EP: 06 - Hospitality Doesn't Have a Recruitment Problem. It Has a Retention Problem.

Everyone in hospitality talks about a recruitment crisis. Dawn Lawrence thinks we're solving the wrong problem. In this episode she makes the case that retention is the real issue - and that the fixes are cheaper and simpler than most operators assume. She unpacks why benefits belong at the top of every job ad, why free parking and a uniform count, why transparency on tips is now a competitive advantage, and where AI in recruitment quietly filters out brilliant people. She also opens up the CLEAR campaign - care, leisure, entertainment, attractions and retail - the parts of hospitality nobody thinks to advertise. Practical, blunt and full of things you can action this week.

About the Guest

Dawn Lawrence is Co-Founder and CEO of Hospitality Jobs UK, a job board built around quality over quantity that also runs employer microsites, and Co-Founder of HUU - Hospitality & Universities United, a free platform connecting students, universities and hospitality employers. Before hospitality she spent her career at Dixons Stores Group (Dixons Carphone PLC), leaving as European Head of Recruitment covering the UK and Europe for 90,000 employees with a team of 53. She is a vocal advocate for structured hiring, transparent pay and tips, and the CLEAR campaign.

Key Topics Covered

• Why your job ads are losing candidates in the first three seconds - and the one section that has to sit at the top.
• How to turn tips into a hiring advantage - what to disclose, how to explain the split, and why £100 a week changes the whole offer.
• Where AI helps in recruitment and where it costs you good people - the screening trap most operators walk straight into.
• How to keep your best people without spending more on pay - L&D as a retention tool, not a training line item.
• What great hospitality managers actually do differently - listening, succession conversations and handing over real projects.
• The five hospitality sectors you're not recruiting from - care, leisure, entertainment, attractions and retail.
• How to sell hospitality against a warehouse job - the benefits maths that wins the argument.
• Why brand awareness beats brand size - parent brands, sub-brands and what candidates actually recognise.

What We Discussed

1. Introduction - Mason sits down with Dawn Lawrence of Hospitality Jobs UK.
2. The white-label graduate programmes Dawn built on HUU, and the 18-month rotation scored against a discipline matrix.
3. Inside HUU: employer, academic and candidate sections, hospitality acronyms explained for international students, interview tips, charities and trade bodies.
4. Why HUU isn't commercialised - universities pay nothing, and what employer sponsorship actually buys.
5. The heat-map exercise that revealed candidates were leaving to research employers, and how microsites fixed it.
6. Why every microsite must have a benefits section - uniform, food, tips, and in some cases live-in accommodation.
7. What students actually want: the monthly university sessions with eight to ten employers across different sectors.
8. The career story hospitality never tells Gen Z - head office, not just the shop floor.
9. "More than just a jobs board": quality over quantity, and the audiences other boards ignore - the armed forces career transition programme, universities, Springboard, the BII, the Institute of Hospitality and the care sector.
10. Tips as a benefit, and why some operators still hide them - culture, transparency and where the money really goes.
11. How to build a job ad that converts: benefits at the top, brand awareness as the second pillar, and the underrated wins like free parking.
12. Mental health support as a benefit - and the free industry provision operators forget they already have.
13. Retail versus hospitality: what Dawn found when she moved across from Dixons, and what has improved since.
14. Tech and AI in recruitment - where it earns its place, where it has to be policed, and the case for human-to-human.
15. The retention argument: why L&D is a retention tool, and why onboarding and ideas from the team matter more than pay rises.
16. The Peach Pub Company "Peachy Parade" - fifteen minutes each morning that set the team up for the day.
17. What makes a great hospitality manager: listening, succession conversations, giving away projects and hiring people better than you.
18. The good news stories the industry doesn't tell - new openings, competitive socialising and pubs that are thriving.
19. The report stat that stopped Mason: 72% said working with people they like mattered most - ahead of pay.
20. Dawn's own career - from an hour and a half sat waiting on day one at Dixons to European Head of Recruitment, and why she left.
21. Hospitality versus the warehouse: life-work balance, predictable hours, and the five to eight grand difference.
22. The CLEAR campaign explained - care, leisure, entertainment, attractions and retail, and why people leave the industry without knowing it.
23. Career waiters: what the UK can learn from America and Europe about front of house as a profession.
24. What the armed forces career transition survey revealed about why leavers want to run a pub.
25. Imposter syndrome, and why the answer sits with how we train and recruit managers.
26. The closing question we ask everyone: what are you grateful for?

Key Quotes

"We talk about, is there a recruitment problem in hospitality? There's a retention problem in hospitality. Because if you retain people, there wouldn't be a recruitment problem."

- Dawn Lawrence

"If you're earning 100 pound tips a week, that's five grand extra a year."

- Dawn Lawrence

"I like AI. I think there's a need for it, there's a place for it, but it's got to be supervised and managed. It's got to be policed properly."

- Dawn Lawrence

"The older you get, you realise that possessions don't mean anything, memories mean everything. And when you go away, every memory, if you look at all your memories, it's created normally in a hospitality environment."

- Dawn Lawrence

Key Takeaways

1. Put your benefits at the top of every job ad. Candidates flick through adverts in seconds. Uniform, food, free parking, accommodation, tips, mental health support - list them before the responsibilities.
2. Be explicit about how tips are split. Say what goes to back of house and what goes to front of house. Hiding it reads as something to hide - and £100 a week is £5,000 a year you're not advertising.
3. Treat learning and development as retention spend, not training spend. If people are developed and feel valued, you don't have to recruit and train a replacement.
4. Never leave an AI screen unsupervised. Rigid criteria will reject candidates who have the skills but not the CV wording. Police the filters and keep a human in the loop.
5. Reintroduce the fifteen-minute morning huddle. Menus, standards, how everyone is doing. Peach Pub Company's "Peachy Parade" set the tone for the whole shift and built a sense of team.
6. Widen your talent pool with CLEAR. Care, leisure, entertainment, attractions and retail all run hospitality operations. Position moves as a sideways step within the industry, not an exit from it.

What is Grateful for Hospitality?

The Grateful for Hospitality Podcast features candid conversations with founders, operators, and experts shaping the sector. Practical insights, honest stories and ideas to make you think.

Dawn Lawrence: 00:00

Tips is a benefit. Yeah. And sometimes people shy away for it and don't wanna say, oh, we do tips.

