The Importance of Talent Assessment in the COVID-19 Recovery Era

Consequently,  Covid-19  has also  changed the landscape of hospitality  recruitment. Hiring activity has been hit hard in our industry,  with  so many  properties,  hotels,  and  resorts forced into closing and  resulting in human capital redundancies at all levels.  

So,  the big  question  now  is: “what will the ‘new normal’  consist of?”. We can expect  incredible competition for top  hospitality  talent as global lockdowns  and travel restrictions  relax, and hotels, fine dining and restaurants  begin to open, vacations will be booked, and hospitality will pick up and begin to  thrive again.  

Corporate and VP HR’s will play a central role in readapting and rebuilding  hospitality  organisations: previous  talent management  strategies and  trends will need to be reimagined  for the post-pandemic world.  

Where work-from-home and other workplace rearrangements have become “normal” consequences for a majority of industries, this does not apply to the hospitality sector, where direct human contact is and remains  the practice that sustains hospitality’s  brand and service standards.  

Major international hotel groups will automatically have access to their own internal resources, before considering recruiting external skillsets. They will certainly target this at first, not only from a brand loyalty  perspective but also because of budget restrictions, which are consequential of the dire financial situation the hospitality industry has endured in 2020.  

So  in post-Covid-19  hospitality, the talent base  will  change,  not only  because  of an  abundance of  available  candidates  “on  the market”, but also because hospitality properties  will  need  to plan on additional  Human Capital spending as they will replace talents that may have been lost during the pandemic, as well as they will need to improve its senior leadership skills to address a whole range of different  skills and strategies needed to emerge  successfully  in the new-normal world. (in many cases this will require pre-opening and crisis management experience). 

“Hospitality leadership needs to think outside the box in order to re-establish the attractiveness of its box. That will take bigger people and bigger boxes – not smaller boxes with smaller talents”.  

This up-skilling and up-scaling  situation  automatically  opens the door to the renewed need for “Talent Assessment”.  

The quality of new hiring policies will be a top priority.  What was actually the “expected normal” i.e., finding and hiring the right people, has now become a must as a “condicio sine qua non”.   

Critical roles will receive priority since delivering the business agenda and the required leadership are absolutely key conditions for hospitality’s successful return to an active market.  

There will be new business priorities to rethink and reconfigure adaptations  to business needs and guest experiences, which if approached correctly by the right people, will deliver tremendous business opportunity.  

One will need to develop a roadmap towards an innovative talent strategy aimed  both at the guest’s preferences as well as a property’s profile and  brand. The  best talent executives will be  those  who adapt swiftly to the urgent requirements of the ‘new normal’, while simultaneously considering  cost and productivity  standpoints.  Hospitality’s ‘new normal’ will seek profiles who look outside the box, who can build a new win-win strategy, who are  pro-active and intuitive in their personal approach rather than opting towards  pre-pandemic  generic solutions.  

Talent  assessment  becomes therefore increasingly important. Senior leadership will have to  be focused and decisive  about Human Capital strategies. Leaders  will have to break away from traditional  SOP’s to achieve new  objectives.  

The attraction of  top talent  will be considered as  an indirect marketing tool,  with human capital’s  immediate reflection  on  the property’s  branding, its  image, and will automatically bring the much-needed differentiation  from  its  competitors.  The important argument in our post-Covid-19 era will also be one of budget and financial requirements:  indeed,  not only attract top-talented executives  but retain them, which in itself is already a cost-saving aspect.  

There will also be a need for readdressing bonus plans and compensation, given that so many properties have been closed over the last year and that the RevPAR for 2021 is and will remain an unknown factor. However, this aspect does not belong in our specific focus of talent assessment.  

And furthermore, when new investment projects are in their development phase and the due diligence process is ongoing, one of the most important aspects and priorities will consist of knowing that the right management with the fitting leadership capabilities is part of the project. And if not, need to be identified, assessed and recruited as a priority.   

 Again: “Talent Assessment”. 

Talent must be attracted, but also must be retained: which brings us to the concept of the creation of a talent pipeline, which will protect an employer. 2020 has taught us that one should always be prepared for when fast changes arrive, ensuring that there will be no shortage of talent when needed.  The talent pipeline is in itself an interesting subject for future articles. 

RLA Global  has over the years - due to its  broad  international exposure with an impressive client reference list composed of high -profile and successful brands and properties throughout  the world - already delivered the  benefits of best-practice-leadership strategy through its experience and collaborations.   

RLA Global’s  respected reputation is therefore well placed, not only to identify these very unique out of the box thinking top-level executives but also to offer hospitality leadership’s best practices to those properties committed  to market dominance after COVID-19.