HOTEL GROUP WELLBEING
EVOLVING WITH SOCIETY
Having begun with a classic Irish education at the Christian Brothers school in his hometown of Gorey, County Wexford, Pat McEvoy would never have predicted ending up in the role of Corporate Wellbeing and Executive Coach at FBD Hotels.
“I’m living in Kildare for the last 40 years or thereabouts,” says Pat, who originally opted for the well-worn career path of the family law firm, ending up in the Chief State Solicitor’s office at Dublin Castle.
“It was a pensionable job and I enjoyed it to a certain extent,” recalls Pat,
“but I was always a bit of a square peg in a round hole… people used to come in and chat to me and even without any training, I always seemed to be able to understand what was going on in people’s lives –I’m a good listener, I suppose.”
At that time, Pat says, the Civil Service were completely sup-
portive of any employees who wanted to do a course and Pat opted for a two-year course in counselling at Maynooth University, which he completed in 1998. In terms of its application to the wider world in late 1990s Ireland, counselling rarely strayed beyond the two main areas of marriage guidance and addiction.
The newly-qualified counsellor followed up with a Mediator’s course in 1999 and then achieved a qualification in Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP). He became a practitioner in NLP and then went on to study every weekend over a two-year period in yet another course – this time in Life and Business Coaching.
Friends who had a medical practice in Kildare offered him a part-time opportunity as counsellor and, as this role got progressively busier, he found himself with a full set of clients at night while still working a pensionable job during the day.
“Something had to give,” say
Pat, “and
the choice I made was to give up the full-time pensionable job and do something that I had been told I wouldn’t be able to make a living out of… but I just had faith in myself and I got great satisfaction out of it.”
Determined not to be limited to one area of counselling, Pat continued to add more courses to his portfolio, completing another in addiction counselling and another one in couples counselling.
“I was told that if you worked in one area only, you would suffer burn-out, so I became an eclectic counsellor.”
His business grew progressively, with word-of-mouth playing the main role in generating new clients. As Irish society was evolving, the very notion of counselling was going from being seen as American and pointless to a very normal part of life. In the beginning, Pat recalls, approximately 90% of his clients were women. Today, the majority of his clients are men and the age profile of them is continuing to decrease.
“As things progressed, I started to do a few corporate jobs for a few companies… employees are normally reluctant to open up to people in the company because they’re too close to them and counselling can’t work without creating an atmosphere of confidentiality first.”
“It’s a strange job in many ways because it’s in complete confidentiality. I don’t ever go home to my wife and tell her what happened to me today at work, for example.”
In 2020, FBD Hotels & Resorts CEO David Kelly approached Pat to ask him to work as a consultant with the group in the area of wellbeing. Pat took on the role with the proviso that any consultations with staff would be in complete confidentiality –something to which David Kelly readily agreed.
As Pat sees it, wellness in the context of a company employee is all about looking after the whole person and all aspects of their life.
“Work is only an eighth of what we call
the
Wheel of
Life. There are seven different other areas in which we can become involved… if we don’t look after our other areas such as our health, our wellbeing, our hobbies, our relationships – if they’re not right, then how can we come into a work situation?”
Pat sees his role as a very simple one – providing clarity in unravelling the complications, rather than adding anything complicated to people’s lives. “We need to take a ‘helicopter’ view of their situation and we need people to have a willingness to listen and to have an open mind… it’s also a job that you cannot do if you are in any way judgemental.”
As FBD moved back to normality after the Covid Lockdown period, it was decided that Pat’s role would be kept on. Clearly, wellbeing was recognised as an asset well worth retaining on a more long-term footing.
“It was decided that we would go out to all the hotels in the group and look after the staff in all the hotels,” says Pat. It was an innovative...
...approach for the group that introduced a function that the HR department would traditionally have got lumbered with.
The workload of the entire group with its 1700 staff members was significant enough to necessitate a reorganization of Pat’s role. The company decided to put in place an Employment Assistance Programme for every FBD staff member.
“It also meant that I would look after all of the senior staff in all the hotels – the four in Ireland and also at head office, and I would go every quarter to all of them.”
For the two Spanish hotels in the group, Pat’s lack of Spanish meant that he wasn’t able to fulfil the role in the same way, so FBD hired a Spanish counsellor to look after the Iberian-based staff, while Pat has an overseer role involving visiting the hotels there twice a year to talk to the senior staff.
Getting staff members to trust someone in Pat’s role takes a certain amount of time – particularly in the case where FBD have acquired a new hotel in the group. The natural tendency for some is for them to consider him a management spy rather than what he actually is.
“I would be the same,” says Pat. “I wouldn’t trust someone just because they seem to be a nice fellow. They have to see that I am true to my word; so, when I mean that it doesn't go farther than the door, then it doesn’t go farther than the door. And it wouldn’t be just the professional end of things that people can talk to me about. It can be all kinds of ongoing personal things that they can’t talk to other senior staff about.”
Pat points out that there is an assumption that those in positions of leadership are the ones with everything figured out but those positions can be amongst the loneliest places in an organisation. Where there are issues behind the scenes in the workplace, it can infiltrate the atmosphere of a hotel. Pat maintains that this is something that people can pick up on when they visit a hotel.
This is where the value of having a Wellbeing Programme pays off.
It facilitates the creation of a welcoming and pleasant ambience in the hotel, giving the customer a feeling of comfort akin to donning an old pair of slippers.
The other area where it pays off is in staff retention. The cost of the process of hiring new staff is considerable and it is reduced to a significant degree by having more contented staff within the organisation.
“In a busy hotel, everyone is very occupied in their various roles, so very often the show of appreciation – the pat on the back or saying, ‘well done’ can mean so much.“The fact that I’m there of itself makes people feel that they are really valued,” says Pat. “They feel listened to, supported and really appreciated.”