Mason Potter: 00:04

Why do you think that is?

Dawn Lawrence: 00:05

I think it's because of culture. Tech is tough because what works for one person might might not work for another.

Mason Potter: 00:10

Yeah.

Dawn Lawrence: 00:10

AI comes up all the time now. I think we've gotta be careful with AI. I did an article the other day on LinkedIn. Andy Burnham put on there that every single person should have a face to face interview. And I thought, are you kidding me?

Dawn Lawrence: 00:23

How would we have the time to do that? We talk about is there a recruitment problem in hospitality? There's a retention problem in hospitality. Because if you retain people, there won't be a recruitment problem.

Mason Potter: 00:46

I'm Mason from Grateful. I'm just about to sit down with Dawn Lawrence, cofounder and CEO of HJ UK. They're more than just a jobs board, but we're talking about everything to do with retention, recruitment, and the hospitality industry across the board. What youngsters are doing, how people are being savvy with looking for jobs, and everything in between. Tune in for an exciting episode.

Dawn Lawrence: 01:05

The Hospitality Centers don't really do graduate programs. So one of the things I did on on Hue was I created graduate programs which the the companies can white label. Because most of the people that are doing recruitment are ex recruitment agencies and they don't really know much about psychometric testing, structured interviews or they don't know much about how do I put a graduate program together. So what I did is I created these graduate programs for the different sectors, so one for hotels, one for care, one for pubs, where they can download it off you but it's linked to a matrix. So when they go for this eighteen month rotation, it's actually linked, they just have to white label it and put their logo.

Dawn Lawrence: 01:42

They might want to tweak it a little bit. And then someone might come and say, I wanna work in operations, wanna be in HR. But when they go for this eighteen month rotation, when they get scored on every discipline within those areas of that department, they might tell us they're actually doing good in operations, think you'll be a great, you you'll be great in the kitchen or you'll be great in sales or events. So it's a really good structure. So I just took that really, my lessons learned from when I was at Dixon's.

Dawn Lawrence: 02:12

Didn't, just, it's there for employers to download. So on Hue you've got an employer section, academic section and a candidate section. So they actually use it within their universities. So they say if you want to the know different sectors of hospitality, go to Hue and if you're looking for part time job opportunities, go to Hue. So it's a really good, it's a brilliant tool.

Dawn Lawrence: 02:36

It's got everything from, for the international students, it's got everything to do, we've got acronyms for example, we say FOH, they might not know that. So it's those really simple things, it's got interview tips, it's also got the charities, it's got the training bodies, but for employers it's got events that are taking place across The UK for different universities. They can, so if they've got a graduate program they fill out a form, send it through to HOUK, and we distribute it to amongst our universities saying, you know, Firmdale are looking for a graduate. But equally the students can say, I'm looking for a placement or a student or graduate, and then we circulate that to all our clients.

Mason Potter: 03:17

Right, and you're commercializing HOU, right?

Dawn Lawrence: 03:21

No, no, no.

Mason Potter: 03:21

Is that a goody heart?

Dawn Lawrence: 03:23

No, I just think it's just an, I wanna keep people into the industry. Commercializing it, universities don't pay for it. Some of the clients have paid sponsorship because they want a banner and they just pay for the creation of it because we have to create it, create the banner, then it links through. So David Lloyd for example, they wanted to get a early careers program and they wanted to target universities. So there was a banner on there and it talked about David Lloyd.

Dawn Lawrence: 03:51

When you clicked through it went straight through to within HAA UK every employer has a microsite. So when we did a

Mason Potter: 03:59

Like they're an intranet type of thing. Yeah. Right.

Dawn Lawrence: 04:01

Because when they were coming, we did a hot map sort of exercise on where our candidates were going before we had microsites. We had so many candidates coming and leaving. And they were obviously leaving because they wanted to find out about their companies.

Mason Potter: 04:14

So

Dawn Lawrence: 04:16

when you go to, if somebody wants to go, I don't know, if someone wants to go to Gignan Squid, very rarely do they look for a job on their website, they want to book a reservation. So when they come to us, if they were looking for a job, they either come to HCA because they're looking for a job. So when Giggling's would advertise, for example, Giggling's would advertise and they do advertise with us, there's a microsite and the candidate then clicks on the microsite and finds out about their benefits, their locations, their accolades they've got, they've some storytelling because the microsite is we work with the clients to make sure that they represent themselves the way they want to be represented. There's always a benefit. We say you always must have a benefit section because that's one thing I think that hospitality is very different to everybody else.

Dawn Lawrence: 05:01

You can go in, you get your own uni some place, get your own uniform, fed, paid, you get tips. Some places even offer, you know, living accommodation. The hotels. Always talking to one hotels every day. Right.

Dawn Lawrence: 05:15

And they have one hotel that's got 115 rooms just for their staff, for their employees.

Mason Potter: 05:22

And that's just for anybody that works on-site. You just stay there. It's part of one of the perks of the job.

Dawn Lawrence: 05:26

Although I shouldn't really say this, but if you're a university, if you're a student and you live local and you work thirty hours a week, you can go in there and have accommodation at one hotel, have a part time job, have a living accommodation. It's quite

Mason Potter: 05:41

In Southern.

Dawn Lawrence: 05:43

They can't actively promote they want people to work with them not because of just the living accommodation. Yes. You know, where do you get that?

Mason Potter: 05:49

Yeah. Well, you don't.

Dawn Lawrence: 05:50

When you go to M and S, yes, you get a uniform. Don't get tips at M and S.

Mason Potter: 05:54

No.

Dawn Lawrence: 05:55

And you're doing no different than you are when you go to other places.

Mason Potter: 05:59

Are you finding that these younger students when they're coming through to these microsites, are becoming more picky with where they want to work and that sort of thing? What are the things that they're actually looking for as an element of importance of this is an employer I want to work with because of these reasons? Is there a blanket thing that you're seeing across the board?

Dawn Lawrence: 06:17

We do sessions once a month at universities where we go into universities and we take eight to 10 employers. Right. And we try and get them from different sectors, so someone from Cares, someone from their Jazz, someone from pubs bars. And we talk to students about what you're looking for. And it's not split evenly, but some students are looking for just a job where they go every week.

