#HOF23 - A vision of human resources for 2023

What have you put in place in terms of training?

This is a major transformation project for us. Historically, we had a training department that didn't deploy many tools and the genesis of this transformation, that is to say the creation of a hotel school, goes back to the end of the first lockdown in 2020. With the operational teams, we encouraged our hotels to reopen as soon as possible to try and get back to business. The feedback we had from the first hotels to reopen was: “Be careful, our staff have lost some of their skills!” In fact, during the 55 days of lockdown, a sort of “sofa - crisps - Netflix” syndrome developed. We realised that skills had been lost, and so we asked ourselves what we should do next.

It was June, the summer season was on its way, and we knew that hotels were going to be full during the 2020 summer season. There were limits and travel restrictions everywhere. If we didn't act, we risked getting annihilated in terms of daily customer feedback. So, we set up a large number of training modules in order to give back this skillset to the staff in the hotels. It was a real race against the clock to redeploy these skills to the group's 4,000 employees in just a few weeks.

As well as maintaining and rekindling the flame of the hospitality professional, you need to reach out to people who are struggling to find employment. It's an approach that has an impact for these people, whilst also providing a new labour pool for your properties.

Generally speaking, the hotel and catering industry struggles to recruit, but since 2021 it has become even more difficult. We asked ourselves how we could attract new skillsets and new profiles...