An interview with the Head of HR at the Cavendish Hotel

Managing Director Ciaran Fahy (right foreground) picks up the Sunday Times Award

The Cavendish recently got 35th place in the Sunday Times ’100 Best Small Companies to Work For’ – the only hotel on the list. So I phoned up Sarah Strawbridge, the Cavendish’s HR Manager and asked: “What’s the secret?”

It starts with recruitment. The hotel has a very good name in the industry – not just among hotel staff but also students and lecturers, because of its policy of running student placements as a prelude to graduate jobs.

“At any one time we have about 10 placements,” she said, “which is quite a lot when you only have 100 or so staff.” A good number of placements help to fill real job vacancies. The hotel also operates a refer-a-friend scheme – staff often have a good feel for who will (and won’t) fit in.

She also explains that the hotel looks for the right person rather than a specific skill set. “For a lot of positions, we can train the skills, so when we’re hiring we look at the personality, at the person’s attitudes and values and whether they will fit into the Cavendish team.”

This philosophy of recruiting for attitude is similar to other top-end London hotels and has been mirrored too in the way some cheap hotels hire staff.

One real innovation however is the fact that staff are often sent to look at competing hotels and restaurants – for instance the cocktail bar staff at the Cavendish were sent to learn from best practice from their competitors.

Sarah says the hotel’s Petrichor restaurant is now aiming for a second rosette to add to its first: “So we’re taking the team to a couple of Michelin-starred restaurants. We could just send the managers to look and then tell the staff, but it’s so much more powerful if we send the staff themselves.”

That gives everyone a sense of the standards that their rivals are achieving and gets them talking about what the Cavendish should be doing – as well as giving the team a morale-building day out of the office.

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Staff training at The Cavendish centres around the values and mission, with a flexible approach designed to provide staff with the solution that meets their individual needs

Recognition is crucial. For instance the hotel awards £10 shopping vouchers for good customer feedback – and staff can nominate colleagues for the awards, too. Managing Director Ciaran Fahy sends a handwritten letter with every award – a nice personal touch as you’d expect at a hotel which sees itself as a family. Sarah does her part too – when I mentioned the cocktail bar she said “Oh yes, those guys are amazing.”

Human Resources is a department which in some organisations becomes divorced from the real business, but that’s not the case at the Cavendish.

“Everything is centred around our values and our vision,” Sarah says, “and our balanced scorecard and targets for the year are communicated to everyone.” Strategy doesn’t stop with the managers.

She also believes it’s important that managers have regular one-to-ones with their staff – “so team members are constantly reminded of our targets and given feedback on how they’re doing – it’s not just about doing the appraisals once a year and then forgetting about them.”

The Cavendish invests in staff training, using senior staff to deliver customer service training, as well as external suppliers like Westminster Kingsway College (for chef training) and Learnpurple. The hotel also has a mentoring programme to develop staff for ever more responsible jobs.

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The Cavendish Hotel's football team which recently got to the final of the inter-hotel footy championship (where they lost to the Dorchester!)

Being a good place to work not only helps recruiting, but also helps keep staff turnover down to 17 percent – incredibly low for the hospitality sector. Another factor that helps the Cavendish retain good staff is that it promotes from within wherever possible; the front of house manager started as a waitress, and also worked in accounts before joining the front of house team. “Such an example helps other people too,” Sarah explains, “because they see such promotions are available within the hotel.”

Sarah herself is an example of staff longevity. She did take a break to go and work somewhere else – and then came back to the Cavendish.

Cavendish staff have fun outside work too. Everyone is given a day off to help ‘give something back’ – several staff participated in the Race for Life, while others have gone skydiving or abseiling to raise money for charity.

There are parties, recognition awards, monthly themed lunches at which one of the departments takes over the canteen and there’s also a high-achieving hotel football team. It got all the way to the finals of the regular inter-hotel championship – before being beaten by the Dorchester.

All in all, it seems that the Cavendish deserves to be on the shortlist of all those who are searching for jobs in London at a top hotel.

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