto the furlough scheme quickly, and a second wave followed a couple of weeks later. Right now, those still working are focused on tech, product and marketing, and on keeping our core clients up to speed with what we’re developing. It’s all about building foundations for the future, and helping our core communities of venues and corporate event planners to navigate through these times. How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? We’ve changed as little as possible. As founders we address the team twice every day, to talk about the things we’re focused on and thinking about, to take questions, and to give people the opportunity to talk about the things challenging them. As a leadership team we’ve aimed to be visible, and be transparent, and to answer any question we’re asked quickly and honestly. CORECRUITMENT
We’ve also maxed out on social activity and team building, including launching a ‘virtual pub’’ in Slack, which is always busy from 6pm, and regular cooking and exercise classes hosted by various team members of the team. We’re all now armed with far more knowledge about baking bread and doing yoga than we’ll ever need. What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? The entrepreneurial spirit of the team. We’ve laid some amazing foundations for the future in adversity. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Event planners are focused on safer meetings, hybrid and virtual events, and sustainability. These things will all be evident as the industry emerges from lock down, and will shape live events and experiences for a good few months to come.
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60 seconds with...
Frederic Lluch Former Managing Director
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? Social distancing will drive several changes in the hospitality business. Brand will have to review their current procedures & policy, each service step will need to be observed with a risk assessment put in place. The team will be trained on new processes in order to ensure that from day one of re-opening the customers have 100% confidence the business has taken all the necessary steps, the business has demonstrated an investment in the health and security of the customers and team, that the environment is safe. A plan will have to be drawn up site by site taking into consideration each site specificity. We have seen what good looks like in the retail sector with some brand taking the safety of their customers into their hands, hand & trolley sanitising station at the entrance, limiting entrance to a set number of customers , queue management, creating one way system in alleys, installing protection for cashiers, marking safe distancing on floor. Most of these initiatives can be put in place in the Grab & Go businesses , QSR & restaurants , reducing number of eatin covers.
CORECRUITMENT
It is not only about customers confidence , it is primarily about the team, the team having the right equipment, training, understanding of what is different now and why. We therefore need to use the time we have before the government ease the confinement to be ready. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Our industry has the opportunity to review the supply chain, buy locally, support local farmers, increase organic food items on the menu; the consumers are ready to support this if it is clearly communicated. I think we all understand the benefits now Diversification might be coming back, we used to say just do one thing but do it extremely well, we see now that having several revenue stream will help businesses carry on an activity, delivery, take away, retail, food market. The business which were only restaurant eat in were not able to generate any revenue and were more vulnerable. Technology even more relevant now, whether it is to stay in touch with team & customers, on line menu, click & collect, loyalty scheme, social media and so on , it provides speed of communication and continuous presence
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How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time?
60 seconds with...
We have an internal social platform which has been invaluable to keeping in contact with our teams. Aside from any central communications there are lots of informal group chats, quizzes , even cookery and exercise lessons have all been used to keep levels of engagement up. What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way?
Gavin Hughes Operations Director
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? We laid out our three main priorities at the start. 1.PProtect the business for the future 2. Protect our teams jobs and pay 3. Plan for the long term Communicating these priorities and explaining the impact of the closure was then key to the well-being of our teams. We met with every venue team to discuss what was happening and how we would support them over the coming weeks, and we have kept this dialogue going throughout the closure period. The teams have had many questions over the weeks, and keeping open and honest lines of communication for every team member has been central to our planning. The reaction of our teams has been inspirational. They distributed our stock at closure to food banks and hospitals, some have kept kitchens open to provide meals for NHS workers and the level of volunteering has been a joy to see.
CORECRUITMENT
Seeing how so many people have looked for ways to contribute whilst they themselves are facing hardship and challenges, both towards each other and the wider community. The examples of managers and teams looking out for individuals that may be isolating alone, or the support that the teams have offered to local community projects has been wonderful and uplifting to see. How will social distancing affect your business, what plans do you have in place? We are planning for a number of different scenarios. I believe customer perception will be more impactful than any legislation and watching the examples being set in supermarkets and the behaviour of customers in shops now is a good indicator. Cleaning and hygiene practices will be vital to restore confidence in the sector and giving our customers the options of how they wish to be served and interact not just with our teams but with each other is at the forefront of our minds. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? It feels as though the concept of local community will come out of this as a stronger construct. Small local networks on the high street and in neighbourhoods will have more social value. Our teams want to be at the heart of that.
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60 seconds with...
James Grist Head of Talent
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take?
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way?
Unfortunately, we have had to temporarily close all of our locations. Whilst disappointing for all, our focus since lock down has been on our employees and making sure that they get all the support and information they need
The real surprise was the amount of passion from our teams for the industry and for D&D. We are facing this together and when this is over, we will come back together, stronger than ever.
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? We have created an online platform ‘D&D Connect’ which not only supplies are team with up to date information from the government but also a place to ensure our teams still part of a team. We have masterclasses, Friday pub quizzes and even a few home work out videos!
CORECRUITMENT
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? We are awaiting further guidance from the Government of what this looks like in restaurants and Hotels. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Collaboration will be the key trend after this. As an industry we will collaborate to ensure that we not only get back to where we were but be stronger, be bigger and be better. www.coreruitment.com | 1
60 seconds with...
