The Editor's Hospitality Blog

The deadline is looming for hospitality operators wishing to enter Best Places to Work in Hospitality 2008. Here are five good reasons why you should get working on your application NOW.

ONE We all know how hard it is to attract, recruit and retain great employees. Winning a Best Places award and displaying the Best Places kitemark on job adverts makes it clear to prospective candidates that you are an employer of choice and treat your staff well.

TWO All category winners receive extensive profiling in Caterer and Hotelkeeper and here on Caterersearch, meaning that your company could become an exemplar of employment best practice around the industry.

THREE Competitive advantage: wouldn't it be great to be able to boast that you offer a more attractive place of work than the other players in your sector?

FOUR What better morale-booster for your team could there be than winning one of our Best Places awards?

FIVE Your success will be celebrated at a blue riband event taking place at the Honourable Artillerary Company in the City of London, during the week of Hotelympia 2008.

Can you afford not to fill in an application form and shout about your employment successes?

I'm off on holiday for a week, safe in the knowledge that last Friday's judging of Caterer and Hotelkeeper's Best Places to Work in Hospitality 2007 was a resounding success.

Once again, we've managed to identify the hotel, restaurant and leisure companies doing the most to ensure good practice in the recruitment, training, retaining and motivating of their employees. Last year's winners included McDonald's Restaurants, whose commitment to providing a positive working environment led them to start a campaign to get the word "Mcjob" (definition: a low-paying, low-prestige job) taken out of dictionaries. As of last week, the fast-food giant's campaign petition had attracted over 100,000 signatures. Good on them for taking steps to challenge prejudices and boost the self-esteem of their workforce.

I could tell you who our Best Places winners are, but then I'd have to kill you, so you'll just have to wait until we announce them at a ceremony during next year's Hotelympia.

See you in a week, when there'll be plenty to tell you about the announcement of the 2007 Hotelier of the Year.

Have you ever wanted to know the secret to attracting the very best hospitality workers to your company? Or wondered what other companies do to be selected as one of Caterer's Best Places to Work in Hospitality? Look no further.

Hospitality recruitment specialists, HR on Tap have sent me a list of reasons why some companies fail to find good staff. There's some good stuff here, I think:

Are you looking in the right place? An advert in trade press will hit people in the right industry, but most readers will statistically be outside your region and most will probably not be looking for a new job. Local papers have similar problems – you get the location right, but not the industry or job seekers. Spread your net wider and it’ll be easier to catch the right people.

Are you offering the right package? Too much money is just as bad as not enough! You need to be competitive but without either making applicants suspicious or imagining the job is more senior than it really is.

Are you looking for Mr / Ms Perfect? Be realistic – it’s really rare to find the absolute perfect match of experience, skills and qualities that you imagine the role needs. How much of it is essential and how much can you train? The more open-minded you are, the more candidates you’ll have to choose from.

Are you flexible enough? If you offer flexible working, flaunt it! It’s a major plus for many people to know that they’ll get a decent work/life balance or be able to work around the school run. Be explicit about this in your adverts

Do you have to advertise? You might find that your perfect candidate isn’t actively looking for a job. Do your homework and you might just find that gem hiding away somewhere, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to coax them away.

Are you prepared to train someone? It might not be as painful as you think. How about someone from a completely different industry? Just because they’ve never worked in your industry before, doesn’t mean they can’t. And if they have transferable skills from another industry, you’ll probably find training doesn’t take nearly as long as you’d think.

Are you well known as a good employer? If not, why not? It’s not all about the money. For some people, switching employers is a big deal and they need to know they’re doing the right thing. You don’t have to be a huge corporate to have a strong employer brand! Get known as a great place to work and you’ll soon reach a point where great people approach you, rather than you having to hunt them down.

Think like a marketing expert! If you can get your head around how to attract customers, then attracting staff isn’t so different. Understand your audience, know where to find them, give them what they’re looking for.

Don’t try to change people. If you want to find real star performers, put talent first (the behaviours and actions that come naturally and are hard to teach) and skills, experience and qualifications last. It might take a couple of days longer to train the person in the skills you need, but it’ll be worth it in the long run. Trying to change behaviours might succeed to a degree, but rarely to any great extent.