How transparent should hospitality leaders really be with their teams?
It is easy to say that businesses should communicate openly. It is rather harder when the decision involves pay, difficult trading conditions, organisational change or something people simply do not want to hear.
In this episode, Timothy R Andrews is joined by Adena Cahill, Molly Davis, Joe McDonnell and Dan Hawkie to explore what transparency actually looks like in a hospitality business, and why simply sending an email, posting a policy or putting something on the staff app does not necessarily mean you have communicated it.
The conversation looks at the relationship between trust, communication and leadership, why people increasingly want to understand the reasoning behind decisions, and how leaders can involve their teams without pretending that every decision can be made by committee. As the panel discusses, people may not always agree with the outcome, but understanding how and why a decision was made can make a considerable difference.
Money inevitably enters the conversation too. Tips and tronc provide a particularly clear example of why transparency matters, especially when decisions directly affect what people take home. The panel discusses tipping policies, the importance of explaining how decisions are reached and why being open about a policy does not automatically make the policy itself fair.
There are practical lessons throughout, from adapting communication for different people and languages to making better use of briefings, checking whether information has actually been understood and knowing when a digital message still needs a human conversation.
Ultimately, transparency is not about telling everybody everything. It is about explaining what matters, being clear about the decisions you make and creating enough trust for people to ask questions when they do not understand.
This episode is produced in partnership with TiPJAR, whose work around pay, tips and tronc makes transparency particularly relevant to the conversation.
Featuring: Adena Cahill, Molly Davis from the British Institute of Innkeeping, Joe McDonnell and Dan Hawkie, Chief Commercial Officer at TiPJAR.
Talking Hospitality: Moving The Hospitality Conversation Forward.
Companies mentioned in this episode:
