3 minute read
NEWS: THE POWER OF A DIVERSE WORKFORCE IN HOSPITALITY
THE POWER OF A DIVERSE WORKFORCE IN HOSPITALITY
SevenRooms brought its Pass The Bread panel event to Sydney last month to discuss diversity, equality and inclusion, and its influence in the hospitality industry.
Hosted by SevenRooms senior community development manager Skyler Hunt, the panel consisted of Esca group operations manager Chris Mul’Howard, Merivale senior learning and development manager Jake Walsh, Stanley House Studios account director Regina Lee and Solotel relationship manager Ella Collins.
In a conversation about empowering your staff to understand the diverse needs of your customers, Walsh explained that the first step is building an engaged and inclusive workforce.
“For us, it starts at the recruitment process. Obviously, a skilled workforce is important in hospitality, but over the last two years we have really focused on the personality of the individuals that are coming through and making sure that they fit our values. Merivale has four strict core values, but each venue has the freedom to define what those values mean to them.
“We hire through our venues, people who fit the definition of those values. We’re really in touch with the communities that surround our venues, and really focused on bringing people into our business who are passionate and show the right personality and values, rather than their skillset.”
Collins added: “The more diverse the workforce you have, the more ideas are going to get brought to the table. More ideas result in more effective events and activations.”
Beyond recruitment and representation, Walsh elaborated on the importance of educating your workforce so that they are equipped to respond to new situations.
“As soon as something happens in our world, it’s a great opportunity to educate our team. Not only our employees, but our wider reach workforce, our contractors and suppliers, the people who come and visit us day in day out, as well as our guests.
“WorldPride is a fantastic example. We felt that our workforce probably wasn’t ready to be respectful enough to the people that we were going to welcome into our venues. We took that opportunity to partner with some of the best in the business, letting that trickle through a 500-large training session and seeing the rewards throughout the year in how our team started to react to different situations in a way that is respectful, inclusive and makes us feel proud of them.”
Speaking from the perspective of a group role, Collins expanded on the discussion by sharing insights into Solotel’s approach of outsourcing training.
“In terms of training, partnerships have been the biggest tool for us. We might not have the tools internally to be able to achieve true diversity and inclusion, so externally, we really focus on partnerships. It takes some investment at a group level and it’s not cheap, but the best educational results we have seen have been through our partnerships.”
