With such a large proportion of the global workforce currently working from home, it’s now clear that the offices and workspaces that people eventually return to are going to be very different. So what does the future of the workplace look like and what part will it play in attracting and retaining top talent?
My guest this week is Ash Hanson, SVP of Human Resources at Aramark. Aramark provides facilities, food and uniforms to employers across 19 countries and is at the cutting edge of the changes we are currently seeing in workplaces all around the world.
In the interview, we discuss:
• The changes Covid-19 is driving for Aramark
• How hospitality companies are becoming safety companies with a hospitality focus
• The importance of effective employee communication
• How Aramark recruit and retain top talent
• The importance of workspace to employer brand
• What’s next for Aramark
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Aramark. Whether your company is constantly battling for the top talent in your space or you’re worried about keeping employees on board following the COVID 19 shutdown, it’s imperative you develop a strategy for recruiting and retaining employees. It just makes good financial sense. Labour turnover can cost your company up to 33% of employees annual salaries, and that adds up fast. That’s why Aramark, the top provider of healthy and delicious food options in dynamic dining environments, created a guide that reviews the top trends for recruiting and retaining talent. And you can get a free copy for being a Recruiting Future podcast listener. You know you can trust Aramark’s insights since they offer customer service across food facilities and uniforms. Wherever people work, learn, recover and play, their 280,000 team members deliver experiences that enrich and nourish the lives of millions of people in 19 countries around the world every day. For your copy of the guide, just head to Bit Ly AramarkInsights. It covers the top seven trends and it’s free to download that URL again. Bit Ly AramarkInsights and Aramark is spelt A R a M A R K.
Matt Alder [00:02:01]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 279 of the Recruiting Future podcast. With such a large proportion of the global workforce currently working from home, it’s now clear that the offices and workspaces that people eventually return to are going to be very different. So what does the future of the workplace look like and what part will it play in attracting and retaining top talent? My guest this week is Ash Hanson, SVP of Human Resources at Aramark. Aramark provides facilities, food and uniforms to employers across 19 countries and is at the cutting edge of the changes we’re currently seeing in workplaces all around the world. Hi Ash and welcome to the podcast.
Ash Hanson [00:02:55]:
Hi Matt. Thank you for having me on.
Matt Alder [00:02:57]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Please, could you just introduce yourself and tell us a bit about Aramark?
Ash Hanson [00:03:04]:
Sure. Aramark is in the service business across food facilities and uniforms everywhere that people come together to work, learn, recover or play. So whether at a hospital or a higher education campus, at the cafe, in a corporate office, or at a sporting venue, many, if not most of your listeners have probably experienced Aramark services. We have over a quarter million team members across 19 countries. My role specifically is to lead human resources for the US food and facilities portfolio, which is eight distinct lines of business here in the US and employs about 150,000 team members across nearly 5,000 locations. You know, cliched as it may sound, we often say here at Aramark that we’re in the people business. And my job really is to ensure that we’re hiring, developing and retaining the best people for the company.
Matt Alder [00:03:56]:
Now, we’re recording this in the middle of June 2020, and obviously 2020 has been an unprecedented year. So let’s start by talking about that. Tell us about aramark’s response to COVID 19. I mean, how is it transforming your role as a hospitality company?
Ash Hanson [00:04:16]:
You know, I don’t know who to attribute this quote to, but I’ve heard it said that the 2008 crash was a CFO’s crisis and the current pandemic is the people officers crisis. And I couldn’t agree more. It’s been a fascinating experience, not just to be in human resources, but specifically in a hospitality services company during this time. So Aramark was actually the forefront of the COVID 19 pandemic in many ways. We serve at a hospital in Wuhan, and so we’ve been involved in reacting to the crisis from very, very early on. We formed the Aramark Response Committee back in January to centrally manage all aspects of the company’s response to COVID 19. And from our very first meeting back in January, and we learned this lesson every day since, it’s been clear that we’ve had to really lean into the core capabilities of the company that make it a trusted partner for our clients. Right. So that would be our deep operational expertise, our ability to quickly bring innovative solutions to bear to our clients and consumers, and the remarkable strength of our field people. So specific to the pandemic, it was clear that what was already a deep rooted commitment in the company to safety would be even more critical, not only to ensure the safety of our own employees, but but also in creating solutions that our clients and customers need. So I’ll give you a few examples. Not only did we have to reinforce safety training for our own employees on issues like hand hygiene or PPE use or CDC guidelines as they emerge, but we had to very quickly create solutions like pop up convenience stores for our healthcare clients so healthcare workers in the front lines could avoid grocery stores at the end of a long shift, or deploy enhanced cleaning protocols for our facilities clients who are still delivering essential services and were up and running during the pandemic. Pandemic. It’s become clear to us that our safety and our operating experience around safety is so critical and a key differentiator. In fact, recently, in partnership with Jefferson Health here in Philadelphia and aligned with CDC and WHO guidelines, we launched Eversafe, which the easiest way for me to describe Eversafe is as a holistic, multidimensional safety platform which takes into account everything from employee safety and well being to safe operational practices, to the use of technology to create frictionless experiences. And actually the most important part of Eversafe, that it’s a platform for continued learning and collaboration as we go through this pandemic. What it means for sort of the community at large as we launch eversafe is now we can bring our expertise around safety not just to our traditional clients, but to small and medium sized businesses that will now be able to take advantage of our expertise to operate their own businesses safely. It’s interesting Dr. Klosko, who’s the president and CEO of Jefferson, along with a couple of his colleagues, wrote a paper for the World Economic Forum back in May, and I’m paraphrasing him here. But you know, they talk about the fact that hospitality companies would need to evolve to become safety companies with a hospitality focus. And based on the lessons of the last few months, I personally couldn’t agree more.
