The leaders I interviewed retain people by treating the team as the product rather than a cost: hiring for character, onboarding seriously, sharing goals and financial results, protecting staff from the pressures that would wear them down, and managing each person according to their talents. Motivation follows from being taken seriously.
Of everything I discussed with eighty hoteliers and chefs, the team came up more than any other subject. The answer to retention that emerged from those conversations is less a set of perks than a posture. The operators who keep their people treat the team as the work itself, and they spend accordingly.
Joan Roca grew the kitchen at El Celler de Can Roca in Girona from two cooks at its opening in 1986 to forty at the height of its operation, while holding a standard that made it twice the most respected restaurant in the world. He was clear about what made that growth possible.
“Human capital is the most important capital in the restaurant, and we invest heavily in our team and resources to take care of our staff. This enables them to grow and perform their best.” Joan Roca, El Celler de Can Roca, Girona
The word investment matters. The two day onboarding at Four Seasons Resort Lanaʻi, the personal coach Stephen Ansell assigns to every new hire for their first three months, the hour Marc von Arnim spends at every new recruit’s orientation at Park Hyatt Sydney, all of these look on a quarterly statement like discretionary expense. The operators in this book treat them as capital expenditure on the only durable asset the industry produces. A new property across the street can match the linens, the spa and the chef brand within eighteen months of opening. It cannot match a team built and retained over a decade.
Transparency is the second practice, and it is one many operators would find uncomfortable. The late Patrizio Cipollini, general manager of Four Seasons Hotel Firenze from its opening in 2008, shared the hotel’s goals with all staff, shared the financial results every year, and gave each department the budget it was responsible for delivering. Showing people the numbers treats them as adults whose work matters the way an owner’s work matters. In the experience of every operator I know who has tried it, a team that knows the property’s numbers runs the property as if the numbers were its own.
The third practice is protection, and it is the one the leaders in this book describe with the most conviction. Early in his career a manager noticed that Aaron Kaupp, then a young hotelier working too many shifts in a row, was about to tip into fatigue the department could not afford. He took Kaupp to lunch, sent him home and finished the shift himself. Nothing more was said. Kaupp, now in his sixties and running luxury hotels at the highest level, still tells that story and still credits the manager. A leader who absorbs the difficult guest, the impatient owner and the visiting inspector on the team’s behalf gets a level of performance the same team cannot reach without that cover. A team thrown to the wolves once spends the rest of its tenure quietly disengaging.
Tom Roelens, then general manager of Four Seasons Resort Lanaʻi, framed the stakes from the guest’s side.
“You can have the most amazing physical asset in a beautiful natural surrounding and in an idyllic location. But it all comes down to people and the service they provide.” Tom Roelens, then general manager, Four Seasons Resort Lanaʻi
The last practice is management that fits the person. Roca told me that managing his team in an inclusive way, based on all their various talents, was the only sustainable path. A chef who runs a forty person brigade as one unit loses, within a year or two, the people who could have become the chef de cuisine of the next decade. Nicolai Nørregaard of Kadeau in Copenhagen goes further still: every summer he closes the Copenhagen restaurant and moves the entire staff to a farmhouse on Bornholm to work the season together. The bond built there is the retention strategy.
Chapter 4, First the Team, follows this through hiring for character, onboarding as induction, building the culture, defending the team, and the economics of the bad hire.