Jan Van Delden Managing Director ITICO F+B Ltd.
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? Towards the end of January, it was clear that the virus would have a big impact on the UK. The core management team sat together to brainstorm what we could and should do. We stopped recruiting, started refresher trainings on hygiene practises and implemented extra sanitisation procedures. When the lock down was imminent, and business disappeared overnight from central London we had to close one site and changed the others to delivery and pick up. We engaged with our delivery partners for extra visibility and delivery range. That has enabled us to keep our head above water. How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? WhatsApp groups, calling them, keeping them informed through letters and emails. And, as everyone, having virtual meetings on the internet What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? The support and love from the team goes a lot further than I could hope for. And the innovative way of approaching problems and finding solutions knows no boundaries apparently.
CORECRUITMENT
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? Now the first panic is over and the business continues, it was time to assess and brainstorm about the future. Social distancing is here to stay, enforced or voluntary. That means fast casual restaurants as ours need to adapt to a brave new world. With more people ordering delivery, and when offices reopen more block ordering as the supermarkets will be not equipped to accommodate all office workers in their lunch break. So that platform will grow. Also, with more delivery, it means extra pressure on the P&L because of higher commission cost. We’re developing platforms to organise delivery differently so we can reduce cost and keep competitive. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Compared to the US, pick up in store was less developed. I believe we’ll see a lot more of that if customers can’t sit down because of less capacity in restaurants. On the development and expansion front, unfortunately we’ll see many operators not reopen. That will chance the property side of our growth plans completely.
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60 seconds with...
Jason Danciger Hana Group UK & Ireland Managing Director Hana Group UK and Ireland encompasses 140 sites across country under brands of Sushi Gourmet, Mai,Genji, Sushi & Robata, Wok St and El Luchador mainly situated in retailenvironments How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take?
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way?
So much so quickly! We were fast & nimble but first priority was to ensure our people were safe and had all relevant information & we changed our processes to protect our teams, then obvious steps to plan ahead to ensure liquidity and control costs, then creating our war council that meets daily to steer us through this crisis in good shape and make quick decisions, customer engagement next step to give assurances and share our many heroic stories of supporting and feeding NHS on regular basis and ‘buckets’ of planning and new initiatives so we don’t come out of this limping but charging forward like British bulldogs to drive positive future for our business.
Kindness from us, our teams, our suppliers & our retail partners and speed in which we were able to react.
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? Weekly virtual pubs with our teams, videos and photos of our heroes mainly via our suite of apps such as Plan Day (staff rota/payroll) Yoobic (pictorial live retail standards) and many WhatsApp groups.
CORECRUITMENT
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? We are already offsetting rotas so that we extend cover to longer in day to keep that all important social distancing, equally offsetting shifts to avoid teams having to travel in peak periods What trends are you seeing to come out this time? To date its necessity, luxury & availability as opposed to price but we expect that to change when we all have to pay for this mess! Our spend per head at moment increasing but clearly volume is down given complexity of trying to food shop. Whilst panic buying has dissipated long life products are still on top of everyone’s shopping list and we only create fresh products daily.
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60 seconds with...
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? Seeing the whole industry come together to support each other and work towards the greater good has been amazing, I really hope it continues in the future and everyone continues to share information and ideas. The work that Jonathan Downey has been doing is amazing, hopefully this will kick-start our industry into having a bigger voice on the issues that affect us all. How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place?
Jim Robertson
Operations Director How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? After Boris’ announcement advising people to steer clear of Restaurants, Bars and Pubs we continued to trade for the next couple of days whilst we considered our position. After seeing revenue completely fall off a cliff we had no option but to close all sites a few days before the official lock down was announced. How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? Initially we held multiple group wide Zoom calls to explain what was happening and go through the furlough process in detail with everyone. Since then I have been communicating with all managers through calls and WhatsApp. These have been mainly focused on wellbeing, offering training and simply keeping the conversations going so we don’t forget each other. The site managers each have their own WhatsApp groups which they use to communicate company messages but above all they seem to be using them to have fun with each other. Today, Andrei our bar manager from Disrepute, our members cocktail den in Kingly Court is hosting a Zoom gin masterclass that any one from the group can log in and attend if they wish. We aim to move our communications to Yapster in the coming weeks, having taken them up on their wonderful offer of using the app for free until the end of furlough. CORECRUITMENT
Being a business based on throwing an amazing party for our guests we are going to have to make some big changes to the way we operate if social distancing remains in place. It’s very hard to predict what the rules are going to be so we are working through multiple scenarios so we can easily change our operations when we see what the rules are and what happens to consume behaviour. Ultimately we imagine we will have to move to a table service model, the challenge is keeping the Barrio magic happening whilst people are seated, personally I’m more than happy to have a boogie whilst seated so I’m sure it won’t be a problem! What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Generally I think a lot more people will end up working from home as businesses realise that they can save rent by not having such a large central office. I think it will accelerate the move away from cash as people will want as little risk of contamination as possible. I would love the entire industry to see this as an opportunity to move away from discounting and happy hours in order to try and maintain a better GP, in reality I imagine it will only get worse as everyone will be desperately trying to grab their slice of their pie.
