Fáilte Ireland partnership with Great Place to Work marked by staff retention increase

Launched in September 2022, the Fáilte Ireland Employer Excellence Programme helps tourism and hospitality businesses to recruit and retain staff in a tight labour market. The programme helps participating businesses to drive improvements in employment practices and provides them with guidance and tailored action plans to help them become more rewarding and appealing workplaces. A key element of the programme is an employee survey carried out by Great Place to Work.

“We kicked off the partnership with Failte Ireland in 2022,” says Great Place to Work business development strategist Fania Stoney. “The programme aims to support the tourism and hospitality industry to attract more people into the sector. That was a major need post-Covid. All participants with more than 20 employees take part in the employee survey. More than 230 businesses across the country are participating in the programme this year.”

The survey results give businesses important data and benchmarks. “It helps them understand where they are concerning the sector and other businesses outside the industry,” says Stoney. “They can use the results to identify opportunities for improvement in areas like communications and management styles. We help them build action plans and are there to support them for the duration of the programme. The businesses that participated in year one have seen overall improvements in survey results in the second year. That helps retain and attract staff.”

One participant is Hotel Woodstock in Co Clare. The award-winning hotel is run in partnership with the Choice Hotel Group by the Lally family, Sean and Elaine and their son Oisin and daughter Caoimhe.

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“Fiona Kelly our HR manager co-ordinated the Great Places to Work Survey and we were blown away with the positive responses and feedback which very much focused on the family-run feel at the hotel,” says owner director Sean Lally. “The team feel they are treated fairly and respected and that they are part of the Woodstock family. Our business motto is ‘you arrive as a guest and leave as a friend’ and we apply the same approach with our team when they start working with us.”

The hotel’s highest survey score was 91 per cent for camaraderie. “We are really proud of that,” says Lally. “While we all have a job to do we know if the team are happy it will lead to happy guests and more repeat business, and this has certainly worked for us. As a family-run business, it is important to us to have a hands-on leadership approach. This not only allows us to build a strong personal relationship with our team but also, they see first-hand the hard work that goes into running a hotel on a daily basis. One thing that stands out for us as an employer is the loyalty of our staff, we have many of our part-time employees bringing their friends and younger siblings to work with us throughout the year.”

Castle Leslie Estate in Monaghan also participated in the programme. Owned by the Leslie family since the 1600s the property included a 21-bed country house hotel and a 50-bed modern hotel along with an equestrian centre, all situated on a 1,000-acre estate.

“We have more than 200 staff, fluctuating with the seasons,” says general manager Kevin Kenny. “Our CEO [chief executive] wanted us to achieve recognition as a Great Place to Work two years ago. We achieved it in the first year.”

That process identified new opportunities and one of them was to increase engagement with supervisors and team leads. “You can drill down into the Great Place to Work reports and we saw we were scoring very highly in a number of key areas including at grassroots level, but that we could do more with the supervisor and team lead cohort.”

That led to several targeted initiatives aimed at improving engagement. “Communications is very important, and we homed in on that,” says Kenny. “We hold regular briefings with the team where they can discuss things with the senior team. We set up a digital platform for communications to inform them on everything from performance to sustainability and future projects. We also produce a professionally designed and produced newsletter that goes out to staff every month.”

Staff development is also important. “We put our people through Fáilte Ireland training and college courses in DKIT, University of Ulster and other institutions,” he adds. “We also send them away to other similar properties around the country on contra deals. They spend one or two nights away and come back with ideas from what the other properties are doing.”