Employees from ethnic minority backgrounds are still being denied the same opportunities to build successful careers in hospitality as their white counterparts. That’s one of the key messages behind a new campaign from Be Inclusive Hospitality which seeks to help employers build fairer, more inclusive workplaces that will ultimately drive stronger business performance. The ‘Better Hospitality’ campaign calls on employers to publicly commit to six priorities that will support fair access to opportunity among employees of all identities. It follows a survey which found 57% of respondents believe high employee turnover is a direct result of unfairness and exclusion, with 38% believing these biases directly contribute to people leaving the hospitality industry altogether. In this week’s episode, Nick speaks with Be Inclusive Hospitality’s founder Lorraine Copes to explore what needs to change to build a fairer, more inclusive hospitality industry, and the practical steps businesses must take to deliver and sustain that change.
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Further reading
Hospitality has work to do on race
Awareness of the need to tackle ethnic inequalities is growing within hospitality and the environmental movement but discrimination remains rife
Time to deliver on ethnic diversity
A new Footprint Intelligence report shows signs of progress among hospitality businesses on ethnic diversity and inclusion but true employee equity remains a long way off
Transcript
Lorraine Copes: We know employee turnover in hospitality is one of the highest of many industries, and there we have an opportunity. So ultimately, people stay where they feel as if they belong, where they feel included and where there’s fairness. And if that’s not the case, the consequences is more of the churn, or more churn than we already do see within our industry.
Nick Hughes: Hello and welcome to the Small Print, a podcast by Footprint Media Group. I’m Nick Hughes, Footprint’s editorial director. Each week we delve beneath the headlines of an issue impacting the hospitality and food service sector through our unique lens of environmental and social affairs. Employees from ethnic minority backgrounds are still being denied the same opportunities to build successful careers in hospitality as their white counterparts. That’s one of the key messages behind a new campaign from Be Inclusive Hospitality, which seeks to help employers build fairer, more inclusive workplaces that will ultimately drive stronger business performance. The Better Hospitality campaign calls on employers to publicly commit to six priorities that will support fair access to opportunity among employees of all identities. It follows a survey which found 57% of respondents believe high employee turnover is a direct result of unfairness and exclusion, with 38% believing these biases directly contribute to people leaving the hospitality industry altogether. In this week’s episode, I speak with Be Inclusive Hospitality’s founder, Lorraine Copes, to explore what needs to change to build a fairer, more inclusive hospitality industry and the practical steps businesses must take to deliver and sustain that change. Lorraine, welcome to the Small Print. I’m delighted to have you join me. We’re going to talk about your new campaign, Better Hospitality, which has the ambition to build a fairer, stronger, more inclusive industry by creating better workplaces. Before we do that, perhaps you can start by reminding us about the story behind Be Inclusive Hospitality, the organization that sits behind this campaign. Why, having spent your career working within the sector, did you decide to set it up back in 2020?
Lorraine Copes: So, I personally, I started my career in hospitality over 20 years ago and I’ve specialized in procurement and supply chain for a very long time, working for a number of leading brands. I think Elior Contract Caterer, Gordon Ramsay, Shake Shack Spirit Group, who are now Green King. And having spent two decades in the industry and carved out a career I enjoyed, there was always a feeling of isolation, and that was because the further within leadership I kind of rose, the less people there were that look like me in the industry. And so in 2020, I decided to take voluntary redundancy from who were then Corbyn and King, who are now the Wolverine Hospitality Group, and decided to Set up a business to not only bring about awareness, but really drive change across the industry. Really focused on race inclusion, as prior to that point there were no organizations actually doing the work in the way that we do across the industry to bring about change. So that’s kind of the backstory.
Nick Hughes: Okay, terrific, thank you. So, that being the case, where does this new Better Hospitality campaign sit within Be Inclusive Hospitality’s broader work and mission?