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60 seconds with...
Jonah D. Sandler
Founder / Chief Entertainment Officer How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? As can imagine, navigating Covid-19 has been incredibly challenging for all in the bricks and mortar entertainment industry. Having overcome many challenges in our own history, including a tornado last Spring that tore through one of our locations, this particular epidemic has unquestionably been the most difficult. That being said, I remain optimistic for a strong recovery, in due time, for a number of reasons. One, we as a society are all in this together. We have a mutual understanding of what we are all experiencing right now. Common pain will give birth to common celebrations. Two, people are social by nature. What we are facing today, in the long run, will not change the innate human need to socialize. And three, while we are not considered an essential business, entertainment centers undoubtedly play an important role in sharing fun and helping people create memories together. When we are ultimately able to look at this epidemic from the rear view mirror, we are ALL going to need more fun and more positive memories in each and every one of our lives. At Scene75, we have really been focused on five aspects to manage the lock down as best as we possibly can. 1) Finances. We are doing all that we can to ensure we can overcome the present reality of revenue falling from record breaking levels to a complete halt. 2) Team members. Our team is communicating regularly with the their teams, whether furloughed, temporarily separated, or actively engaged in the business. I am personally sharing regular messaging with our entire team to ensure that they see transparency in the process. Their well-being is important as Scene75 is very much a family to many, and collectively, we are all going through a traumatic situation. Compassion remains key. For our active team members, we are hosting numerous video breakout sessions throughout the week to push the business forward, along with one weekly video conference call where all participate. CORECRUITMENT
3) Guests. We are communicating with our guests in a number of ways. In addition to our routine of e-mails and social media outlets, we are starting to push out text messaging to our guests. Additionally, we are focused on finding ways to keep our guests engaged and entertained. We are hosting fun games, videos and contests daily for them to stay connected to us; we are seeing as many as 70,000 impressions daily from our Facebook programming, aptly named QuaranSCENE. 4) Networking. I personally have been joining as many as 5 webinars each week. I remain connected to my industry peers to learn from them as to how they are navigating the storm, while also sharing our own initiatives. 5) Reopening Planning. We have a team dedicated to the reopening process. Together they are developing detailed plans as to what a reopening, in due time, looks like. We continue to share this with our peers as well. What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way?
I have always known the passion of our team, so I can’t say I’m surprised by the dedication. However, what surprises me perhaps is how much they are able to accomplish given the emotions and feelings we are all trying to manage during these trying times. I remain proud of them for continuing to give this their all. And for those who have been furloughed, their sense of understanding, compassion, and strength impresses me. How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? Until definitive guidelines are outlined by the government, we can all only conjecture what life will look like. That being said, we are developing plans for multiple scenarios that could unfold. Ultimately, the safety of our team and guests is paramount so even if we are permitted to open on a specific date, we will need to ensure that we feel it is the right time for us to do so. Our reopening task force is taking a look at each facet of the business, for example, determining if and how we open ride ‘xyz’ in the early reopening stages. At a very basic level, we fully anticipate that reopening will require all staff members to wear masks, dozens of sanitization stations will be set throughout each of the venues, electrostatic sprayers will be part of the norm, cleaning intervals will be tightened even further, and much, much more. We have always taken great pride in the level of cleanliness of our facilities, and it will remain top of mind for us as much as it will for our guests.
What trends are you seeing to come out this time? I am seeing a ton of collaboration across our industry. I am finding that we are having to assign members to webinars since there are now so many taking place – one person can’t possibly join them all! It is a great thing as there is true comfort in camaraderie – we are all dealing with the same uncertainties of today and tomorrow.
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What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way?
60 seconds with... Jonathan Read Commercial Director How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? Prior to the lock down announcement we modelled three potential scenarios on the impact of a lock down, ban on mass gatherings and social distancing measures. These were communicated to our senior management team and then the plans for communicating with the whole team, clients, supply partners and other stakeholders were put in place. Thankfully our systems were set up for remote working and it was fairly straightforward to migrate the team to homeworking. We then prepared for closing down and securing the venue and putting the protocols in place for checking and monitoring.
I wouldn’t say it is a surprise as we have built an amazing and dedicated team over the last 8 years, but I have been really heartened with how they have all adapted so well to working in isolation, that their appetite for delivering a great client service has not diminished and their overall positivity that we will come through the COVID-19 situation stronger as a team even if we do take a financial battering on the journey. Secondly, almost without exception, our clients have been fantastically supportive – they understand the pressure of concertinaing bookings into the last quarter of year and have been swift to make decisions, approve contract variations and settle invoices. How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? Although we will have to wait for the full government guidelines in due course, we are busy drafting a full set of operational procedures in anticipation including CAD planning capacities based on 2m distancing in each of our 57 spaces, utilising multiple entrance and egress routes to minimise contact, contactless registration, grab and go catering, safe hygienic protocols for A/V such as microphones, thermal scanning, enhanced sanitising measures and dozens more. What I can say with confidence is that we will have the best procedures in place for when we are able to re-open and host events again.