Dawn Lawrence: 06:36

Yeah. So someone might wanna work for, I don't know, Pukchat, because they go there every week and they love it. And they know that if they work there, they can play

Mason Potter: 06:43

and But

Dawn Lawrence: 06:45

some want a long term career, so someone really will think logically about where do I want to work and what's a long term career progression. What we're not very good at is telling the gen zed it's not just all about omnichannel

Mason Potter: 06:58

Who's we is this Hospital industry. Okay. Industry. Yeah.

Dawn Lawrence: 07:02

So in retail, and it might go back twenty years now when I was at Dixon's, it was all about head office then retail stores.

Mason Potter: 07:13

Right.

Dawn Lawrence: 07:14

So people came into head office. And if they were in the stores, we used to say to them, there's opportunities for you at head office. So when people look at the Weatherspoons in the world, which are doing amazingly great, they don't think about Weatherspoons head office, which is massive. That's what we don't do very well. Tell them about the big long career opportunities.

Dawn Lawrence: 07:34

Yeah. I think you've gotta focus on two things. You've gotta focus on this is an opportunity where it can support you if you're studying or if you want a long term career, these are the other opportunities around that. So that's what we're doing on Hue but that's also what we do. Try and do at HJ UK.

Dawn Lawrence: 07:49

We just, I know we're a job board and our

Mason Potter: 07:52

Well, your slogan is more than just a job board, isn't

Dawn Lawrence: 07:55

it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we're really proud of that because we do

Mason Potter: 07:59

Why is it, like, do you say that?

Dawn Lawrence: 08:01

We said it because we actively go into different places that people don't go. We don't just wanna be a job board where you post your advert and a finger in the air and see how it goes. I'm very much around quality over quantity, so we're not in Indeed or the world. Indeed do a great job. Get volume, volume, volume.

Dawn Lawrence: 08:18

And if you throw enough shit at the wall, it will stick, or mud at the wall, it will stick. So that's why, but you pay a lot for Indeed. We're quite competitively priced and we try and mark quality over quantity. So we try and target audiences that other job boards don't target, so like the career transition program which is the armed forces, Gen Z which is the universities but we also work with spring boards, all our jobs go on spring board. So we're tapping into that college and students.

Dawn Lawrence: 08:46

And then we work with industry bodies like the BII and the Institute of Hospitality and just about to work with the NACC, is a care sector.

Mason Potter: 08:53

Right.

Dawn Lawrence: 08:54

So care sector body. Because when people look for a job, they go to these bodies and think, oh my god, look for a job because I love pubs, I love hotels.

Mason Potter: 09:01

Yeah. But like you said earlier, like, hospitality is so much wider than that and it's actually quite because of what we're doing now with tipping, we're thinking hospitality of restaurants, bars, pubs, cafes

Dawn Lawrence: 09:12

Yeah.

Mason Potter: 09:12

Nightclubs, that sort of thing.

Dawn Lawrence: 09:13

But what

Mason Potter: 09:13

you said is that everything that's where you're serving a drink, that is hospitality. And it's going into care and it's going into not retail but tourism and leisure and that element.

Dawn Lawrence: 09:22

Well, is retail because you go into Marks and Spencer's and I know you don't get tipping at Marks and Spencer's, but there's a coffee shop in most big Marks and Spencer's, next you've got a cost of coffee. But I think it was interesting because Katie talked to our conference last year and I said in the audience there are people from the care sector and there are people from the leisure sector where they don't tip. I said, but they need to be aware of what is happening out there. And when they market their roles and they advertise their roles at the competing events companies that offer tips, and tips is a benefit. Yeah.

Dawn Lawrence: 09:53

And sometimes people shy away from it and don't wanna say how we do tips.

Mason Potter: 09:57

I Why do you think that is?

Dawn Lawrence: 10:00

I think that's because of the I think it's because of culture. If you look at Europe, if you look at America, you know, you automatically tip. You tip, tip, tip, and nobody queries it. Where in The UK, it's something that the Gen Z population automatically tip, they don't even question it. Even if they haven't had a great service, they still tip.

Dawn Lawrence: 10:17

But the older generation's like, why should I tip? Because I don't do them a great service. But I think that it's moving, I think actually having courtesy tip and how it's, and I think transparency is massive for me. And I always am very transparent and I don't do bullshit because it really bores me and I'm too old for it. And I just say, you know, and I love people's opinions cause I think that's valuable cause it educates me even at my age.

Dawn Lawrence: 10:45

But I just think with the tipping process, I think people should, I think companies should say exactly where those tips are going because they don't. Some people hide it. A couple of years ago we all know that some companies didn't do it correctly and that has got a bit of bad press. But if someone says actually you get a tip out that tip is split between the back of house so it slips in the kitchen, because if they're not serving great food, the waits at the front of house won't be able serve it but actually the waitress has to deliver it and say, everything else, anything else you want with that? To make sure it's all right.

Dawn Lawrence: 11:15

And if it's spread evenly, it's massive. If you're earning £100 tips a week, that's $5 extra a year. So you may be on minimum wage, minimum wage is quite good at the moment and it's going up again next April. But you earn minimum wage in retail but you don't get the tips. Do you get discounts in retail?

Dawn Lawrence: 11:35

Yeah. But you get discounts in hospitality. You get a friend free. And you give your friends some, you know, all your mates. Come and have dinner with me and I'll get 20% off.

Dawn Lawrence: 11:42

You're the better, you know, you're the next best friend really because you're getting all these discounts.

Mason Potter: 11:47

Mhmm. And you're finding that's like an unfair advantage, not just from a financial perspective, but you talked earlier about hospitality being the best industry when it comes to just benefits and all around packages. Like, how do you think that's sticking with applicants?

Dawn Lawrence: 12:00

They're looking at that massively, they're looking at benefits massively and I always say if you're gonna put an advert out, make sure your benefits are at the top because they flick through these adverts so quickly and it's brand recognition, brand awareness. So what we do at HAA UK, we have two pillars. One is about candidate attraction, the other pillar is about brand awareness. So people will apply for your job for brand awareness and when you've got companies that have a permanent brand and then they have brands underneath, for example if you look at, I don't know, say if you look at Boparan, massive brand. If you advertise as Boparan, people are gonna think it's Boparan.

Dawn Lawrence: 12:35

But if you advertise as Slim Chickens,

Mason Potter: 12:36

oh I

Dawn Lawrence: 12:36

love that. Go there every Friday and get my wings from there. I'm gonna apply for that job. So brand awareness is massive. And then when you put the brand awareness and you put the benefits.