Lorraine Copes: I would describe it almost as a unifier. So over the past six years we’ve done two things. We have, we’ve worked really closely with hospitality operators of all sizes to provide training and consultancy services to help them improve inclusion and company culture broadly. So we have a specialism in race, but we do work across all protected characteristics. So we, over the past six years we’ve built up a client base, but for most high street brands that you would know, whether that’s restaurants, whether that’s hotel groups. And we’ve been delivering the work and working with them really closely. Simultaneous to that, we have provided skills development programs for over 600 members of our community. And our community are made up of employees or restaurant founders of colour in hospitality. So those skills development programmes have included anything from mentorship programs, funded qualifications, have an award ceremony which is about visibility and celebration. We, we’ve worked in partnership with Mars Foods, OpenTable Uber all, with the aim of supporting better outcomes for people of color in the industry. And the reason why I say that Better Hospitality is almost like a unifier of the two is today, you know, and I will add, the Better Hospitality is our sixth industry report. All of our industry reports today largely say all of four of them have been survey based. So surveying the industry, talking about what’s going on within the industry and providing hospitality operators with some insight as to the what. So inside hospitality. Alongside that, we’ve produced two of us, one of which was using government data to provide us information on representation and the other was kind of a combination of all of our reports to date. Now, where Better Hospitality is different is because it basically brings together the hospitality voice. So we conducted a survey earlier in the year and we surveyed people from all backgrounds, all career levels across the UK about their experiences in hospitality. And it really focused on career progression, salary, why people leave, and really importantly, the impact that inclusion and fairness has on hospitality employers and the wider industry. And the. So that’s one element of Better Hospitality. The second is that we brought together a leadership group of senior leaders from hospitality groups such as Travelodge to Hawksmoor to Flatiron to Molly’s to Hyatt hotels to Mitchells and Butlers. And we met as a collective group on a number of occasions throughout the year and we basically brainstormed and put our heads together around where there are opportunities in the industry to be better. What are the common challenges faced and how do we overcome them? A lot of brainstorming and discussion. But when you pull together the outcomes and the output from industry expertise with the survey, they basically both aligned in what they were saying. And that’s how we basically developed six key priorities that we believe are essential to build a better hospitality industry. So it’s probably the research I dreamt of producing in year one, but at that point I didn’t have the network. So it’s a really, really great read. It’s my favorite report. Just because it does combine industry expertise with employee voice.
Nick Hughes: Yeah, absolutely. There’s loads in there. I mean, it’s about a 60 page report, isn’t it? And there’s loads in there about how to make positive change happen. And we’ll come on to that in due course and in terms of how businesses can get involved as well. But let’s just touch on that survey that you mentioned. First of all, it captures over 400 hospitality workers experiences of pay progression, workplace culture, as you say, with a focus on race and ethnicity in particular. Now, you know, we, you’ve obviously published six reports back in 2022. Footprint sort of did a report as well, looking at pay disparities, barriers to progression, negative workplace experiences for those from ethnic minority backgrounds. And we found, you know, the evidence was that people really did feel quite significantly disadvantaged. But based on the progression of reports you’ve published, is there any sign of progress on these issues within the hospitality sector, would you say?
Lorraine Copes: I think, I think it’s. It’s really difficult to call and it’s really difficult to call because for all the research that we’ve produced and any of our organizations have, we’re looking at a different sample pool of people. Right. So it’s not the same data set that we’re kind of looking at and tracking their experiences over time. I think that, you know, progress within this area is extremely difficult to track, especially looking at a collective industry. But ultimately my view and mark of progress is going to leadership events in our industry and there being more diversity there. And I still go to them now and there’s not an extreme, more extreme amount more than when I started my career 20 years ago. So it’s difficult to quantify. But what I would say is that when I look at the data from this recent survey and it’s a relatively small sample versus previous. The disparities still exist. But the stat that I think is, is most telling, which speaks to the fact that different people from all different backgrounds and different identities experience fear feelings at some point in their careers, feelings of exclusion or unfairness. But the impact that this is having on the industry is a conversation, and so something I believe leaders should be really paying attention to. And that key stat is that 57.3% of respondents say that high employee turnover as a direct response to unfairness and exclusion, with a further 38% saying that unfairness and exclusion directly contributes to people leaving the industry altogether. And when you think about the repeated narrative that our industry has not only about being viewed as a place where, you know, it could be a career of choice for many, also kind of labeling that also with the fact that we know employee turnover in hospitality is one of the highest of many industries and there we have an opportunity. So ultimately, people stay where they feel as if they belong, where they feel included and where there’s fairness. And if that’s not the case, the consequences is more of the churn or more churn than we already do see within our industry.