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? We have our Monday kick-off meeting for the whole team as usual, a leadership meeting daily, the sales team have twice daily catch-ups, the operations team have their scheduled meetings, we continue our weekly yoga sessions but now via Zoom and have a team virtual social every Friday where everyone is encouraged to share at least one piece of positive news. Both the sales and event operations teams have remained busy engaging with clients both on postponed events and new enquiries for 2021 and beyond and all the team has been working on reviewing our policies, systems and protocols so that we are in the best shape possible to bounce back once we are allowed to re-open. We have migrated our CRM to Salesforce and there is a lot of training and optimisation of this to support our business plans postlockdown. CORECRUITMENT
What trends are you seeing to come out this time? I have had direct conversations with over 50 of our key clients and despite the current necessary need to make events virtual, there is an undiminished appetite for direct, live, human interactions once it is safe to do so. There will undoubtedly be changes – more social distancing may be with us for a long time – but as human beings we will continue to want and need live experiences. I also believe this time is useful for reflection and it is heartening that in the vast majority of instances the best in people has emerged – looking after neighbours, those in greater need, collaboration with competitors for the greater good of the industry and appreciating small pleasures.
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How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? I can and will continue to work from home supporting my clients. Though of course, there is nothing better than seeing someone face to face to gain trust, enabling strong collaborative working relationships. I believe everyone should enjoy their time at work, and so as part of my retained service, I work hard with my business owners to understand both them and their leadership team’s strengths to leverage, as well as traits and behaviours that could negatively impact progress. I Meg Fenney Founder & CEO then support them in creating a bespoke people plan to enhance the working environment for all (including How has your business dealt with the lock down, what themselves). steps did you take? To do this well, I am in no doubt will be easier, and faster As a support organisation to help my clients, I worked if I was able to be physically there with my clients. hard to review the new legislation that the government Though for now, good old zoom, teams and Skype calls will be just fine. have been issuing and set up various communication channels to my clients, such as webinars, calls, and funny What trends are you seeing to come out this time? enough they liked most what’s app video message updates. So, for me it was about engaging warmly with There will likely be a lot of social anxiety regarding our clients, and helping them navigate, the sometimes illness in general, and of course specifically catching the daily, changes the government were making to the virus. This will likely lead to managers perceiving they’re employment law landscape. To keep both sane and having a very odd conversation with an employee about adding value to my clients I networked strongly with my a specific issue, when they step back, they are likely to Employment Law and HR peers, discussing all gaps we understand the real topic of conversation was fear. My could see and alerting my clients to those gaps (broadly role here is helping leaders prepare for this before it happens. now closed by the government).
60 seconds with...
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? My largest surprise was winning more retained clients throughout this period. I have been fortunate enough to have been in a position to be able to help people in a way that they enjoyed and wanted to continue to work with me on a commercial basis for their organisation. I have also taken some business from local legal competitors as they struggled to cope with demand placed on them through the initial stages of the crisis.
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So that they can spot those signs from their team members, and navigate them well, to enhance the performance of the team, something that will be even more important as many owners are fighting to move back to profit. I know leaders are made from hard work and intentional effort and as such I create and implement micro-training for my clients to access when it is convenient for them. “How to lead in a virtual environment” and for all “how to build personal resilience” are amongst the newly prioritised sessions.
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60 seconds with...
Mike Williams 60 seconds with... Operations Director
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way?
The team themselves and their reaction to dealing with How has your business dealt with the lock down, this crisis. what steps did you take? We have a great team spirit, but this issue has brought us together even further and it has been an absolute Food Alert are very much in the same boat as the case of we are all in this together and will do whatever it majority of businesses within the hospitality takes to help. industry. How will social distancing affect your business, what We have had to take steps to protect the future of plans do you have in place? our own business but also have recognised that we can continue to support the sector during lock down both technically and financially until Government restrictions are lifted. We are also issuing various guidance and support to our clients.
Social distancing will make office working challenging. This period of lock down has really demonstrated that we can work remotely and that flexible hours, accommodating home schooling, can achieve great results.
Clearly the hospitality sector has to overcome social distancing requirements and it is unlikely that we will As a further step, we opened our Advice Line get back to ‘normal’ life quickly. services to all hospitality operators, not just clients. However, we are planning ahead to help our client base develop their own protocols along with tools for testing Furthermore, we are offering e-learning to our their efficacy. client base for free with the goal of helping businesses be We are also looking at service delivery models including ready for re-opening. the provision of remote audits. How are you keeping engaged with staff at this What trends are you seeing to come out this time? time? The main trend for Food Alert has been the request for support and also a reliance upon our online platforms, Zoom, WhatsApp & MS Teams have been fantastic. especially the use of our checklists’ module. We have regular team updates via Zoom calls and hold weekly quizzes to keep staff engaged. Additionally, our clients are clearly showing us that in depth, technical guides are not what they want. The use of social media is also important with many updates sent out which our team share They are looking for short, snappy and clear guidance, across their networks. We also did the toilet roll often assisted by checklists to help them comply and challenge! develop.
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60 seconds with... Nuno Sacramento COO
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? How resilient people and businesses are as long as the right measures are taken at the right time. It’s been tough on particularly lower income individuals, without savings, but those are the people that are always ready to keep it positive. People will always be the highlight of these days.
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take?
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place?
