Author: Jaime

The expectations that employees and visitors have of front-of-house teams have changed significantly over the last few years. Since enforced working from home ended, employees have been encouraged to return to the workplace by their employers and the Government alike. Ensuring the workplace is a welcoming and inclusive space that people feel happy entering is key, which is why guest services have been thrown into the limelight.

The front-of-house teams that businesses bring in to look after their staff have a huge impact on an employee’s experience in the office. Having disengaged staff on your front desk will not present the workplace as a productive and positive place to be. It doesn’t matter how many fun office perks you might have, or cool comfy chairs – if your front-of-house team is not delivering the required support, employees will be put off coming in. Creating an inspiring and encouraging environment is the first step towards success.

The days of the tired and grumpy receptionist that is chained to the front desk are over. Your front-of-house team are usually the first people employees and visitors will see and/or interact with when they arrive at the office. That is a key turning point for how someone’s day could go. Having a friendly and happy welcome for your team as they start their workday will help create a positive atmosphere at the office.

Creating this environment is everything that On Verve strives for. Hiring outside of the traditional talent pool has helped us to create some great, well-rounded teams. To access this untapped branch of the workforce, our recruitment process focuses on who the candidates are as people, not just their CV experience. Enthusiasm, willingness to learn, and a strong sense of self; all these core values can be identified in strong candidates who have the tenacity to apply for a role they might not be “traditionally” equipped for.

The roles of front-of-house teams have extended beyond the reception desk. The new teams are not only at the front entrance – they roam the workplace to assist employees and guests with a variety of issues and needs that can appear throughout the working day. They help to organise and engage employees in time-out events and networking opportunities to ensure their well-being is supported. They help those employees who do need extra support in their day-to-day work life and ensure the right provisions are in place, giving them the best workplace experience. They engage with company stakeholders to ensure front-of-house teams are echoing the business’ messaging, and offering consultancy on where it could be developed further.

It’s an enhanced service that involves teams truly embedding themselves within client teams, and always looking for ways to add value. Hence the job title “DayMaker”. We want to make our client’s day, whatever way that takes shape for them.

Diversity and inclusion are high on the agenda for many UK businesses, and for objectives to be met, companies need a robust plan that includes how they communicate with their teams and provide ongoing support for employees.

It’s estimated that around one in seven people in the UK are neurodiverse – about 15 per cent of the population. Despite this, a CIPD poll in 2018 found that just one in ten organisations considered neurodiversity in their people management practices.

What is neurodiversity and why is it important?

Simply put, neurodiversity is about the different ways that the brain functions, learns and interprets information. Some of the more well-known neurodiverse conditions are autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and epilepsy.

Neurodiverse people are on a wide-ranging scale of hyper and hypo sensitivity. Any number of environmental factors can be challenging, including sound, lighting, temperature, the number of people in a space, proximity to others, confined or closed spaces, lack of enclosure, patterns, colours, and texture.

This can make workplaces quite daunting spaces to be in for neurodiverse individuals, so it is important they are supported as best as possible. This is where the front-of-house (FOH) team comes in!

How to support neurodiverse individuals

One on the main remits for our teams at On Verve is to treat every employee and guest as an individual. We embed ourselves within our client organisations get to know each person. In that sense, we already appreciate that everyone is diverse, whether they have a neurodiverse condition or not.

The best way to have your front-of-house teams supporting the neurodiverse among you is to educate and train people on these conditions. We have an extensive library of in-house and external training resources, including podcasts, videos, and short courses.

I’ve found that rather than pushing staff to undertake training, if we simply offer a wide range of resources and make staff aware of them, they are more than happy to explore the options and use the resources they find most useful.

Knowing when and how to offer support to visitors can be trickier as FOH teams won’t have had the chance to build a relationship in the way they do with an employee. It comes down to reading the room and being intuitive. You might be able to pick up on dyslexia if a guest email contains noticeable spelling mistakes, or a guest that appears flustered upon arrival might benefit from being taken to their destination within the building.

This is where already adopting a personal approach can be helpful. If your FOH team makes a point of escorting every guest to their destination, then they’ll automatically be supporting any neurodiverse guests that need that bit of support.

