I rang Kate Martin, Managing Partner of Brookwood Partners, on the morning after they had received the award of coming thirty-first in the Sunday Times 100 Best Companies To Work For survey – national recognition for organisations that are prepared to invest in their people.

Brookwood operates in the school catering sector; perhaps not one that automatically springs to mind when one thinks about inspirational leadership. Indeed, as Kate explained, one of her greatest challenges is actually to get her chef-managers to realise that they have a leadership responsibility.  These are typically people, often middle aged who started as a kitchen assistant or are in their first managerial position, who provide around 400 lunches a day in an independent school. They have team of perhaps ten part-time staff who may have returned to work to supplement their family income, rather than having any career aspirations. Albeit being a manager in school catering poses real challenges, far too often they do not recognise themselves as leaders. Yet, motivating their team to provide a service that fully contributes to the school socially, academically and financially calls for real leadership skills.

To address this perception, Brookwood take their site managers out of the kitchen and encourage them to see their responsibilities from a different perspective. By posing work-based scenarios and asking them how they would react; how they would set an example; how they would achieve their vision, they address the leadership aspects of their roles. Kate says that the most rewarding results of this approach are the ‘light bulb moments’ when managers suddenly appreciate that they actually do apply leadership skills and how crucially important they are.

Many people believe that leaders are only found at the top of a company structure, hence those lower on the managerial scale often do not see themselves as having a leadership role. It is therefore incumbent on organisations to reinforce the fact that inspirational leadership is required at all levels; not least by those leading customer-facing teams.

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Permalink: Kate Martin – ‘Lightbulb Moments’
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The annual Sunday Times 100 Best Companies To Work For survey identifies companies across the country whose staff score them the highest across eight categories – from their leadership, to the extent to which they involve their staff in charity work. For me, being recognised in this award separates the great employers from the rest – and yet, year after year, so few hospitality companies are featured. Indeed, last year the only one in the ‘Small Companies’ category was The Cavendish London – a privately-owned, 230-bedroom, four star hotel in London.

I asked Ciarán Fahy, its Managing Director, how he uses the survey to develop his staff and, hence, his business. The hotel already had a well-earned reputation within the hospitality industry but three years ago Ciarán decided to benchmark it against companies from across all sectors and, thus, entered the Sunday Times competition.

Since then he has used the eight categories as a framework upon which to identify what his managers should be held accountable for. He finds that this structured approach offers the management team a set of objectives that are both comprehensive and tangible. Great leaders make things happen – but they need clear objectives upon which their leadership can be measured; and in this survey they are measured exclusively by their staff!

If Ciarán wanted proof that his leadership approach is bearing fruit, The Cavendish London was ranked 35^th    with 3 star accreditation  out of the 567 companies that entered the 2011 Sunday Times 100 Best Small Companies To Work For survey – scoring an impressive 86% positive score for strong leadership.

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Permalink: Ciaran Fahy – ‘Being a Best Company To Work For’
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Many hospitality companies talk about empowering their staff but Malmaison and Hotel du Vin have taken the concept to a different level with their WOW Campaign. In it, staff from all departments are trained and actively encouraged to reward customers by offering complimentary goods or services beyond what they could be expected.

 What makes this application of empowerment unusual is the process that underpins it. Each employee is given their own personal WOW Card to record the actions they have taken to delight the customer, which are then inputted into a staff database as a means of sharing ideas and encouraging wider participation. Moreover, staff are formally recognised and rewarded for participating: when their card has five Wows on it they are offered a drink at the bar; ten Wows gets them a free meal in the restaurant; and all cards are entered into an annual draw with a chance to win a luxury trip to New York.

 Hence, employees are actively encouraged to use their authority to find new ways to develop brand loyalty – not only in response to customer complaints, but also by proactively seeking opportunities to exceed guests’ expectations. Like, for example, offering complimentary nibbles to accompany a bottle of champagne; or like the member of the maintenance team who noticed a guest’s expensive suitcase had a wheel missing and, without prompting, sourced and fitted a replacement wheel.

 Unlike some other companies’ empowerment schemes, this one imposes no financial parameters on actions taken by staff. However, each entry on a WOW card has to be posted to a cost code and signed off by the unit’s Deputy General Manager, who may wish to discuss the appropriateness of the action and resulting cost with the member of staff.

 Is there a net cost-benefit of schemes that demonstrate that a company values and trusts its staff?  Certainly, in this particular case the board and investors of Malmaison and Hotel du Vin believe so and would point to the fact that their labour turnover is reducing seven per-cent a year – contributing over £100,000 to the profitability of the company.

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Permalink: Mike Williams – ‘The WOW Factor’
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Vice President, People for McDonald’s Europe, David Fairhurst explained to me that things have changed dramatically for their restaurant managers over the last decade, which has resulted in fundamental changes to the company’s approach to career development. Its training programmes, amongst the best in our industry, have always been designed to develop the management skills of the employees, but now they must also include the leadership ability necessary to take decisions in a more complex, transparent world.

The business is growing, which means that its managers could be responsible for forty per-cent more staff in restaurants offering customers a broader menu than ever before. Moreover, they increasingly have to be conscious of the needs of a wide range of other interested parties including: the local community; government at local and national levels; those having environmental concerns; other pressure groups; the media; as well as the ever-rising expectations of restaurant customers.  All this in addition to the manager’s delegated responsibility to manage the P&L account!

Company training strategy must now enable managers to deal with these multi-dimensional set of challenges on a daily basis, often without delay. Hence, they are now given the skills to build trust, not only with their workforce, but also with the community at a local level. They must be ambassadors: representing their business to all its varied stakeholders. The old days when the operational manual held all the answers are long gone: leaders now need a broader set of skills and thinking that can determine and deliver solutions at a speed required of the modern communication age.

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Permalink: David Fairhurst – ‘Leadership Training in the Internet Age’
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