We realised late February that there was an exceptional downturn. One of our shareholders is based in Asia and talked about 25% occupancy. At the time it looked too dramatic of a scenario to consider but with the heads up we started monitoring pick up patterns and the outlook was dire. So, we prepared for three different scenarios and started looking out for cost efficiencies. That phasing down became very helpful in terms of cash flow and allowed us to focus on keeping the business safe and with that, being able to protect our teams. Eventually we fell into our worst-case scenario, effectively putting the business into hibernation. Governments across Europe have promised relief and we are hoping that it comes through, but we have a safe financial position and therefore are keeping management busy, preparing the comeback. We have reviewed marketing, tactics, property, product and will be very ready when we go back to the new normal.
We are thinking that we may arrive into a completely new order. We are ready for less international travel, will adopt contactless transactions like check in, manage social distancing by reducing capacity and safe food and drink delivery prepacked and bottled. We will be offering Coronavirus kits, health insurance built into rate and are adopting a lot of supermarket learnings. In a perfect world a vaccine is developed soon, and we will be able to deliver the communal experience that is the fuel of humanity. We don’t expect business to be fully back until March next year so we will learn from others, we will be cautious and take baby steps to ensure everyone is safe.
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? In times like these, I think engagement takes a completely different shape. Our teams wanted clarity and simplicity. They wanted to have a contact point with answers. And they wanted to be able to stay home if available. We have a raft of sensible activity to say hello and stay in touch and where there is a desire, we are bringing them on to the payroll to develop projects.
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What trends are you seeing to come out this time? The value voucher has caught my eye. Buy a voucher for £10 now and we will give you an extra £5 after 60 days. Effectively a 50% discount creating some cash flow. Food will be very interesting but the uptake of take away seems to dispel any fears of ongoing reluctance from diners – takeaways are fresh food prepared in environments we know little about and we still give them the thumbs up. Quality will be definitely preferred to value. We are seeing some tolerance for price hikes as long as safety and quality are the drivers.
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What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way?
60 seconds with... Paul Nisbett Finance Director Valor Hospitality Partners How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? We began to see a serious drop of reservations in early March, so we started to take steps to reduce the usage of variable payroll, to only utilise on the contracted staff which helped us prepare for the eventual forced shut down that actually came. In terms of steps, we did a number of things: Liaised with Health & Beauty teams early on and once we sensed their nervousness about being in a confined treatment space with clients, we took the decision to close these facilities and not put the team at risk. We allowed all non-front-line staff to work from home in early March and built a remote working plan ensuring we had adequate laptops for key staff and tested all VPN connections for those without laptops so they could work from home. Finally, we had to create hotel specific core teams that would be on the premises once we shut for all insurance, fire, life safety requirements. These teams were voluntary, and we had a big uptake of those people that wanted to be in the teams and as they said, “do their bit at this time”. How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? We have a full social media programme including over 850 staff on our Facebook page. Weekly communication to all furloughed staff. Each hotel has its own WhatsApp group to keep in touch with its employees.
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How quick the business has adapted to working remotely, we have been looking at centralising an number of tasks to reduce duplication on property and this has now been achieved, due to furloughing staff and focus on the key controls that are needed with all businesses shut. Additionally, we have seen how effective a small team on property can be, as we have had to open a couple of hotels for the NHS and the core team have managed this rather than requiring additional staff returning from furlough. How will social distancing affect your business, what plans do you have in place? We have a number of large meetings and events hotels with 3 connected to major convention centres (SEC in Glasgow and HICC in Harrogate) and we do not see the meetings market returning for the foreseeable future or until a vaccine is introduced. Additionally, our retail food and beverage will be materially lower as the capacity in these areas will have to be reduced. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Everyone is far more aware of cleaning, we are having to look at what items are in bedrooms and how are they cleaned i.e. kettles, irons, shower curtains etc. Reviewing the buffets and restaurant offering as people do not want to share or be in queues. One big question I have heard is around hot desking, are the teams willing to share desk going forwards, as some staff have got COVID-19 from sharing? One major focus during this time? Know your actual cash burn amount by month, this has been key to discussions with shareholders and banks. All stakeholders what to know what is the actual minimum cash you need to survive and what can be done to reduce this especially as overnight you have lost all your revenue.
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60 seconds with...
Rian Kirkman Vice President, Marketing
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take?
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place?
All of our movie theatres are temporarily closed, however because all of our theatres have full kitchens, we were able to quickly pivot and get about a third of them up and running for curb side pickup and additionally on GrubHub for delivery. It's allowed our customers to experience SMG at home.
We are still working through that. Anyone who says they have an answer for that is likely "full of it".
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time?
What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Empathy and authentic optimism
The initiative above has allowed us to keep some kitchen staff and management working plus 10 % of the proceeds go to our OneFund to help employees in financial need. What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? The enthusiasm that our team has rallied around our efforts to embrace being a restaurant - focused organization over these last few weeks CORECRUITMENT
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60 seconds with... Roger Payne Enhanced Hospitality CEO How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take?
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way?