It’s also vital to remember that neurodiverse people are not fragile and don’t need handholding. They often just need to be engaged with in a slightly different way. We all have these skills already. We engage differently with our clients, our friends, and our families. It’s just a case of tweaking those skills again when supporting neurodiverse people.

Neurodiversity in the workplace

Many companies are adapting their workplaces in the era of hybrid working or developing strategies to do so. There’s never been a better time to ensure that neurodiverse needs are considered in these plans.

However, we must avoid creating zones specially for neurodiverse individuals as this has the potential to increase stigma. Rather, we must create spaces that are to be used by all employees. After all, you don’t need to have a sensitivity to light or noise to appreciate working in a quiet area with controlled lighting.

These areas need to be communicated effectively to the entire team, not just to highlight their neurodiverse-friendly features, but also to ensure their use is understood by all. Often, these office space subsets are created as per the current trends in office design without communicating with employees what the space is for and how it should be used.

Once again, when supporting all employees and guests, but especially those with neurodiversity, clear and effective communication is the best solution. Your front-of-house teams can be prepared and trained to support the neurodiverse by offering a great standard of service provision, which is exactly what we strive for at On Verve.

On Verve are fundraising for The Brain Charity who help people affected by all forms of neurological condition to lead longer, healthier, happier lives. Find out more and show your support.

Workplace culture has become the biggest trend over the last year. As companies navigate their workplace strategies and try to ensure that their employees are happy and productive in the office – whether they are mandated to come in or not – the culture created there is extremely valuable.

Strategies can range from enhancing employee benefits to offering more flexible working hours.

Some sectors are quicker to embrace change than others. Traditionally, corporate businesses can be among the slowest to make changes. But when it comes to reception areas and front-of-house (FOH) teams, the reinvention has already begun.

The end of the corporate reception area?

Corporate receptions commonly aspire to that of a 5-star hotel – FOH staff were expected to be dressed immaculately and blend into the background. However, there has been talk of how corporate reception areas are changing, with the biggest new addition being staff coming out from behind the desk for the first time.

I believe this is changing through a combination of client policies and education from guest services partners such as On Verve. In fact, we may be heading towards a future where the corporate reception desk disappears entirely!

Until then, the role of a corporate receptionist is entering a new era. The type of person that can undertake that duty is changing. We’ve had more than one large corporate client tell us that they don’t want a traditional “stiff” receptionst, but someone warm, relaxed, and personable looking after their guests and, more importantly, their staff.

These people – at On Verve we call them DayMakers – are asked to not only welcome employees and visitors at reception, but to roam the workplace and support occupants as needed throughout the day. This might be anything from giving directions to a visitor, to helping direct an employee with IT problems to the right person.

For this type of work, the right personality is arguably more important that the right skillset. We take that approach with our recruitment, and it pays off for our clients.

You can’t teach a personality

It’s essential to listen to a client when they share their requirements for FOH staff. It can be easy to fall into the trap of hiring the same type of people, but that would do the client a disservice.

On the other side, it might take some persuading with clients to move forward with certain candidates. A CV might not tick all the boxes for required skills, but if we think a candidate’s personality is the perfect fit then we’ll share with the client.

After all, you can learn skills, but a personality can’t be taught.

Recruitment for growth

The widening scope of the FOH role has the potential to open it up to a much larger pool of candidates than before. Now it’s up to guest service firms to get the word out.

In addition to the usual job boards and recruitment methods, we’ve started relationships with job centres where we’re giving a presentation and offering two-week placements. It’s likely that most of these people will never have considered a job in guest services, but it might in fact be the ideal fit for them.

A great example was our recruit Ingrid. She was in her mid-50s when she joined our team with no prior experience of working in a corporate setting. In fact, she wasn’t even comfortable using a computer. However, her personality was exactly what our client wanted, and she has become embedded as a key part of the client team.

Since joining we have given her relevant training to get her up-to-speed with the technology required for the role, and she has flourished.

Recruiting the right people helps to create a positive business environment, benefitting both the client and the business itself.