Nick Hughes: And that’s such a key point, isn’t it? Because this is a sector that’s experiencing some really significant challenges at the moment from rising costs, sort of softening consumer demand, like you say, labour shortages, high staff turnovers. It’s not like hospitality has the luxury to carry the reputation of, of a sector in which people can’t build lasting, fulfilling careers. Yet, as your research shows, that is still the case for many people, especially those from ethnic minority backgrounds. Do you think, A, there’s an appreciation within leadership teams that people still feel as though hospitality is not an industry in which they will have the opportunity to build a successful career. And B, do they understand the tangible cost to their business when people hold such attitudes?
Lorraine Copes: Yeah, I would say this. I do think, and you know, whether with the businesses we work with directly or I go to a lot of leadership events and conferences within our industry, I believe there is an understanding of the cost to a business to replace a particular employee. I’ve seen several reports about the cost to train. I think it costs about 30,000 pounds to bring someone in, again, train them, and that’s like an additional cost ultimately for high staff turnover. So I think the understanding is there in terms of the cost and why staff turnover is. Or employee turnover is a challenge not only within our industry, but within within others. I do think that there remains a gap within our industry to recognize the difference between diversity and representation. I, you know, still engage with many people across the board that talk about the industry being the most diverse in a celebratory way and, you know, 84 nationalities celebratory again. And I’m not sitting here saying that’s a negative thing, but I think it’s really focusing the attention on if, if we were sat with the very same conversation talking about gender representation and we said, you know, 50% of the industry are women, which we know to be the case. But how many of those actually occupy senior leadership roles? And if they are, it’s extremely diverse. But that diversity sits at the kind of lower paid and lower end of your organization that is symptomatic of a wider problem. And I really do think that a lot of leaders that I’ve engaged with, they. It’s almost like the penny doesn’t drop, that the way things are isn’t the way it should be for ethnic minorities as well, the same way it applies for gender and other protecting characteristics. And I think that there’s a number of complex reasons for that. But I think that what I do know for sure, and I’m often asked the question as to whether we’re moving forward quickly enough or whether progress has been made. What I can say for sure is there are no shortage of businesses in our sector that are doing the work to ensure that all people from all backgrounds feel welcome and feel like they can build successful careers. And there’s no shortage of. And I could sit here on this call and name maybe 30 off the top of my head and go away and fight. There are, there are. I don’t want to say a number because I’m like, there’s hundreds. But there are a lot of businesses in our industry that are really people first, inclusion focused, that are doing the work. But there’s an educational piece that still is underway, still needs to happen. And I think that hopefully better hospitality as a piece of reading inform some of that education, which is always our aim with producing reports generally.
Nick Hughes: Absolutely. I mean, clearly there are, there are obviously huge demands on leadership teams, lots of subjects competing for their attention. How do you make the case to business leaders that sustained investment in people and culture and within that the commitment to a quality of opportunity should be seen as a fundamental part of their core strategy, not some optional extra or tick box exercise?
Lorraine Copes: It’s interesting because even the idea of kind of making a case, when I reflect on our journey over the past Six years. And I even think about some of the businesses that sit on the leadership or sat on the leadership group for the duration of this year. The commitment to people, commitment to curating cultures of listening and feedback and data and understanding your people is definitely something ultimately comes from the top. There were no businesses that sat in the room or I’ve sat in rooms with, where they’ve had to influence their leaders to understand the importance of the role that people play in the success of your business. As a hospitality industry. I do think that, I don’t think that there’s a gap in leaders understanding the importance of employee sentiment and company culture. What I do think is as you’ve described, I appreciate this industry is under huge amounts of pressure and it’s extremely turbulent, but when you think about that turbulence, there are certain factors that leaders can influence and there’s certain factors that they cannot. What they are able to influence are their teams, their people, whether they stay, whether they leave, whether they understand who’s in their organization and how they feel about working there with what they feel to be possible. So I think that there’s never been a time in my 20i RDA career that hospitality hasn’t been extremely challenging to navigate. But without people, there is no hospitality.