We closely monitored the clearly worsening situation during later February and March. We began monitoring staff travel plans and destinations. By 14th March we were looking at staff redundancies but these were fortunately averted by the government backed Furlough Scheme. We wrote to all of our landlords on 18th March to ensure we had engaged as early as possible with them. We contacted our drink suppliers and have managed to return around 60% of our stock on hand which has brought amounts owed to suppliers to close to zero. In our high street locations we boarded up premises , it was a little sad to see this. We are working on re opening marketing plans and the business is currently operated by its directors , its been good to get back on the tools so to speak! We contacted all customers with bookings and offered either enhanced benefits for booking later in the year or full refunds.
The wholesale understanding , resilience and trust from every team member , was I really surprised? Especially their regular messages of support and good wishes to us. The amazing support from our main suppliers
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? We produce a weekly team video briefing, the first was sent out on the Monday 23 March immediately following the furlough implementation. It was a positive message about working to build a sustainable future and to do whatever possible to protect jobs and the businesses. We have set up furlough assistance lines and email accounts. There are various WhatsApp groups which the unit managers used to keep in touch and at head office level we have live streaming offices open all day that we can "pop" in to, and like most others heavy use of video meetings. All work very well and are sure to end up as part of a " new normal" ( excuse the cliche). CORECRUITMENT
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? Clearly there will be much work to be done in respect of risk assessing, training and implementation. We are looking at these in light of the the ever increasing information. We hope the track and trace app will provide comfort to customers to resume going out more speedily. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Smaller head office teams and leaner working practices. An increase in home socialising amongst the customer base. A longer term reduction in average commercial rents. A short term contraction in number of operational hospitality premises.
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60 seconds with... Rory Holburn Director
Openwide International Ltd
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? Initially, before the lock down took full effect, the team became extremely creative and initiated new ways to operate with takeaway offers, social distancing arrangements for the bars and restaurants and new operating practices and procedures for the attractions. In a matter of days, they were ready to operate under the new conditions and then the plug was pulled from under them by the severe lock down and total cessation of trading. But all that work has placed us in a very good position to open up again as soon as we are allowed to. Before the government furlough scheme staff were volunteering to do whatever, they could to protect the company and cut hours, job share and totally change functions. Incredible people. Having been totally shut down across our entire business we have had no choice but to furlough everyone, which under the government scheme really would have penalised our top and key people, so we are topping up everyone for as long as we can to 80% of their previous pay for those earning above £30k. The government’s scheme is extremely meagre for those with a lifetime of work and seniority behind them and all the mortgages and family commitments that go with that. All our team, including us as directors have taken the pay cut and all fully understand the necessity to do so. But I think we will all expect the public sector to do likewise when it comes our turn to step in and resuscitate the economy and bring the nation back to life. Including some redress for the 30% plus cut in the pension funds that the private sector has experienced. How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? We have had to suspend the use of the company e-mails system on advice as we are not permitted to ask any of the furloughed staff to work whilst on furlough and any sign of communication between the company and the employees could render the furlough payments invalid. The directors have made it clear that they are available on phone or Skype throughout for anyone that wishes to contact us, and we keep Skype on throughout the day to that end. Once a week I will contact the senior team on personal phones and e-mail just to see how they are and update them on any news we have. I am fairly sure they do the same for their people but as we are not permitted to instruct them at all that is their choice. But knowing how they all look after their people I doubt they needed any instruction from “the ivory tower”. CORECRUITMENT
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? A positive surprise is a little hard to define. I think above all my own pride and thrill at the way the bunch of maverick individuals we employ to make things work have proven to be beyond any managerial or team concept so beloved of big cooperates. Totally busting the myth of there being no I in team – it’s all I’s, lots of brilliant Is, who come together to form a team to complete a task and then disband and reform anew for new tasks. No team building required, just lots of damn good individuals! How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? Social distancing is an anathema to business that rely upon social interaction. The physical distancing will reduce capacities by as much as 90% in theatres, from just below 2 people per m2 to 1 per 8m2 so there is no real way to reopen whilst they are in place. In bars and restaurants there may be some potential for drastically reduced trade and take away. But numerically this will not sustain employment nor debt servicing for the loans taken out to build the business. The reality is that there is no real future for the industry until this is lifted and that must be the priority. With regard to face masks, this too is an area of major concern for social interaction in general but also for participation shows including variety and comedy where communication between the audience and the stage is essential. Currently science is overlooking the fact that human communication is far less about the words we speak than the emotion and veracity we see in each other’s faces. Face masks will be a very inhumane necessity in some environments but have no place in our social lives. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Sadly, the greatest trend we are witnessing is the new apartheid between the public sector and the private sector. If you work in the private sector you are a second-class citizen with less rights, freedoms, wealth and representation. Your pay has been cut to 80%, or much less if you used to earn over £30k per year and zero if you were a solo wealth creator, and your pension has been decimated by at least 30% - where as your superior counterpart in the "state sector" still has their full salary, job security and a gold plated pension that was already much higher than yours before all of this. www.coreruitment.com | 1
60 seconds with...
Sam Lee Owner/MD Temper Restaurants, London
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take?
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way?