The future for front-of-house

It’s exciting to see more corporate firms embrace the change to reception areas and teams. I truly believe this shift will be a permanent change, as FOH teams have so much more to offer when they are not tied to a reception desk.

For those of us working in the sector, it’s up to us to advise clients, educate them where needed, and spread the word far and wide about these new career opportunities. It’s a wonderful chance to increase the diversity of people working in guest services.

Chief DayMaker and Director, Bianca Angelico, shares her thoughts and opinions on the future of guest services.

As more businesses offer hybrid working practices to their employees, they are facing the further challenge of encouraging them to go back to the office, and therefore making it a desirable prospect. What do you think the solution is?

For me it is definitely the provision of guest services. As we fully return to the world of in-person interactions, expectations around the quality of guest services in the corporate sector have increased. Since the world has found comfort in staying at home, there needs to be a greater incentive to return to the workplace. This can, and has started to, take shape in the form of increased care when looking after guests in certain contexts, ensuring their optimum total comfort. The future of corporate guest services is a growing industry and keeping up with it will require more extensive recruitment, which creates more job opportunities for people of all backgrounds.

With the hospitality industry at large facing some of the biggest recruitment challenges of current times, how do you think guest services is going to break through and continue finding great talent.

At On Verve, we are aiming to be forward thinkers when it comes to social value in our business, which definitely reflects in how we handle our recruitment. This all started at the implementation stage of On Verve last year; I knew it was a principle I wanted throughout the business. We looked at how we can support the happiness and wellbeing of our employees as well as prioritising diversity and inclusion in the workforce. To access this next level of workforce we needed to hire based not just on the level of experience, but on who the candidate is as a person.

What kind of talent are you looking for to help achieve this?

Traditionally, corporate guest services has been compared to a 5-star hotel experience. Now, we are prioritising qualities that our clients value, such as personable, approachable, and kind people. In the last year, we have employed people without prior experience in the corporate environment and those who were not familiar with the expected protocol for such settings. However, by introducing our clients to employees who don’t have the “ideal” CV, but rather those that we think would be the perfect fit for their culture, we have seen great results.

For example, Ingrid joined the On Verve team in 2021. She is friendly, has great energy and a willingness to learn. She was also 57 and had very limited computer skills, something that is usually a baseline requirement for an individual going for a front-of-house role. It was Ingrid’s personality and enthusiasm for helping people that made her the best fit. Since then, Ingrid has been given all the relevant training to be able to use the computer effectively and she has settled into her role with ease.

Do you think this is where the future of guest services is heading?

Absolutely. We believe in finding DayMakers like Ingrid who have an innate desire to help others; skills can be taught, but who you are can’t be. What our clients want from a guest service provider has changed, hence the title ‘DayMaker’, as we aim to make people’s day through our services. The days of the traditional, stiff front desk person are gone, and more clients are looking for relaxed, personable people. This is a truly exciting time for the sector.

We’re also seeing a greater emphasis on servicing the employees of an organisation as well as the visitors at a building. I think throughout 2023, this will continue to dominate the conversation around the future of guest services.

To celebrate the launch of On Verve, we asked culture & people manager Lynne Cullen several questions on her thoughts, feelings, and responsibilities at On Verve.

What is your role and your main responsibilities?

I am really excited to be culture and people manager at On Verve. My role is to support with initiatives to develop our people which we call our “DayMakers”. I will do his from recruitment stage, all the way through to supporting individual career growth. Our culture will be driven from our DayMaker’s sharing our vision and core values – obviously I will be leading by example too!

I will be designing and implementing bite size coaching through a mix of content which is made so much easier through all the various online platforms we have in this day and age. This will allow for “coaching on the go” and will encourage learning and engagement for the whole organisation. I will promote our culture by providing an inclusive environment where everyone feels they have a voice and a place where they can develop and really use their personality to create a great service,  a diverse workforce is more creative and innovative.

What is your favourite part of your job at On Verve?

Being part of something new! It’s all so exciting as its fresh and never been done before – we can be creative and innovative with implementing everything. Our launch was on the 12th May and was a huge success.