Nick Hughes: It sort of sounds like, Lorraine, what you’re saying is that there’s not necessarily a sort of absence of understanding of the need to build sort of people, centric workplace cultures, but perhaps there is a gap between that understanding at a senior level and actually deploying strategies that create greater fairness and inclusivity. So perhaps let’s now get into how employers can start actually doing this and creating that positive, inclusive culture. And as you alluded to earlier, the Better Hospitality report identifies these six key priorities. Data, resource training, representation, policy and collaboration. Now, I appreciate we don’t have time today to go into loads of detail on each of these, but talk us through, if you will, at a sort of high level, what do those require of businesses in practice?
Lorraine Copes: So if we talk about data, and I think that this, this pillar is probably the single most important when we think about data, in order for businesses to build better culture, they have to understand not only who’s in their organization, but also how they feel about working where they work, right? And so collecting data is really essential. And by collecting data, I don’t just mean employee data, I mean protected characteristics as well, but with the caveat that people will share the kind of non mandatory data only if there is a culture of trust. So being able to, you know, we talk about and you’d said earlier around the fact that hospitality operators understand and recognise the important role that people and how they feel at work and culture plays in company performance. But actually who’s in your organization and what roles do they occupy? And that is a question in terms of the actual data that many operators can’t yet answer. And it is because a lot of the HR systems in our industry and broadly they capture gender, nationality as a two mandatory field and the rest are optional. So a lot of businesses are retrospectively trying to collect that data so they understand their people. So collecting data and there’s a variety of tools to enable them to do that. The other is resource. And resource also speaks to the fact that, and this came up in the leadership group meeting, we know that businesses of different sizes all have different resource pools that they can lean on to move this work forward. Some the very big have dedicated teams, some it’s a bolt on to the HR team and they lead the agenda. But De and I broadly has to be implemented by people across the organization and leaders across the organisation. So resource is about ensuring that you have specific resource attributed to moving that dial forward. Training, Training really speaks to the idea, and I mentioned this earlier, about the importance of education. Our biggest service provision as a business is actually training and leadership training for that reason. And training is important because we all have our own worldview, right? And in order to, to, to become an inclusive leader, it often requires all of us to broaden our worldview and, and, and training and education can be a big enabler of that. Training benefits leaders, but it obviously can benefit us at all career levels and it’s an investment, irrespective of how big or how small, on broadening worldviews and better understanding the world and the people within it. The next is policy. This really speaks to the idea that yes, policy exists in all businesses across the industry, but how those policies live and breathe within organizations is a metric and a consideration for businesses to consider. And there are ways through data of understanding whether the policies are effective or not and who they are not effective for. So representation speaks to the idea that the ultimate goal for the work that we do as an organization is for there to be representation of ethnically diverse leaders across the industry. But we also acknowledge that whilst many businesses are on the journey that there’s limited representation currently in senior leadership teams within our industry and it’s really around how we get there. So using an example from the Better Hospitality Report, Travelodge as an example, they have targets in place to increase Representation because they recognise that until that representation is visible, they are making decisions sometimes in a vacuum because there is no one that’s ethnically diverse sat on their board informing those decisions. So it really speaks to the importance of that in driving long term change within the industry.
Nick Hughes: And Lorraine, just to pick up on that point about Travelodge having set targets, do you as an organization advocate for target setting to improve representation at senior leadership level? Because I know there is sort of conjecture about whether actual actually setting targets is the right approach.
Lorraine Copes: Yeah, there is. I mean, providing that the target, and I know for them it doesn’t operate in isolation as we have a target, is actually there’s a broader strategy supporting that. But I absolutely do, I firmly believe that, you know, in business, and we understand this to be true, whether it is sustainability or marketing or finance or procurement, there has to be a metric in place in order to work towards it and achieve it. But, but what I also firmly believe in is that setting targets is not about putting the wrong people in the right, wrong roles to fulfill a quota. It’s actually about you reviewing your strategy on how people from whether that is ethnic minority backgrounds and similarly gender, are able to access opportunities that otherwise were not available to them.