Our first priority was our people. We held individual site meetings to ensure each member of staff knew what the process was going to be and why we had chosen a particular course of action. We gave all staff the opportunity to ask questions. Throughout lock down, I have sent an email daily just to say hello and to ensure the teams are clear there is a contact point should they need it. We also sent mental health helpline contacts as well as helpful details on how they can access benefits and other helplines that can assist if they had issues with their domestic landlords etc.I also lifted the ‘no second job’ policy in their contract for the duration of furlough. They all got NETFLIX for a month.We donated all of our food surplus to an NHS kitchen to make into meals for front line staff.
You need to ask them. The daily emails have been well received
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? As above and by letter for any formal communication cascade. We have an in-house system which ensures all staff, even those without company emails, receive the daily mails. CORECRUITMENT
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? We don’t know but anticipate we may only be able to have 50% of our restaurant full at any one time when open. We are working on rotas and staffing level requirements to cover all bases. We are also working on a number of alternative ways for customers to interact with our teams when we re-open. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? People want good news and are intolerant of selfish behaviour, more a mindset than a trend. People want to support those who are being supportive.
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60 seconds with... Scot Turner, Vice-President - Operations
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take?
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way?
It has been a challenging time for all! We’ve had to change our business model, consolidating locations to minimise manpower and overheads in order for us to keep the business open. Our key priority throughout has been our staff and looking after all our employees so we have been determined to do what we can to keep the business afloat and protect our teams livelihood. We have been reviewing our operating model to look at where we can improve efficiencies and where there are new opportunities to ultimately come out of this stronger. We also feel we have a key part to play in the community and have been offering discounts to NHS and other key workers, supporting our local heroes with free hot drinks, offering free school meals to children, and pioneering @feedyourcommunity where we have partnered with City Pantry and 12 partners and charities across London including hospitals, the homeless and City Harvest. To date we have now dropped over £15000 of meals in our mission to look after London.
I don’t think our team stop surprising me in general but some of the entrepreneurial ideas that have come from our people have been amazing and have opened up new and incremental revenue streams – from the ideas we have implemented, I think we are probably going to continue at least 80% of them long term. How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place ? It’s going to be an interesting time for the industry, the whole ethos of hospitality is about interaction, communication and socialising so it is a sad day when we are talking about restricting this. The message to our teams at the minute is that we will operate in the safest way for our teams and our guests while retaining the essence of our brands and the industry we love.
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? We have a number of different platforms we are using; we have two WhatsApp groups, one on communication updates on the situation and one focussed on wellness and supporting them through the period. We have been using our partners to do yoga sessions and also doing social media workshops for self-learning through zoom. We have also used Perkbox to do surveys and recognitions programs to make sure we are interacting with all of our team most days. We feel it’s really important we show our support as much as possible and to keep an open dialogue so we’ve been very transparent with an open door approach including a weekly ‘drop in’ zoom call with our Head of People for simple chat – some of the topics have been on the industry and situation to the price of fuel and oil! CORECRUITMENT
What trends are you seeing to come out this time? The community spirit and how everyone is supporting the key workers is going to be a real positive – the initiatives from Feed Your Community and Feed the NHS are initiatives that show community responsibility has a huge part to play in every business. I also firmly believe the crisis will bring a focus on supply chain and food source, we have already started to review this with our suppliers to ensure full traceability of all products used in our kitchens.
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60 seconds with... Silvio Liedtke CEO
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take?
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place?
Main focus was and is securing the safety and wellbeing of all our employees. Second priority was and still is to minimize our cost structure to minimize the losses right now. We have been fully locked down since 15th of March and even the month before that was already only on 50% of normal revenue. One big part of our work right now is to sit down with our landlords and external stake holders and re-define our relationships so that both sides can be sustained.
The core of Leisure and Entertainment is bringing people together and create experiences for customers to socially interact and enjoy themselves. So, this is the polar opposite of social distancing. It is not surprising anyone that entertainment venues will be mostly impacted by this new reality. The plan really is damage limitation until confidence returns and this may only happen with a working and fully distributed vaccine.
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? We are fortunate enough to work with facebook@workplace in Landmark Leisure. Every single employee is connected to this tool and this enables not only me and the Leadership team, but everyone in the organisation to directly and instantly communicate to whomever you want to communicate too. This helps us stay connected, informed and creates a sense of inclusion for everybody. We have several # which we encourage all staff to share their experiences, fun and tips, e.g. #thisisme or # stayhealthy. On a more professional level we make full use of MS teams for our work engagements.
What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Totally new relationships with our stakeholders and landlord's, less fragmentation and competition as not everybody will make it through this crisis. Companies who are able to adapt to the new reality and emphasise safety and hygiene to such an extent, that customers will use it as benchmarks for their own life. In my personal view, basic emotional experiences will trump the fad ones...
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? This crisis may be the turning point in some of our ways of working, whether it is creating a sustainable business model going forward or whether it is the way we work together for the better.
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60 seconds with... Simon Browning Owner/Director
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take?
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time?
There are 2 main streams to this. First, my clients, then my business. For my clients I work on a retained basis or a longterm project basis, so I’m effectively an outsourced resource responsible for commercial channels - so seen as a member of the team. As an example of one stream of work I'm in close contact with Krispy Kreme UK & Ire every day, so that developed quickly into creating plans for immediate action/developing community work and then beginning to think about the new near future. Like most senior members in businesses we created a new working relationship to help long term sustainability.