Dawn Lawrence: 12:47

So some people, we presume that some people have got, there's lots of presumptions. So if you've got underneath those benefits that you get uniform, free parking. Free parking is amazing. People don't even put it as a benefit but it's a benefit because if you arrive and you've had a nightmare getting there but you know you've a space when you get there, it's like, oh this is easy, know I've got a space, which is always good. And then your uniform, don't have to worry about what I gotta wear in the morning.

Dawn Lawrence: 13:13

So everybody is the same because some people dress differently and people can make judgemental decisions on that. So what people wear is valuable if you've gotten it away. But also I talk about mental health and support, which is massive. There's a lot of, you know, when we go into universities, it's about, yeah, but I wanna know what support you're gonna give me for mental health, which is so much more higher in the news now, more so than ever. Yeah.

Dawn Lawrence: 13:39

But if you're

Mason Potter: 13:39

a bi- Is that just like a really recent thing or has that just crept in over time, do you think?

Dawn Lawrence: 13:44

It's recent.

Mason Potter: 13:45

Right.

Dawn Lawrence: 13:45

And it's the last few years. We weren't even talking about it three years ago.

Mason Potter: 13:48

Do think it's a post COVID thing?

Dawn Lawrence: 13:50

Yeah, think so. Yeah. It is definitely. And you know, I feel sorry for those kids that went through post COVID, COVID. Know, they had a tough time, and there is mental health issues there.

Dawn Lawrence: 14:01

But in a licensed trade charity, there's a mental health free mental health line. And if people are part of the BII or they're part of the licensed trade charity, they can put that as a benefit. We provide mental health line through the licensed trade charity or

Mason Potter: 14:16

financial Like an LP or an employee well-being

Dawn Lawrence: 14:20

package. You don't have to go out and fund it. It's there in the industry. But again, it's, you know.

Mason Potter: 14:26

Yeah. People talk about like hospitality as being a huge industry but it's very close knit. It does genuinely feel like a community because you've got all these licensed trade charities. You're doing stuff that you're not licensing to just help bring people into the industry. It's like it is nice to see because you don't really see it in any other industry.

Mason Potter: 14:43

Like, you know, you worked at was it Dixon's group? Yeah. Like, you you recruited for different industries, didn't you? Yeah. But now you've come into hospitality, like what's I mean, time's obviously gone on between them, but like what's the differences that you've seen outside of hospitality and inside hospitality?

Dawn Lawrence: 14:57

So when I worked with Dixon Stores Group, is Dixon's Curry's PC one, The Link at the time.

Mason Potter: 15:00

Yeah.

Dawn Lawrence: 15:01

So four different retailers, they individually worked, and they had Master Cares where they individually worked all alone. But when I moved into Hospitality, it was shocking, they were so far behind. They didn't understand the value of structured interviews, they didn't understand the value of, you know, process. I found, this is my personal opinion, when I came into the industry, it was very much around, there was a poster on the wall, the window saying I need waiting stuff. That still happens.

Dawn Lawrence: 15:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because sometimes it's the best idea to advertise. But the Gen Zs are so much more savvy now, they will go online and look for a job. But also years ago, was like, especially at that corporate C suite, I'm gonna get shot for saying this, executive C It suite level, I used to be, oh man, my mate, Dave's got that job because he's a mate of mine. And it used to be mate rather than experience and skills and talent.

Dawn Lawrence: 15:57

Now it has changed.

Mason Potter: 15:58

So who you know, what you know saying, that's where it's Yeah. Coming

Dawn Lawrence: 16:01

And in retail we used to, know, when we looked at the retail, was, you know, when I was there, there was 39,000 employees across the whole of Dixon's group. And when we used to come into the retail, every single person had a really clear onboarding process. And before GDPR, everybody that started, we used to give them a card and say, Do you think one of your mates would want to work here? Can you give us these details? And so we had this talent pipeline.

Dawn Lawrence: 16:27

When I went into Hospitality, they didn't think about talent pipelines. It was immediate, it's very reactive. Now I think they're smarter. Now they get talent pipelines. Now they're doing succession and now they're using a lot of tech.

Dawn Lawrence: 16:41

Not necessarily the right way but they are using tech.

Mason Potter: 16:44

Yeah. It definitely feels like the the the momentum has shifted in terms of operators adopting the right technology, whether it's for recruitment, attraction, you know, tracking data in the business, tipping, all that sort of thing. Yeah. But like you said, I think because there's so much noise out there, if if I'm an operator and I'm, you know, head down in the business, I'm worrying about p and l, I'm worrying about my team, I think it's quite hard to try and decipher through everything to understand what is a good tech stack, what does that look like, how am I gonna attract the right people into the business without adding loads of manual work and process to the team without, you know, any due course basically.

Dawn Lawrence: 17:22

Yeah. Tech is tough because what works for one person not work for another. Yeah. And AI comes up all the time now. But AI, I think we've gotta be careful with AI.

Dawn Lawrence: 17:31

Yeah. Hospitality is a people business.

Mason Potter: 17:33

Give me your view on AI then.

Dawn Lawrence: 17:35

Oh my god. Okay, so AI, I like AI. I think there's a need for it, there's a place for it, but it's got to be supervised and managed. It's got to be policed properly. Because AI, if you turn around and say, especially if you use it in your recruitment process, if you say, right, I want this criteria, that criteria, this criteria, you are dismissing a massive audience.

Dawn Lawrence: 17:54

So somebody's got all that skillset just because they haven't got the right information on that CV is getting missed out.

Mason Potter: 17:59

But

Dawn Lawrence: 18:00

there's elements of it. I use AI all the time. I'm a big chat person. And you know, just everything, when I put something through, I float through, and it's amazing in some context. So for operational, if you're gonna do a presentation or a proposal, yeah, fantastic.

Dawn Lawrence: 18:18

But actually in the recruitment process by dismissing or either regretting people or taking them to the next stage, gotta be really careful and it's gotta be managed. It's gotta be managed a lot.

Mason Potter: 18:30

Yeah. Sean, a chap from Cali Barbecue Media, he works with Toast as well. I was sat down with him a couple of months ago and he came up with this like really great phrase or terminology. It's like h to h is human to human connection. Yeah.