Nick Hughes: And the final priority is collaboration. What does that mean in practice?
Lorraine Copes: Collaboration really speaks loudly to the value that the Better Hospitality Leadership Group took away from this year. You know, spending time with their peers discussing the very same challenges and like sustainability, at no point there’s competition because everyone has the same common goal. And it’s actually about sharing best practice, what’s worked, what hasn’t, for the greater good of the industry and their respective businesses. And it really is part of the why as to why we birthed the Better Hospitality Committee, which will officially kick off next year, but we’re in the process of recruiting for now, which is hospitality operators of all sizes joining an ongoing committee, taking part in various meetings throughout the year, next year, workshops and cross collaboration projects. And we will also commit to producing two industry papers per year, which is less about comparison but more around the work that’s taking place within this area, within the hospitality industry. What the trends are, what’s working well, what’s not, what system enablers have been uncovered. And it really just supports our ambition endeavor for ongoing sharing within the industry, within this space of inclusion and fairness.
Nick Hughes: And just, just tell us, Lorraine, for companies that are interested in going on this journey, they’re able to use better hospitality as a framework, are they for deploying their own strategies internally? How does that Work.
Lorraine Copes: Yeah. So we see Better Hospitality the report as a free resource and tool that hospitality operators can access and it tells you the why and the what in terms of the how. We invite businesses to join the committee and with the how that comes with additional resources and how to implement the six priorities. And that is a paid membership based on company size.
Nick Hughes: Okay, great.
Lorraine Copes: Yeah.
Nick Hughes: And a key point whenever we’re talking about action on social and environmental and other issues is how can businesses measure change and progress. We’ve talked already about representation. I imagine that’s one indicator of positive progress on equality of opportunity. What are the others? We haven’t really talked about pay disparity affecting people from ethnic minority backgrounds, have we? Is that another key one? Reducing the ethnicity pay gap?
Lorraine Copes: It absolutely is. And I think we’ll touch on pay and say that ethnicity pay gap reporting, I think currently within our industry is about four or five businesses that are voluntarily producing that. A couple of contract caterers and a couple of other businesses as well. That is obviously a key indicator of disparities that exist. Another is employee surveys, which many hospitality businesses now do conduct. But ensuring that you’re interweaving the necessary information so that you can conduct comparison of employee sentiments, employee pay, demographic information, something that I don’t have a huge amount of details on, but I know a particular company within our industry and I can’t share it because I haven’t asked them permission. They actually track their employee sentiment versus performance of their individual sites and they have found the correlation with those businesses where their teams are happier, they feel included, their DE&I sentiment scores are high, is correlated to turnover of and performance of that particular site in a multi site operation. And so there are multiple metrics, but actually I would say the starting place is definitely to understand who’s in your organization and where they work within your organization. At the very, very basics that is a starting point because only then will you understand where your strategy should sit and where the action and the resource that you do have should be applied. It all starts with understanding the where and the what first of all, before you take any action anyway.
Nick Hughes: Yeah, and I guess as you alluded to earlier, just actually in order to generate good quality data, you need trust within the organization because you’re asking people to share data that they’re absolutely not mandated to share with you. There’s potentially a little bit of sort of catch 22 here where if you haven’t built that trust and you want to gain a picture of sentiment within your organization, it’s actually quite Difficult to do so because people perhaps won’t be as willing to share as they would be in an organization that is quite advanced on this journey towards fairness and inclusivity.
Lorraine Copes: But there is advancement. And every single business that we’ve worked with, where they start is not where they end up. As in, trust is built over time, right? As individuals and as a business. And if as an employer, you start the journey of engagement surveys, initially it’s low engagement, but you’re demonstrating to your teams that you’re listening and you’re taking on board the feedback. It’s like a cycle. The more you take on board feedback and show you’re listening, the more people will be willing to share. And so the important thing is to start and to demonstrate your commitment to, to utilize the information that you collect. And once you start to do that, you’ll build trust with your employees. And that will change with time. But it’s really getting started and also communicating to your wider organization the why, why are you collecting this data?
