Laura Benoumechiara, Chief Human Resources Officer at Louvre Hotels Group, sets out the company’s plans to tackle talent shortages and gives advice to those starting out. The HR chief will be speaking in the session The People Issue: Addressing the Talent Shortage at the International Hospitality Investment Forum (IHIF) in Berlin on Thursday 5 May.
Hospitality Insights: Knowing that people are at the core of ho
spitality, how do you view the current talent shortages and what is your company doing to address them?
Laura Benoumechiara: The hospitality sector was hit hard by the COVID crisis. Studies show that about 30% of hospitality workers have left the sector.
In this context, we need to reinvent ourselves, adapt to the new needs of our teams, and of our clients, and launch an industry-wide transformation. To meet this challenge, we must leverage every opportunity to promote and provide support to our teams, as well as to the group’s ‘employer brand’ and that of all the group brands.
Internally, we are boosting the means to develop our ‘Social Elevator’ career pathways and mobility enabling everyone, company-wide, to learn and grow at any point in their career.
Training is paramount, a key lever in our approach. For this, we felt it was necessary, on the one hand, to shore up workforce skills via our company university and, on the other hand, to structure our training pathways to ensure seamless and effective change, while adapting to sector transformation, new consumer trends and new technology. Our talent management department has also launched extensive new business and leadership programmes. We believe these programmes are excellent retention tools and provide our talents with needed recognition.
Externally, we are working on two main themes. The first concerns our employer brand and its visibility: we have launched a project in line with our five-year brand plan to make the employee experience more attractive by fostering commitment and a sense of belonging to each brand and to the group. The second is to reinforce our local and group network and strengthen our ties with employment and training stakeholders. At Louvre Hotels Group, we recruit more and more of our teams from outside hospitality circles. Our recruitment criteria focus on a positive attitude, caring nature, ‘people-first’ attitude and desire to meet client needs. We have put internal measures in place to train new recruits and ensure social mobility. That’s why we are broadening our recruitment process to include unemployed, or underemployed, populations with little or no experience.
Hospitality Insights: What advice would you give someone starting a career in hospitality?
Benoumechiara: People don’t always recognise the true worth of the hospitality sector, while it offers a vast range of careers and stimulating professional lives. A smile, motivation and a can-do, client-oriented attitude are the keys to success in this sector. You can then develop other qualities and skills on the job, through various experiences and exchanges with the teams and clients.
Hospitality Insights: In your opinion, how will the hospitality sector transformation impact human resource management?
Benoumechiara: The current business model for our sector was shaken to the core by the COVID crisis: client needs have changed, and so have the needs of our employees. This crisis brought to the fore the importance of a life-work balance. All sector professionals are aware of it. We must rethink our operational modes and move away from the classic schema we all know:
- Develop more flexible work schedules that meet individual needs,
- Authorize career breaks for personal projects or just to relax and re-motivate,
- Create better conditions that foster team spirit as well as community spirit, connecting with clients to offer a stimulating social environment,
- Strengthen managerial skills to adapt to new employee needs, which are fast becoming the industry norms.
Hospitality Insights: What are you hoping to get out of IHIF?
Benoumechiara: I look forward to sharing our outlook on the transformation of our sector with all industry stakeholders. I hope this event will enable us to find new ideas able to make our sector that much more exciting and attractive.