Mason Potter: 18:42

And some of the things that we bang on about all the time is that tech does have the right place in the industry, but it needs to be something that is gonna improve the operational efficiency of the business to make sure the business can then focus on dealing with customers because people come into a venue to have that human to human connection Absolutely. Not to deal with a chatbot or not to deal with a platform or something else. You want that the the spark and the the the charisma of hospitality when you're coming in. Yes. Want great food.

Mason Potter: 19:09

You want great drinks. You want a great experience. But I think there is there is that fine line that people can end up stepping over where you just introduce a chatbot, a process, a screen, but people don't want that. And the efficiencies and the automations and the intelligence needs to be done in the right way, I think.

Dawn Lawrence: 19:27

And there was, before COVID, there was a company that was launching where you could order your food at a table.

Mason Potter: 19:34

And

Dawn Lawrence: 19:35

this is before COVID. You can order your food at a table and people are no, people aren't gonna like that. They wanna go up to the bar. They wanna be, you know, they don't wanna order a drink if they're outside. They wanna come in.

Dawn Lawrence: 19:45

And the company was way ahead of everybody. They're not even trading now.

Mason Potter: 19:51

Oh, really?

Dawn Lawrence: 19:52

Yeah. Brilliant company. And people just weren't into it. They just didn't get it. Then COVID hit, and now in Audrella they were called, would have been massive.

Dawn Lawrence: 20:04

Yeah. Absolutely massive. But you know, if I go out with my girls, my girls are 28 and 33, I'll go, right, I'm just gonna go up to the, no mom, we just do it on it. Just do this tap tap tap tap tap tap. I'll go, alright then.

Dawn Lawrence: 20:15

But Hospitality, you've got a massive audience. My husband likes to go up to the bar and don't, depending where I am, I'll either tap it or I'll up to the bar. So you've the one that likes to go up the bar, you've one that does both, then you've got my kids that turn around, kids, women, girls, kids that wanna just go, yeah, that's easy. I don't have to move. Could just sit here all day in the sun drinking with my mates.

Mason Potter: 20:38

But it's a convenience thing as well. You look at like Deliver Uber Eats, people aren't leaving the sofa to eat, whereas you just have to get up, get dressed, leave the house to go eat and look at the look at the success of those platforms. I think it's really, really tricky for operators because you need to cater for the whole demographic of every single person that's potentially not going to put just even the potential of them walking through the venue. Yeah. And that, I think, contributes to part of the, not confusion but the complication when it comes to getting the right tech set because

Dawn Lawrence: 21:07

Yeah, agree and obviously we've got to value that some people like to go to these places, whether it's a coffee shop to work or a pub or somewhere because some people like to interact with people, not necessarily by talking to them, just like to be in there. And I feel really comfortable going into most places on my own as a woman, where a few years ago I probably wouldn't do. I mean I'm still a little bit selective, it's a dodgy pub down the road, but still I don't feel that threatened like I did years ago when it's like, oh, I didn't feel uncomfortable when I'm sitting in a hotel in my own mobile. Now it's quite natural. So things are evolving all the time, and that's where tech needs to evolve.

Dawn Lawrence: 21:47

But it's your H to H, your human to human thing, it's definitely, we can't dismiss that. And even in recruitment process, I did an article the other day on LinkedIn, Andy Burnham put on there, that every single person should have a face to face interview. And I thought, you're kidding me, how would we have the time to do that? So there's a, you know, everybody gets an opportunity. So do you do it for AI where you eliminate people?

Dawn Lawrence: 22:16

Do you do it by a Q and A where they answer questions and if they don't answer the right questions then they're sort of rejected? It's really, really hard. So what he's suggesting in reality would not work in hospitality. We talk about is there a recruitment problem in hospitality. There's a retention problem in hospitality because if you retain people, there won't be a recruitment problem.

Dawn Lawrence: 22:39

So with the retention, people need to focus on, you know we were talking a couple of, when we were talking about some questions is we were talking about L and D and how important L and D is and learning development. And learning development should be positioned as a retention tool, not a learning development tool. Because if you don't develop people and give them the tools and they feel valued, then they may leave. So then it's going become a problem because you've recruitment and you've to train them again. So I always look at training development as a retention tool.

Dawn Lawrence: 23:15

To me that's massive, the retention here. I don't think people feel valued. I don't think they get asked How's your day been? I always ask my team, How's your day? What you been up to?

Dawn Lawrence: 23:26

And no matter what, I always ask that because it's really important because then you understand what's going on in their life and that's how it's affecting the business. And I'm a big, big, massive, massive advocate of onboarding. You've got to get the onboarding right. It's about the way people feel. And people are excited to take their ideas.

Dawn Lawrence: 23:43

I say to my team, I've got an idea, give me lots of ideas. If I'm not around, write it down. I say, Write your ideas down and let's look at them in three months' time if we can't implement them straight away or let's look at them in the next month. And when we look at them, they've got some great ideas. Or they may turn around and say, actually Dawn that was a really shit idea, wasn't it?

Dawn Lawrence: 24:02

But we listen to them and I listen to, I love my team, I love their opinions, I like listening to what they want, what their suggestions are because every idea is a good idea. But rather than just go and this is what happens a lot because we're all busy, no, no, no. I always feel you need to give an explanation because if they've put the effort in to have an idea then you should have the courtesy to say actually it's a great idea but it won't work in our business because of x y z.

Mason Potter: 24:30

Do you think that's why people aren't hearing ideas from teams or people don't feel heard because people are busy and because hospitality is so under the cost at the moment or do you think it's something else?

Dawn Lawrence: 24:41

I think it's, the really, hospitality at the moment, we know it's really tough because you've got to have enough people on the floor to service everybody but also if you have too many and no one's coming in, it's a real massive cost implication. But one of the companies that used to do it really well, don't know if they still do it, was Peach Pub Company. Everything but on with Pea, they had poddies and perform, you know, they had their everything, it was just so funny but what they did, they had a peachy parade. Every morning they had a peachy parade where they lined, not literally lined up, but everybody gathered together and they all made sure they looked okay, they knew the menus, they knew everything. That fifteen minute consultation in the morning saved those people all day long and they felt part of a community.

Dawn Lawrence: 25:27

Some people just walk in, put their bag down, put their uniform on or not and just walk out on the floor. And that's the bit that's missing. I think it goes back to an everybody's got time for it is listening. For me management is a big issue in hospitality because if the manager does it right or the manager doesn't do it right or doesn't listen to his team or support his team, there's amazing managers out there, really, really smart managers out there. But the ones that listen to the team will retain their team.

