You’re the UK’s top hotel to work for! What makes The Landmark’s approach to talent and culture so special?
We take a holistic view of talent and culture, looking at all elements of the employee journey. We never assume what our teams are looking for or what they might like as initiatives or benefits, so for us to implement anything we spend a lot of time talking to our teams, finding out what they want, and looking at the data on our systems about what they engage with.
We are very data-driven, whether it be from our systems or talking to our teams, to make sure that what we do lands with them and represents what the teams are looking for at all levels of the organisation.
91% of your employees agree the hotel is run on strong values and principles. What’s the secret?
We don't take the approach of quoting values at people all the time and we tell employees early on that we won’t quiz them on what our values are. Instead, we believe they show much more by actions rather than remembering strap lines.
For example, we have a welcome day, which is a typical company induction, but we don't just have someone in HR running it. Rather than the most junior person in HR telling you policies and a few benefits, at The Landmark, it’s our executive team, the most senior people in the organisation who run the whole day.
One, our team members then know it must be a very important message for our senior leaders including our CEO to take the time out to share the information. And two, it means we can instill those values about constantly looking to improve, being results-driven and team-focused, and constantly working together to deliver the operational standards that our guests expect.
For example, one of our standards is to use a guest name at every opportunity; but we also expect it for our team members, whether they be senior or junior, encouraging teams to greet everyone by name. We offer training programmes that help people learn techniques to be able to remember everyone's names as they go through their employment.
That’s the secret—the senior team instils the values from day one and demonstrates those behaviours we expect from everyone every single day.
And 90% agree you have a strong social conscience – how do you make that value tangible?
We have a ‘Giving Something Back’ task force. Like all task forces across the business for all different subjects, it’s made up of team members across the business. They’re without rank. Whoever has the most creative idea is the champion for that meeting, and it doesn't matter if you're a senior person, an office person, or an operational person.
Giving Something Back is led by one of our middle managers. This year, we agreed on mainly supporting a charity called Debra, which supports children with a rare, extremely painful, genetic skin blistering condition (EB) as well as other hospitality charities. In the taskforce, representatives from each hotel department come up with creative ideas about how to raise money and decide on targets for raising money.
The taskforce gives us quarterly updates on how well we're doing, and it creates healthy competition between the departments. It works because it’s not a senior management-led forum at all, but the senior managers are very supportive.
As a ‘data-driven’ organisation, what are the metrics you keep a close eye on?
A lot of hotels have high turnover. As with any hotel, we do too, in some areas. However, the average length of stay for our team members is over five years, which is exceptional for the hospitality industry. We're very proud of that.
This year we became the highest-scoring hotel in the Best Companies index, and I think it’s our holistic approach to the employee experience that is driving this. All team members complete a survey and rate us, so it’s nothing that the HR team can influence last minute.
Team members anonymously rate our leadership, our management, our teams, and our values. It’s not necessarily about where we rank, but about our matrix score and showing that we’re improving year-on-year. That said, we're obviously very happy to be confirmed as the best hotel to work for in the UK.