Our founder, Bill Kimpton, would always say, “hire the right people, and then get out of their way.” Turns out, that still rings as true in 2018 as it did back in 1981. When your mission is to be the “best-loved hospitality company,” first, you need to hire great people. People with heart and a passion for following their intuition. We’ve never lost sight of the fact that hospitality is a people-driven industry. It’s important to recognize that it’s our employees who create unbelievably meaningful experiences. When we look at review sites and surveys, our employees receive personal recognition from our guests every single day.
With unemployment at record lows, the competition for top talent is especially fierce. There’s more tools and resources to reach candidates but it’s also very noisy out there. So, when your whole philosophy hinges on hiring great people, what do you do when it’s harder than ever to not only find them, but make the best first impression?
Autonomy
Our HR team, known as People and Culture, is there to partner with our hotel and restaurant operators and provide expertise, guidance and training on our Employee Journey. This Employee Journey highlights all the ways an employee becomes immersed in our culture. It all starts with Attract + Recruit.
That initial impression that potential candidates have of us is first shaped by our people in the “field” also known as our property teams. That’s where autonomy comes into play. It’s easy to talk about the benefits of unprecedented trust and empowerment of employees, but at Kimpton we actually walk the walk. Our front desk agents don’t have to ask for permission to surprise and delight a guest and our managers are empowered to hire for their team without a formal recruiter acting as a middleman.
That means the recruiting experience is unique to each hotel and restaurant to better resonate with their candidate pool and market. One general manager in Florida made every single manager read the book, “The Who: The A Method for Hiring" — they all got onboard with that method of interviewing for each position. We had a restaurant get really creative and turn their job fairs into a BBQ with the theme “Brats, Brews and Interviews.” That created a welcoming, relaxed atmosphere where they could get to know the candidates on an authentic level.
Long story short: we don’t provide a script on how to provide heartfelt care to our guests and that same approach applies to recruitment. The teams receive best practices, tools and guidance from us and it’s up to them to bring it to life in a way that makes sense for their market, disciplines, etc.
[Related: Adding Authenticity to Your Career Site]
Tools
Empowerment is important, but it doesn’t mean anything if you aren’t setting your people up for success. We want to make it as easy as possible for our managers to find the best talent for Kimpton. Here are a few of our favorite ways to empower them:
- Employer Branding - Our culture mantra is “Be Yourself, Lead Yourself, and Make it Count.” It provides a framework to all hiring managers across the company to assess candidates’ ability to thrive within our culture. It also helps to speak to candidates about what it means to be a Kimpton employee and why people love working here.
- Responding to reviews on Glassdoor - We collaborate and respond to reviews on Glassdoor. Glassdoor has become such a major player for candidates searching for new jobs and researching companies. We strive to have a two-way communication with employees and candidates, making it clear that their feedback is being heard and taken to heart. We often utilize this feedback for continuous improvement of our HR practices.
- Interview Print + Go Sheet - This is an interactive tool for managers that walks them through the interview process from start to finish. There are dropdown lists of questions to help assess skills and fit with Kimpton core values. You just select your questions, print and head into your interview!
- Career Fair in-a-Box - We provide all the tools necessary to provide a Kimpton experience at Career Fairs including a 3-panel banner, tablecloth, giveaways and a digital look book. Properties can enhance and further tailor this to suit their market and goals.
- “Hire Like a Boss” class - This is a new training workshop that we offer that covers how to attract, recruit and onboard for Kimpton. The hiring climate is always evolving, so it’s helpful for all managers regardless of how long they’ve been hiring. It’s also very interactive to help managers to think outside the box and brainstorm ideas that will be relevant for their market and property.
- Employee Referral Program - One of our biggest sources of hires within Kimpton is our employee referral program. It gives our managers a straightforward way to incentivize referrals, and continue to bring in top talent.
Servant Leadership
Another great quote of Bill’s was, “we’re here to have people’s backs, not be on their back.” Everything our leaders do is in service to the employees who bring Kimpton’s heartfelt service to life every single day. When you think about it, that’s our product — not the brick and mortar of our properties.
Our leaders lead by example and demonstrate exceptional care for one another and their teams. At our Home Office, we have a highly approachable, open-door policy and our executives’ offices flow right into their teams. Bill’s first office was a desk in the middle of his first hotel’s living room lobby which meant he was right in the middle of the action and accessible to both guests and employees at a moment’s notice. Another dynamic way leaders connect with the field is through our internal social network, Yammer. It’s evolved into an open-dialogue platform. Employees and their managers share their triumphs, challenges, tips and tricks and provide support to one another from city to city.
You don’t feel the hierarchy at Kimpton like you do at other companies of our size. For instance, everyone cares about Glassdoor reviews. Our CEO, Mike DeFrino, purposefully set up alerts to hit his inbox and often jokes that his near perfect approval rating could only be due to his mom leaving reviews.
Our leaders also aren’t afraid to show that they’re human. They meet challenges with vulnerability, transparency and humor. That culture of compassion keeps us Kimpton after all these years.
Ultimately, we hire for heart and also lead with it.
This is how Kimpton stays human.
This article was originally published on LinkedIn Pulse. It is reprinted with permission.