Mason Potter: 25:58

And what other than listening to the team, do you think makes a great manager in Hospitality?

Dawn Lawrence: 26:05

Well I think you need to value their opinion, you need to value the team member and also ask them about succession. What do you want to do? Do you want to go, if it's a pub, do you want go on a brewery course? If it's a hotel, do you want to spend a day being a concierge or doing housekeeping? Give them the opportunity where they feel valued and also give them the opportunity about succession.

Dawn Lawrence: 26:26

The ones that keep the employees are the ones that I think where employees feel valued. And give them, don't be afraid to give them projects. Don't think that you've to do it all yourself. The minute you turn around and say, you know, I've got lots of skills, but my team, I always try and recruit people that are better than me. Because if they're better than me, they do a greater job.

Dawn Lawrence: 26:47

I'm learning every day, every day, and I love that. I love that. So I think with managers, they've gotta listen. They've gotta get develop them. They've gotta value what they've gotta say, but also they've gotta be there as a a bit like a mentor and an adviser.

Dawn Lawrence: 27:00

You know, when the gen z comes in, they've got no idea sometimes of their opportunities they have. And sometimes a bit of hard love is good because they will learn from that.

Mason Potter: 27:11

And just going back to the like, the hospitality doesn't have a recruitment problem, it's a retention problem. Yeah. We all know that retention has been a buzzword in hospitality for Do you think that's a trickle down effect of not having these formal processes so then there's no succession planning and career progression paths? It's just a very casual industry where people work that people fall into as the first job. Yeah.

Mason Potter: 27:33

Like, do you think that that would have a demonstrable impact on people staying in the industry?

Dawn Lawrence: 27:38

Yeah I do, I mean there is still a bit of a recruitment problem and you still need to advertise your jobs on Hospitality Jobs UK. Plug. Plug, plug. There's, you know, everybody says we get lots of candidates but again it's the right candidate. But going back to the retention piece is that it's good to have a team of 10 solid people in the team rather than have 15 in the team and you're not paying them attention.

Dawn Lawrence: 28:04

Those 10 people will work harder for you and they support you and they will get the service that you want. Every business is so different now. You've the QSRs, it's fast service. You know the KFC's and McDonald's and Burger Kings, it's fast service. So it's a different type of thing but again, the best thing is when somebody smiles at you and says, hi, how you doing?

Dawn Lawrence: 28:24

Everything okay? Because that person, and this is where I think hospitality is brilliant. The person can walk in feeling like crap and someone says, Hi, how's your day? And someone says that to you. And actually that could change someone's whole life.

Dawn Lawrence: 28:39

So I think actually the role of hospitality is massive. And we're talking about mental health and well-being. It's massive to those customers that walk in and say, you're in the coffee shop, what's your name today? Dawn. And it always comes up with r d n e, sometimes down.

Dawn Lawrence: 28:55

And it just makes me smile that, oh, down, he's down today. But that extra customer service I think is brilliant. Yeah. We do it well.

Mason Potter: 29:05

Yeah, I agree. I think those moments of magic and like you said, it might even be small things where, I had it recently, think where I got like a smiley face in one of my cups. Yeah, yeah. Where they'd read my name as well and it's like, it's it's the it's the smallest thing ever, but I think it can definitely have an impact on how you then go about your rest of your day. If you are feeling down, then it's you're right.

Mason Potter: 29:26

But it's also like when you look at different elements of hospitality, you look at local pubs and places like that, it's where people go to connect with other people, right, and I think that's what's going on in media. People are, you know, slating what's going on because all these pubs are shutting. They're the cornerstone of communities where you may not be in a big city, you might be in a rural area for example and that's the only place that you can go to meet new people, connect with new people or meet friends for example. And, yeah, I think it plays more of an important part in people's lives than you actually think and you end up taking Hospitality for granted a little bit.

Dawn Lawrence: 30:02

What we don't talk about is all the places that are opening. Yeah. We talk about, oh, know, and I know the pubs are being affected massively. I live in a village, there's five pubs around my village, and every time I go there, there's always someone in it. And I feel really comfortable going in on my own, grabbing a glass of wine.

Dawn Lawrence: 30:18

Grabbing a bottle of wine, sitting in my local pub and just sitting there. And I feel really comfortable and everybody's so friendly. Everybody's friendly. What we don't talk about is all these new opportunities. So if I wanted to come and work in a pub at the moment, I'd think, do I wanna work in a pub?

Dawn Lawrence: 30:32

Because everybody's telling me they're closing. Actually, it's great working in a pub. It's the best thing. And again, it's under that Hospitality umbrella. So I think we should be talking about the good news stories.

Dawn Lawrence: 30:43

We don't talk about enough good news stories.

Mason Potter: 30:45

Yeah. No, I do agree. I do agree because like I said, yeah, yeah, there are loads of openings, but even diversification of the industry, like, competitive socializing wasn't a thing

Dawn Lawrence: 30:56

No.

Mason Potter: 30:57

What, five, six, seven years ago? And, like, all those different opportunities that are being presented and younger people that aren't necessarily wanting to drink as much anymore, perhaps across the board. It's giving them an opportunity to go and do something that's engaging, that's stimulating, but they're not just sat siloed at home.

Dawn Lawrence: 31:14

Yeah. I agree. And you know, I take my health to Weatherspoons.

Mason Potter: 31:19

You

Dawn Lawrence: 31:19

know, they're so everyone and I, you know, do I like a Weatherspoon? Depending on the location. You know, they open a Weatherspoons in Marlowe and they open Weatherspoons in Beckonsfield. And you go in there and you know, it's got chandeliers and it's very, very, the way they decorate and the way they refurbish their weather screens now are amazing. But every weather screen you go in is full and the reason why is because of cost.

Dawn Lawrence: 31:43

I go to a pub and I get charged 10, I won't say the pub companies, one particular pub really bugs me. I go and my husband will order a beer and a glass of wine, it comes to £18 and we're talking about outside London. I go to a pub just literally a 100 yards down the line, a glass of wine, same wine, same beer, it's like £12. And it's you know, it's their overheads. And I think sometimes it's, I know there's lots of overheads but sometimes I think that's why Gen Z won't go out because it's expensive.