The team stay in contact outside of work anyway - we are a fairly sociable and friendly group. We always share what’s going on and that’s not changed - it has of course just moved to video calls rather than coffee catch ups.
Secondly as a business we took control of the controllables. We’re in a more fortunate position than many so we don’t have to do anything drastic. It’s just a case of methodically working through all the possibilities, making sure our clients are happy and personally managing cash flow whilst planning for the future. Our small team is a mixture of some furloughed and some still working. All our clients are to some extent still busy working (although not all commercially) and they will be back in business at some point. We’re working closely with them to be as helpful as possible and advise on plans for a sustainable future.
CORECRUITMENT
What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? Rapid uptake of technology and the genuine help and support that’s available and offered throughout the hospitality industry. If we can help we will and that’s true of so many. How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place? For us this is just remote working and staying in touch with our clients through technology. What trends are you seeing to come out this time? In the industry and specialism, I enjoy working in, is the development of on-demand food delivery and the rapid creation of online brands, products and services. The innovation in menu/process/leveraging assets/developing new business streams/exploring new markets/companies’ enthusiasm to test and their lower thresholds to acceptable risk are all really exciting. www.coreruitment.com | 1
60 seconds with...
In short, we believe that the businesses that will spring back the fastest on the other side of this are the ones who maintain relationships with as many parties as possible, mostly including team but also members, landlords and suppliers. What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? Put simply, just how community shows itself in the face of adversity. I have been so impressed with their way people just want to help, stay busy and be useful. So many heart-warming stories coming through from our teams and members.
Stephen Brown Operations Director
Further, from a business perspective, it has challenged us to think more widely around alternative ways to communicate, to serve our members and maintain engagement. The digital transformation of our business has been very pleasing to see. How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place?
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? Initially it was about closing safely and securely looking after our members and team. In doing so the true spirit of DL came through strongly with our club tams able to redirect food stocks to local food banks and NHS facilities alongside other worthy local causes. We have then concentrated on looking after team and members again during this period. We have introduced DL@Home as a digital platform to provide exercise at home, initially fairly crudely, but we have been able to refine this as we have gone along. Business wise of course, we have looked at cost implications without impacting people. We have been able to add stability to reserves to ensure we can weather the storm but have pulled back in any ability for clubs to incur cost without central approval. Short term this is counter to our local decision-making approach but understandable for the moment I believe.
We are working closely with UK Active around the right way to operate alongside many other industry colleagues. There is no doubt it will significantly affect our operation, but the focus has to be to maintain the safety of our teams and members through heightened requirements of hygiene and making sure we manage the flow of members in our clubs to maintain distancing. All this whilst making sure we uphold a premium feel and deliver DL service expectations. We are currently finalising our operating plans and are creating the online training we will need to deliver this. This will include what behaviours will be required by all users within our buildings with a solid comms plan to sit alongside to help educate and guide. I am sure initial usage will be significantly lower than usual with each individual deciding when is the right time for them to return to our clubs and their ‘normal’ routines.
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? What trends are you seeing to come out this time? Our teams are everything to us and we have done all we can to provide clear information, the best possible pay but have furloughed 99% of our people to protect jobs and ensure our workforce are looked after and ready to re-engage when the time comes. We do this through regular comms with our teams at home via CEO live broadcasts with ability for Q&A, by encouraging teams to get involved in local voluntary schemes and also creating a hardship fund to help our people who are struggling to get by, including our self-employed workforce whilst still working within HMRC rules.
CORECRUITMENT
Good question! For me I envisage an increased use of digital platforms, potentially an increase in outdoor options of exercise within the club setting as well as, on a human level, changed personal behaviour for the long term and a greater sense of continued community.
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60 Seconds with... Timothy Keefner Director of Operations New Vision Theatres, USA
How will social distancing effect your business, what plans do you have in place?
How has your business dealt with the lock down, what steps did you take? It was vital for us to remain engaged with our guests as well as our staff and management during the shutdown period. Our marketing team has sent out numerous messaging to our Loyalty Members keeping them updated and engaged with fun industry activities and information and updates from film studies regarding upcoming events, promotions,and releases. We have also created a company employee-only Facebook page where we invited our team members to go on and talk about the issues of the day express themselves and share positive things that are taking place. It has been met with positive engagement.
We are currently putting our plan in place and do not yet know all of how that will look as well will be working with local and state agencies on the protocol as we did when during the shutdown process. I expect a lower capacity to maintain spacing for social distancing, reduced menu items, increased cleaning and sanitation guidelines. We will need to provide training and personal protection items for our staff.
What trends are you seeing to come out this time? I believe our country will unite similarly to the way it did after the 9/11 tragedy. I feel it is already beginning to happen. We acknowledge our neighbors a little more than we have in the past, and we will honor our First Responders and Healthcare workers in the months ahead. Our country will pull together for one common cause.
How are you keeping engaged with staff at this time? Through our internal communications system as well as email. Mailed letters for critical information needed regarding benefits or other information required for all furloughed staff. What’s been your biggest surprise for the company in a positive way? The outpouring of support and encouragement from many of our loyal guests through our guest services as well as our social media platforms. Many are confirming their support of our theatres and wising us a speedy reopening when its safe to do so.
CORECRUITMENT
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