We are constantly setting milestones as our current to do list is pretty long, and though the list is forever evolving there is a great sense of achievement when a task is ticked off. I love to support and champion individuals, and being able to help set up the mechanisms with a company that shares my principles gives me a great purpose.

 How has On Verve evolved guest services?

 We are about creating the right atmosphere for our guests and employees; we recognise the importance of making that special connection by having a real understanding of the environment we are in. It is no longer enough to have years of experience of working in guest services to make you good at your job. Our training and hybrid learning will allow people to be part of a team that really pushes individual strengths to maintain authenticity as well as supporting and upskilling where required.

We believe happy people are productive people, and we aim to think in a modern way and in the process make a service that is amazing. We recognise that guest services are moving with the times and need to remain modern with the introduction of new technology in the workplace. We’ll integrate tech while our dedicated Daymakers promote our brand “to be the makers of someone’s day”, which will be far more natural when the connection is real.

What makes On Verve stand out?

We want to create a wow factor! At a time when there is so much going on in people’s lives, how we interact with others is more important than ever as we do not know the impact we may have. Sometimes customer service can feel scripted and not personal enough. We want to truly connect through personality.

Therefore, our recruitment will be key along with training and enhancing individual performance. Our people will make customer service stand out, as we all know that no two scenarios have the same outcome. By enabling greater creativity, it will generate more energy and enthusiastic and a personable service for our guests and employees.

How will you support staff and develop culture?

 I want to our DayMakers to understand their areas of strength, know their values and behaviours and how they connect with On Verve’s, and enable them to work in a positive and collaborative workplace. From day one, I will support our people to increase their knowledge and skillset through bitesize coaching and development using various formats via an amazing and bespoke Learning Experience Platform (LXP). By encouraging an empowered, inclusive culture where people can be themselves, it will enable them to find their own solutions and really thrive on their personality.

If this is done correctly people will feel at ease in themselves and the environment which they are in, resulting in the best service. I am also a big supporter of celebrating success and highlighting the great achievements of those who are part of On Verve will be key. There will be a real focus on wellbeing among our DayMakers and by communicating and engaging effectively we can understand the goals that we all have, and help each other to achieve them.

June is Pride month. How will On Verve support members of the LGBTQ community this month and throughout the year?

 Our values – passionate about personality and connecting through understanding – really emphasise On Verve’s beliefs. We spend a lot of time at work and often see our colleagues more than we see friends and family, so it’s really important that we ensure that our LGBTQ community feel that they are in an environment where they can be themselves regardless of sexuality or gender identity. We actively promote an inclusive working environment for everybody.

What are your key predictions for the industry going forward?

The uncertainty of 2020/21 has made us far more resilient as we have all had to change and re-evaluate how we get work done, and I feel that we are coming through the other side stronger and better for it. As we see a return to the workplace, customer service and how we connect with each other will be more significant than ever. Not only the physical measures and guidelines in place but the social side of getting people back in the swing of socialising and being back in the big open space.

For some people, confidence will have been hit hard and those in customer facing roles will have a huge part to play in easing people back into the workplace – providing empathy will be key. Technology will have a big part to play as we see a change in roles, but building relationships and emotional connections will build the future. We must provide the opportunity to learn and grow.

To celebrate the launch of On Verve, we asked director Bianca Angelico about why she created On Verve and her experience in the industry.

Why did you create On Verve?

There are two answers to this question, one is personal, and the other is business. Personally, a big reason is because I am dyslexic, and have a reading disability. Not many people know this about me.

When I was a little girl, I always got told I’d never finish school, I’d never finish university, I’d never amount to anything. I’m doing this to show with passion, determination and being your true self, you can.

I hope that I can inspire and make a difference to those that have heard the same words I have and show that anything is possible.

Speaking from a business perspective, there’s something missing in the market, and we need a fresh approach on how we deliver service in the workplace to both guests and employees. I saw a gap for a more modern approach to the needs of today’s workplaces so created On Verve to fill it.

Our guest and employee services solution adapts to the way the way people work and how organisations create spaces that add value to the experience. I think this will change people’s perception on what guest services is moving away from the traditional comparisons to five-star hotel service.