Mason Potter: 32:15

Mhmm. Do you think that's why people are like young? Well I actually did read recently that younger people are dining out more, like the numbers are

Dawn Lawrence: 32:21

actually They're dining out more. Yeah. I don't think they're just going to the pub.

Mason Potter: 32:26

But you think that's because they're not wanting to drink and like there's this new generation that I wanted to be a bit more health conscious or?

Dawn Lawrence: 32:32

Well, I don't know. Both my daughters, they go to the gym all the time. One works at David Lloyd, one works at Champneys. So they go to the gym, but they like a session. They like to go to the pub and have a session, during the week they'll always go out, because they go out for Saint Pete as well.

Dawn Lawrence: 32:46

But if they had a choice between two pubs and one is charging £18 and other one's charging 12, they will go to that £12 pub Mhmm. Because they are very much around. And I think this is what I love about Gen Z, it's not necessarily where you're going, it's about the people you're with. Yes. I think that's big.

Dawn Lawrence: 33:04

I actually think that as well. Yeah. Not just all about the gen Zed, these older because thinkers as I do value the fact that I think where I go, you know, you can go to a Michelin star restaurant or you can go to a local cafe and the service is, it's all about the service, but then all but it's about the food as well and it's you go with a group of mates. It's it's great.

Mason Potter: 33:24

Yeah. Well, it's about people at the end of the day, isn't it? And guess just going back to that retention point, I was looking at the stats on the report that you guys did. Yeah. And I think it was 72% of people said that the most important thing that they valued at work was working with other people that they liked.

Mason Potter: 33:39

Mhmm. Actually, higher than, like, pay. Yeah. And it just shows the importance of you spending the majority of your waking time with these people. You wanna make sure you get on with people who are decent, they're honest,

Dawn Lawrence: 33:50

and you You can spend show lot time at work than you do at home, don't you? Yeah. You spend, I mean, because obviously, you you go out every day and you spend more time, you wanna be in a place where you like the people you work with, And that's what makes people, I think that's what makes, I mean pay is really important. It's really important. But if you advertise something, it's gonna be 1 or 2 pennies more.

Dawn Lawrence: 34:08

That isn't gonna make them come to you. Money isn't just gonna make people come to you. What is gonna make people come to you is actually those benefits and how you look after them. But it's when you go in and you touch down and the first one does their first day, it's how do they feel on their first day.

Mason Potter: 34:23

I

Dawn Lawrence: 34:24

remember years ago, when I started at Dixon Stores Group, years ago, and I was like 25 years old, and I walked in, they sat me down on a chair, they said, we'll be with you in ten minutes. I was still sitting there an hour and a half later. Really? And I thought, bloody hell, I've gotta change this. And I did, know, by the time I left, was a real structured onboarding process.

Mason Potter: 34:46

Did you go straight into recruitment though?

Dawn Lawrence: 34:47

No, no. I worked in customer relations, I was crap at it because I had to answer something like 18 letters a day and I was getting all these letters from these old people saying, you know, da da da da da, and I used go, yeah, bloody often. So I was doing about eight a day, and back in the day when people used to write letters in, and then by default I went into recruitment, they said that, you know, they wanted to

Mason Potter: 35:09

Because of that experience.

Dawn Lawrence: 35:11

Not because of that experience, it's because they wanted somebody at head office at Dixon's, they said we want somebody to respond to people that aren't applying for jobs. And I said, well, are you not replying to them? They said, we haven't got the crasses to do that. I said, I'll do that. And that's what I did originally.

Dawn Lawrence: 35:27

And when I left Dickson's, I was European head of recruitment looking after UK and Europe, thirty nine thousand employees, 53 staff. Loved it. But I left, not because I didn't enjoy the job. There was no flexible work in there. So I had to be at work at twenty to nine and leave at ten past five, and I had two kids.

Dawn Lawrence: 35:47

We're going back on sixty, so we're going back a few years at Mason where they didn't have breakfast clubs, afternoon clubs, evening clubs. And that's when I started my journey on working for myself.

Mason Potter: 35:59

Nice.

Dawn Lawrence: 35:59

Yeah. Don't regret it, I don't think I'm employable now. But I really care about making sure that people are treated fair but also given, you know, I talk about this voice and transparency, do strongly believe that. But I think hospitality is, out of all the sectors I've ever worked in, is the best.

Mason Potter: 36:21

Well, on that point, if you were looking at, let's say, recruiting someone in a warehouse versus someone in hospitality, you've obviously talked about hospitality being one of the best places of benefits and tips and everything else. Like, you're presenting two opportunities to somebody. Like, what's your outlook on pro hospitality or pro warehouse? And, like, what's the conclusion that you'd help them come to knowing what you know about the industry?

Dawn Lawrence: 36:43

If you compare yourself a warehouse. So I go back to, I don't know if you know Katie Moses from CAM Insights. She's got a saying, it's not work life balance, it's life work balance. And I think what we need to do in hospitality is show people actually that we will employ someone and work part time during those really busy shifts on Thursday, Friday and Saturday but you don't have to work the night shifts. People go into work for warehouses because they know they're going to do a forty hour week or a thirty five hour week, they're going get a certain amount of money but they don't get all those benefits that we can offer them.

Dawn Lawrence: 37:16

And I think we're near enough there. I think we've sort of broken the back where we've turned around and said to people, actually it's not about working sixty, seventy hour weeks now. It just doesn't happen. It used to happen before COVID and not too far behind before that. It used to happen.

Dawn Lawrence: 37:34

I used to be speaking to chefs and they're doing sixty, seventy hour weeks but they loved cooking. They loved doing their food. But I don't want those type of people to leave and go to warehouses and go to Just Eat. I want them to stay in the industry and this is why I'm a big advocate of our campaign CLEAR which is raising the pro fund of those other sectors. So somebody needs a different work life balance or life work balance because because of their circumstances, whether they've to care for a parent or they've got family, and just say you're a chef and you're thinking actually I'm going go and work in a warehouse.

Dawn Lawrence: 38:07

But are you aware that you can go and work for a care sector? Buyers are at home because they don't serve food in the evening in these care facilities. And some of these care facilities are like five star hotels with care facilities, that's how I describe them. We're not talking about the NHS, we're talking about these amazing

Mason Potter: 38:24

And when you see them it's ridiculous.

Dawn Lawrence: 38:25

Amazing.

Mason Potter: 38:26

Well it's not ridiculous, it's great, but the standard that it goes to is immense.

