Tech of a Life 5: Cultivating a culture for success

The property industry has always relied on its people to be the driving force of its success, with incentives including competitive commission packages. Today, the world and workforce has changed – we are more open to having discussions about what enables us to do our best work, and employers are actively exploring innovative ways to support and inspire their teams. As businesses in the property sector look to attract, retain and motivate the best talent, the importance of cultivating the right culture is more important than ever.

At iamproperty we have invested heavily in our culture, as our team has grown from 250 to over 600 team members in the past three years, with active recruitment ongoing in line with our growing Partner Agent network. Often, we look to businesses outside of the property sector to see how we can improve our recruitment and culture strategies to give people the best career opportunities and working experience possible. In hospitality, people are key to creating a positive experience for customers, being responsible for a customer’s lasting impression of a visit and ultimately determining the success of a venue.

In order to unlock some of these insights into creating a culture that sets teams up for success, Nicola sits down with Richard to understand how he and his team transformed Cairn Group’s approach to culture and recruitment across their extensive network of hotels and bars. Nicola and Richard discuss what tools businesses can put in place to support people, the power of people in creating positive experiences and strategies for getting the best team culture that then translates to excellent customer service.

“Our team members play huge parts in these memorable and emotional days, so they must be able to strike a careful balance of connecting with people without being overbearing.” Richard Adams Group HR Director, Cairn Group”

Overcoming recruitment challenges

After almost 10 years on the people team at Cairn Group, Richard explains how his team overcame its biggest cultural challenge. “There is a perception that hospitality jobs are not a career choice, but instead something that you fall into temporarily. We wanted to help people understand that you can build a lifelong career in hospitality and the best way to change that narrative was by telling the stories of our team members. We created a campaign that featured people from different areas of the business sharing their experience of working in our hospitality venues, and their stories truly resonated with people. Some of the team had moved sideways from other careers to get a role that works better around their lifestyle, and many had progressed through the ranks of the business. Telling candidates about these success stories had a healthy impact on our recruitment.”

“It was a moment of pride for us to celebrate our fantastic people, and also had an impact on the team spirit too, as people were pleased to see themselves and their teammates showcased for their achievements.”

The art of hiring ‘people’ people

Property and hospitality professionals both play an important part in the major milestones of customers’ lives, so recruiters are looking for a certain spark in their employees that helps them to deliver a fantastic experience.

Richard explains how Cairn Group want to identify someone who can make customers’ experiences truly memorable. “People in our guest facing roles must have strong personalities. We are looking for vibrant, attentive people who can leave an impression on our guests. Our team must effortlessly provide guests with whatever support they need, whether that’s a cup of coffee or a good conversation. We are involved with huge milestones in people’s lives – weddings, birthdays, baby showers, and sadly sometimes wakes. Our team members play huge parts in these memorable and emotional days, so they must be able to strike a careful balance of connecting with people without being overbearing.”

This dynamic personality that Richard and the team are looking for in new recruits for Cairn Group, is the same as what we look for at iamproperty, where our team are all expected to deliver exceptional service to our Partner Agents, vendors and buyers. For both industries, having the right team in place is essential to offering a first-class experience driven by fantastic people.

Nurturing culture to drive business

No matter the size, maintaining a positive and authentic culture will have a huge impact on the mindset and productivity of your team. When your team feel valued and understood, they will come forward with new ideas, feel motivated to achieve the best results, and feel happy in their role.

In a small company, you should be able to define your culture based on your values as a business and allow these principles to guide you and your team. Even if you are a one-person business, culture is important to guide you in how you conduct business, supporting you now and as you continue to grow. It’s key for business leaders to lead by example, embodying the culture of the business in their everyday behaviour. Once your culture is established, encouraging open communication and collaboration will help you to evolve your team’s culture as you grow.

For a larger business, like Cairn Group, the goal is to maintain a consistent culture across their network of venues. Richard explains, “Maintaining culture across such a large network of different locations is a challenge, because there is not always an overlap between teams, but they are all still working towards the same goal to give customers a fantastic experience. What we find helps us in driving a consistent culture across the group is ensuring everyone has the same resources to work from, so everyone has a consistent onboarding, training and journey.”

“A key motivator for people is understanding what their progression opportunities are, and this is a key part of our culture, as we look to shape lifelong careers for people who want them. We want to talk with everyone about what they want from their current role, where they want to be in the future and what we can do to support them as they move up the career ladder.”

“Another key component of our culture is encouraging people to speak up – if the team feel they have a voice, then they become more engaged with their work and the wider business aims. We gather insights through surveys and give everyone in the business the opportunity to help shape our future and set best practice standards in the hospitality industry. Our survey platforms also help us gather insights from guests as well as from our team. We run a mix of surveys through this tech, including some bigger engagement surveys that run periodically for our employees, and then some shorter pulse surveys for team members who have just started or are leaving, to help inform our recruitment strategy and approach to culture.”

At iamproperty, we take a similar approach to gathering insights from our large hybrid team, running surveys and conferences throughout the year to make sure we take on board everyone’s perspective – this is something that can be done on any scale. If you have a small team, then you can either host forum meetings or create your own survey using a free tool like Google Forms, so the team can share their thoughts anonymously.

Ideas and opinions that have the potential to transform businesses can be missed out in day-to-day conversations when everyone is busy, but taking a measure of how the team are thinking and feeling even twice a year can make a huge positive impact on your culture and success.

“Another key component of our culture is encouraging people to speak up – if the team feel they have a voice, then they become more engaged with their work and the wider business aims. We gather insights through surveys and give everyone in the business the opportunity to help shape our future and set best practice standards in the hospitality industry.” Richard Adams Group HR Director, Cairn Group

Using tech to power culture

Richard said, “In our industry, a third of new starters will leave their role within the first 90 days, so reducing turnover is a key goal for us. To do this we are constantly collecting information from our team to make sure that they have the support they need and that we are meeting their expectations, and tech plays a huge part in helping us gather these insights.”

While recruitment and culture should never be left entirely to a tech system, it can help to alleviate some of the pressure on HR and people teams, to allow them more time to focus on getting to know people in interviews, rather than analysing them through their application.

Cairn Group uses a series of tech platforms to support growing and nurturing their team. Richard explains: “We have a recruitment platform which allows us to track the whole journey of a candidate and build up a database of talent. Having tech pick up the admin side of this means our hiring teams can focus their time on interviewing and teasing out people’s personalities to discover the person beyond the CV.”

“If the team feel they have a voice, then they become more engaged with their work and the wider business aims.” Richard Adams Group HR Director, Cairn Group

 

“We also have an onboarding and training platform, to make sure everyone gets the same experience and has the information and resources they need to succeed. However, this does not replace in-person training and onboarding. The two go hand in hand – some information is best delivered online, and some is better delivered face to face. The tech helps alleviate some of the resource within the team, leaving them more time to spend on the face-to-face conversations and workshops that help get people confident and skilled in their roles. Tech and people go hand in hand and work together effectively to get the best results for our team.”

Tech-enabled training has had huge success already within the property sector, and could be a useful tool for your business if you struggle for time and consistency when training your new starters or upskilling your existing team.

As businesses look ahead to the future, the one part of their operations they cannot do without is people, and competition is tougher than ever to find the right skills and personalities to deliver success. Cairn Group is an example of a business taking all the right steps to empower its people, with customer satisfaction front of mind. At iamproperty, we have worked alongside some of our Partner Agents for over 15 years, and we have seen their success come from the dedication their leaders have to their teams. If your business has big ambitions, then taking care of your team is one sure fire way to get there.