What makes On Verve stand out from the rest?

We stand out through our energy and passion. Verve means enthusiasm and vigor, which is exactly what we stand for at On Verve. We are all about creating the right energy and atmosphere for the workplace and our clients. It doesn’t just come down to the energy of our people, but also our unique blend of people and technology.

I think a true blend of people and tech, alongside our energy and enthusiasm, will create a wow experience. It’s definitely time to bring something different to this marketplace – guest services should and can provide a vibrant service that’ll keep clients engaged and put a smile on their face whilst fitting with their brand.

How has your industry experience helped in creating On Verve?

My experience has helped me with the processes and the procedures of creating On Verve and how we do it. When I moved to London, I was an executive assistant to CEOs for many years and that was one of my first experiences with this kind of guest services. People don’t usually link the synergy of an assistant together with a guest service, but there’s a lot of synergy, and I think this helped me massively. It all starts from my roots, being an assistant, working in a restaurant, redefining guest services for Amulet. All of these has helped me in the creation of On Verve.

My role within EWL has also been extremely valuable as I have built a strong network of FM professionals and spend lots of time with the industry’s emerging talent so I use this to better understand what the evolving needs of the workplace are and what would really add value to an organisation.

Where does On Verve sit among the other Churchill services?

On Verve complements the other expert services, particularly Amulet in the security sector, and Portfolio as the high-specification cleaning offer. On Verve can be layered with any of Churchill’s other services but is also a standalone service offering.

How will you support D&I at On Verve?

Our values are around passion, personality, and connecting with others by understanding them. At On Verve, there isn’t a blueprint where you need to be X, Y and Z or fit in to a certain group, we simply embrace those being their true self, no matter your background.

In this industry, people can tell when someone is being genuine and when they’re not. There’s nothing worse than an insincere interaction, proving how important authenticity is. Our other value is connecting through understanding and that’s all about empathy. I think Covid-19 has taught us to be a little bit more understanding with each other, and we want to be a strong team at On Verve that can bring out the best in each other.

What excites you most about the On Verve launch?

What excites me the most is that it’ll finally be out there, I don’t have to keep it a secret anymore! In all seriousness, everyone’s excited for the launch. Our ethos is the makers of someone’s day, and I can’t wait to show just how genuine that is.

As well as the launch of our services, we’re also introducing a podcast called ‘On Verve: the modern approach to customer experience’. We can’t wait for people to tune in and hope they find it insightful, potentially implementing our ideas into their workplace strategy. As part of our launch, we’re sending some gifts to potential clients, all of which were bought locally to support local businesses.

How and when did you start working in guest services?

I would say I was born into it. My family owned a restaurant since before I was born, so my entire culture and upbringing as an Italian was within our restaurant. When I was six years old, I wanted to help out and make some money, so decided to become a waitress. The problem was, I couldn’t really read or write at the time. So, I would ask guests to point at the menu for what they wanted, and I must’ve done something right because I received hefty tips.

As I got older, eventually my father and I bought a restaurant together before I moved to London. I’d run the front of house element of it and my dad would run the kitchen. I really enjoyed the front of house aspect as an owner, I felt pride in welcoming guests and making them happy. So, when I moved to London, I wanted to keep that feeling and move forward in guest services.

What do you enjoy most about the industry?

For me, it’s that we have an opportunity every day to make someone’s day. Whether that’s through a last-minute crisis you can help solve, or just coming up with amazing ideas and implementing them. Positively impacting someone’s life is an amazing feeling and I easily enjoy that the most. I also enjoy the people I work with. It’s great being part of a close community and seeing amazing talent.

How can guest services be improved?

I think it’s all about evolution, adapting to new ways such as hybrid working. It’s important that new talent joining the industry isn’t learning guest services from twenty years ago, but an updated approach. So, I think it’s more about adapting and evolving rather than improving.

One example of this is online training. We’ve changed the way we train people, going from boring hour-long lessons to quick snappy sessions. We’ve adapted and evolved, utilising the latest technology to make it more fun and engaging.