Nick Hughes: And I want to finish off Lorraine that there’s a great quote in the report from Karen Bosher, who I think was on your sort of advisory. She was, and she says the ambition, the ambition should not be simply to change who gets to the top of hospitality. It should be to widen who believes the top is available to them in the first place. And it’s such an important point, isn’t it? And it plays to this idea about the need to create a socially mobile industry that people actively choose, whatever their background. And it’s about so much more than just making commitments and setting targets, isn’t it? It’s about creating space for people to thr within the sector.
Lorraine Copes: It really, really is. And you know, it’s such a powerful quote and it really speaks loudly to why I set this business up, really. And it also speaks loudly to, you know, we have a really active community of over a thousand people in the community that regularly feedback to us. And, you know, we often hear the kind of statement of, you know, why would I believe it’s possible if I see no evidence of it being so? And this industry has made some tiny steps forward, but the biggest evidence is really seeing, you know, people across the industry represented at all career levels of hospitality. And the final thing I’ll, I’ll just add on that is that I mentioned last Monday we had our bihate Spotlight Awards and I attend. I mean, I’m a serial awards judge. I judge every awards in the industry. For some reason, I enjoy it, to be fair, but I go to all of the award ceremonies that you and I both know. And my awards ceremony is the only awards that represents the industry in, in its true sense, in terms of all types of diversity, sexuality, ages. And I, you know, I know for a fact, having gone to all the others, that they’re not representative. And so my hope is that the industry catches up, and I do believe it will. It’s just the steps that we’re able to take in the meantime, of all the things that we’ve described that’s going on in the world and in the UK and the industry, which continues to put extreme amounts of pressure on everyone within the industry.
Nick Hughes: Well, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we haven’t even touched, have we, on the sort of the global DEI agenda, having faced some headwinds of late, obviously the. Specifically the sort of anti DEI agenda in the US fueled by the Trump administration. But it does feel like work on this agenda in the UK at least, has held reasonably firm. Is that fair to say, or do you think it has been derailed somewhat?
Lorraine Copes: I do think that. I mean, we think about diversity and inclusion broadly, and there are some businesses that have continued to move the dial forward on certain areas of the E and I, irrespective of what’s going on within the us. There are some areas of our pockets of our industry that have never even acknowledged race equity or race equality as an issue within the industry and continue in that vein. And then we also have in the uk, like the rise of reform, ongoing marches. And actually, I think that the impact that that has for the UK is I think businesses are probably more apprehensive to stand boldly on where they sit in terms of equality, equity, call it what you may. So loads of contributing factors, but actually. And I don’t think that the wider global agenda is a sole reason, but there has been a rollback. Investing in people often interlinks with De and I, whether that’s your internal people to move forwards and upwards or training. Those two things have both had a cut as a result of really difficult time within the industry. So it’s quite difficult to separate what exactly has influenced which area. But from a race perspective, I’d definitely say it’s standing still or it’s. It’s. Yeah, it’s definitely not progressing at pace as it was post 2020. That is definitely clear.
Nick Hughes: That’s interesting. And what the report shows so powerfully is not just the moral case for greater equity, but the business cases, you know, the greater diversity of thought and experience you can have at the top of organizations, the better organizations perform. It’s such a critical point, isn’t it? And I think it’s made really clearly in the report. Before we finish, companies that want to get involved, what do they need to do?
Lorraine Copes: Yeah, I mean, they can head over to our website, www.bihospitality.co.uk. there’s a section on research and Better Hospitality specifically. But equally feel free to reach out to me on any social media platforms and we’re more than happy to have a chat with you and talk you through the options and how you might be part of better hospitality into 2027.
Nick Hughes: Well, best of luck with the work, Lorraine, and thank you again for joining me on the Small Print.
Lorraine Copes: No problem, Nick. Thanks for having me.
Nick Hughes: We’ll be back next week with another episode of the Small Print. If you like what you’ve heard, please take a moment to rate, share and subscribe.