Dawn Lawrence: 38:29

Yeah, it's amazing. But also that they might wanna work in an environment, and I think we were talking about zero hour contracts a couple of weeks ago, and zero hour contracts work both ways because it candidates works for and it works for the company as well. But you've gotta always be on your toes in Hospitality so how can you attract those people? Why would I go to a warehouse when I go to a warehouse or logistics like the Amazons of the world? It's not an exciting job, it's not great.

Dawn Lawrence: 38:58

You work with your colleagues but you're working all day long. Why would you not come into a hospital too excited, it's fun, it's a community, it's a family, we listen to you and also you get some free food and you get good money and you get some tips. Straight away instead of earning the same money in the warehouse, you're earning $5.06, $78 more just by doing a great job. So that's the bit we've gotta do storytelling. Storytelling, I'm massive on storytelling.

Mason Potter: 39:24

And you talked about CLEAR then. Tell me about CLEAR.

Dawn Lawrence: 39:28

So CLEAR is just an initiative raising the profile of those sectors outside the normality of hospitality. When people think about hospitality, they think about pubs, bars, restaurants, hotels. So CLEAR is just an acronym which stands for Care, Leisure, Entertainment, Attractions and Retail. So you've got the care facility, it's those people, if you look at a care facility, you've got everything from operations to housekeeping to chefs to operations, HR and so that definitely fits under the Hospitality umbrella. When you look at leisure you think, well how does that fit under Hospitality?

Dawn Lawrence: 40:03

You've got that service element in the spas, you've the service element in the leisure sector and also you've got, you you go and get your juice from there, it's, so anybody basically goes back to serving a drink over the counter. When you look at entertainment, if you go into a cinema or you go into a theater, that entertainment element or casino for example, that entertainment element, you get served food and drink there. And then you look at attractions, a passive, you know, I'm not just talking about the Chessentons, the Legolands, the Alton Towers that all have hospitality facilities, but also I'm talking about the London Eye and those type of places. And it's raising the profile that they fit under hospitality. And then I talk about retail, that big up brands that fit under hospitality.

Dawn Lawrence: 40:49

You go into Harrods, Shelves, Fortnum and Masons, M and S, Tesco's. It's a coffee shop or a restaurant in some, you know. So it's like how do I raise that profile? I'm talking constantly about people don't leave the industry because people will leave the industry if they only know about pubs. Can a pub, someone working in a pub, easy transition into hotels, they can transition to any of these sectors and that's what we need to be doing is raising the profile of those sectors have it under the hospitality umbrella.

Dawn Lawrence: 41:20

You've got all these different sort of raindrops which is all different sectors.

Mason Potter: 41:23

Yeah. And what were you saying earlier, you ought to make The UK hospitality industry like America?

Dawn Lawrence: 41:29

Yeah. Yeah. It's because I think if you look America, if you look at Europe, I think Europe, you go to Europe, when does somebody, you know, when you're in Spain or Ibiza, you know, the person that's serving you normally isn't a young person, it's normally a 30, 40, 50 year old guy or woman that's been there for years cause they know the quality. You know, it's a great job because at the end of the day, can go home and not necessarily worry about it. You make people happy.

Dawn Lawrence: 41:51

You serve people great food and you get tips. So if you look at America and Europe, they both are, they are looked as, you know, front of house is looked at as a readable high profile job. That's what we need

Mason Potter: 42:04

That's what the same career waiters come from. Yeah. Career waiter waitress.

Dawn Lawrence: 42:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just think that's what we need to do, we need to sort of keep on raising the profile of it. And you know the work we do at universities is about raising the profile of most of these international students I was talking to you about earlier, they think I just want to work in a hotel. Why? Then we talk about other things so that's when we separate ourselves, why we're different from other job boards in the sense that we target those Gen Z, we target those career transition program, 18,000 leave every year.

Dawn Lawrence: 42:37

Been there one day and actually interesting, we did a survey with the career transition program which is the Army, Navy and RAF And what were the three top jobs they wanted to work in? And it was operations, chefs and pubs. And I was like, Pubs? You want to work in a pub? Why is that?

Dawn Lawrence: 42:55

And it wasn't about necessarily working a pub, it's about running a pub. What they wanna do, they come out the they didn't want anybody they didn't wanna work for anybody. They needed somewhere to live. So they'd run a pub. They got somewhere to live.

Dawn Lawrence: 43:05

They got no one the only person that, you know-

Mason Potter: 43:08

Answerable to themselves.

Dawn Lawrence: 43:08

Answerable that was really interesting. I didn't think that would come out, then it was operations, and then it was catering. So it was interesting. Right. Yeah.

Mason Potter: 43:17

And just a a sideway movement on that, on imposter syndrome, because that was one of the things that was like up year on year on the report. Like why do you think that is and what do you think is going on with youngsters coming into the industry or people that just exist in the industry now?

Dawn Lawrence: 43:33

Yeah. I think, you know, managers have to be managers. You know, I think the management, you've gotta be training those managers. We were talking about again a few weeks ago about management and actually when they recruit, who's given the tools to know how to recruit best and given that person a really good experience that if they didn't get the job and they're not successful, they walk away feeling they've had a fair opportunity. So the management is the people that actually have the biggest impact of their team.

Dawn Lawrence: 44:03

So recruiting managers is massive because if they don't get that bright and they don't look after their team but you need to also invest in your manager by giving them training and development, whether it's leadership style, whether it's communication, whatever they need. So that's where I think it's a management element of it.

Mason Potter: 44:21

Thank you so much for that. Thank you for coming on. Last question. Yes. We ask everybody.

Mason Potter: 44:26

Okay. What are you grateful for?

Dawn Lawrence: 44:28

What am I grateful for? Oh my God. I'm grateful for, it's gonna sound so deep, okay? I'm grateful for life. I'm grateful for memories.

Dawn Lawrence: 44:38

I'm grateful for my kids and my friends and my family. And actually the older you get, you realize that possessions don't mean anything, memories mean everything. And when you go away, every memory, if you look at all your memories, is created normally in a hospitality environment.

Mason Potter: 44:52

Amazing. Thank you. Thanks so much for coming on, Don.

Dawn Lawrence: 44:55

Thank you, Mason.

Mason Potter: 44:56

Great to

Dawn Lawrence: 44:57

be having you. It's good to chat to you too. Yeah. Thank you.