"Hospitality is the "Power of Human Connection" - Dame Karen Jones
Inspiring words from Dame Karen Jones, chair of both the Hawksmoor and Mowgli restaurant chains, senior independent director at Deliveroo and who founded casual dining chain Café Rouge in 1989. During the Pandemic, she worked closely with ministers and was the only hospitality representative on the government's Build Back Better business council. She was made a dame in the Queen's Birthday Honours List 2022 for her services to business and the hospitality industry.
People are at the heart of every hospitality business.
Karen Jones spoke at the Propel Hospitality Talent & Training Conference on Tuesday she said:
Hospitality is the lynch pin of society. We realised how much we missed it during lock down.
She reminded us that the holy grail of hospitality is:
The power of the moment of human connection that keeps your customers coming back again and again.
When asked about what attracted her to working in hospitality she said it was the
Excitement hospitality can give
The pleasure of looking after people
Lovely colleagues who are fun, high energy, innovative and entrepreneurial
She went on to talk about that elusive "hospitality gene" found in people who just get the excitement and buzz of hospitality and love the pleasure of looking after people. The million dollar question is: is the hospitality gene innate or can you teach it? Karen Jones believes that you can. An employer needs to explain what hospitality is all about - the hard technical skills and soft communication skills can be learned later.
The Importance of Culture
Culture is hard to define she said, it’s more complex than “your people just doing the right things when people are looking.”
Culture is that feeling it gives you.
She defined CULTURE as the 'feeling it gives you' built on 4 pillars:
Being clear about the culture you want to create and knowing and communicating your values.
Genuinely caring about your people. Remember everyone is different: different backgrounds, different outlooks and with different ambitions. Culture is about trying to weld them into a whole through daily decisions that strengthen not weaken the culture.
Not expecting people to do things in their work life that they wouldn’t do in their personal life
Always delivering on what you say you will.
How to define your Values to build Culture
Karen Jones emphasised that your values have to be what you genuinely believe in. Values should be driven by the business founders or leaders, not outsourced to a consultant. Create a Mission and Vision statement that communicates your purpose and values. This is the time for leaders to be quite direct - your team need something to hang their hat on.
Keep your values simple and easy to articulate. If you can't remember them or say them clearly, they're too long and complicated. Use the one-sentence test! Can you say what you stand for in one simple sentence?
You know your values have caught fire when people start using them and talking about them. Then they start to drive behaviours.
4 Crucial Factors to Retaining Employees
Building on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Karen Jones identified four blocks to retention, without these things you will never get people to stay in your business.
PAY - You can’t do a good job if you are worrying about how you are going to pay the rent.
SAFETY & SECURITY - If I do well will I be secure?
WORK LIFE BALANCE - long hours and low pay are the worst things. Our cognitive ability is affected by stress and the main causes of stress are fair pay and scheduling.
CAREER ADVANCEMENT - how do I get my foot on the next rung of the ladder?