Matt Alder [00:07:40]:
That’s really interesting stuff. And obviously it’s something that’s affecting the, the industry that you’re in in a very dramatic way. Obviously around the world, a vast proportion of the workforce has been away from the office and working, working from home. But as countries start to unlock and people sort of start to go back to what does the future of the office look like as people go back into their workspaces? What’s it going to look like moving forward?
Ash Hanson [00:08:11]:
You know, for us, I would say that’s an issue that has two dimensions. Right. So there is the issue of our own employees and how do we bring our own teams back to our headquarters, for example, or our regional offices. But also then how do we support our clients in creating safe workplaces with their employees as they bring their teams back? Ironically, not too long ago. So back In December of 2018, we moved to our brand new, stunning headquarters here in Philadelphia at 24th and Market. And it’s a space that we were very conscious of designing to create opportunities for collaboration and innovation. So it’s open and bright and welcoming. It’s got amazing amenities, including our flagship cafe, a fantastic innovation kitchen, flexible workspaces, a great fitness center, all of which, of course we have to rethink and reimagine as we bring our teams Back to the office. And so I will describe some of what we’ve done in our own space because that is similar to a lot of what we are consulting with our clients to do for their locations. So a couple of things to consider, right? So first is most important in some ways is entry. So making sure that we are putting in safety protocols from before people enter the building. So everything from temperature checking to ensuring that there are prescreening questions that are responded to, not just for our team members, but also for any visitors who happen to come to our space using floor decals and other visual cues from the lobby on. So people understand social distancing and it becomes the norm even as they enter the building. To other ways to support social distancing. For example, from a cafe perspective. As much as our cafe was designed very much to create opportunities for people to share meals, we’re trying to set it up now to enable online ordering and having great new sort of to go meal options that are healthy and convenient and safe. We’re making sure that workspaces are set up in a way to allow for safe social distancing, including insured spaces like elevators and restrooms. And then there’s issues like high contact surfaces. So for instance, we’re retrofitting all of our restroom doors with step and pull devices so you don’t have to touch the door handles. We’re installing nanoseptic film over our elevator buttons so there isn’t infection on contact. There will be multiple visual cues like hand sanitizing station set up and pretty good intervals, as well as signs that remind people about hand hygiene and facial covering practices, et cetera. But look, the most important part of all of that will be communication. So we know that as employees return to the workspace, the most important thing will be to reassure them of their safety and to ensure that they can see that we have taken their safety as our primary priority as we’ve set up the space for return to work. And so communication is going to be key in our offices. For example, we did a survey of all of our headquarters and regional office team members to ensure that we were truly trying to identify the core issues that they were concerned about as they returned to the workplace. And we folded that feedback in very visible ways into both our planning and communications back with the teams as we’ve given them details on our return to work plans. And so it’s really important not only to be comprehensive in your planning, but also to ensure, you know, to making sure that your employees are communicated with frequently and thoroughly. And Understand that their safety is of paramount importance to the company.
Matt Alder [00:12:09]:
To focus, I suppose, a bit on your employees for a moment, tell us how you recruit and retain top talent in your business.
Ash Hanson [00:12:18]:
Well, I could spend hours on this topic, so I’ll try to, try to remain succinct. You can keep me honest here. So, you know, talent acquisition at Aramark is a significant activity. So in the US alone, for example, we recruit roughly 75,000 hourly associates a year and roughly 10,000 salary managers every year. A lot of those numbers are due to the seasonal and cyclical nature of our business. So there’s a tremendous amount of effort that goes into our TA strategy, all the way from sourcing of talent to recruiting, marketing, leveraging social media, etc. Leveraging talent acquisition technologies, including AI and dashboards to keep track of all of those moving parts. So there’s significant effort around ta. We have a strong focus around diversity recruiting, whether it’s, you know, women, people of color, people with disabilities, multi generational hiring, for example. So an example in that last piece. So we do, you know, we’re pretty known for our campus recruiting programs. We hire hundreds of students off of campuses in our campus recruiting program that is called Accelerated to Leadership, which is really about bringing college students in right after they’re done with their degrees to really focus on developing their leadership skills in a very focused manner over a period of a year where they placed in operational jobs right off the bat and given on the job training. But then there is, you know, how do you, how do you think about this from a multi generational perspective? And an example of that for us would be a partnership that we’ve been piloting with the AARP here in the U.S. it’s a national partnership with a lot of specific regional focus. And in the last six months we’ve seen 1,000 applicants come in through the program. Now I will tell you that Covid has certainly had an impact on conversion rates to hires in that particular program, but we are really thinking through recruiting and sourcing specifically from many different sources, including some very non traditional ones. On the retention side, our efforts are pretty wide ranging as well. So everything from thinking about, again, going back to the idea of bringing 75,000 hourly associates and 10,000 salaried managers into the company each year. We focus a lot of our time and energy on thinking about onboarding those new team members successfully and really training them both in terms of on the job training for technical skills, but also for leadership training. Last year we launched our Frontline education program which allows for Our hourly associates to earn a college degree with a fully sponsored college tuition, a lot of whom are graduating out of Arizona State University, which is actually a long term client partner of Aramarks. And then there is the issue around culture and how do we continue to signal what’s important in the culture of this company and how do we use that to really drive retention? So for instance, I go back to the point I made around diversity and inclusion, which is a crucial part of our culture. We do microbiome training for our employees, we have employee led resource groups that not only help build culture, but going back to the idea of recruiting, are a great source of diverse talent for us. Finally, recognition is a big piece of what we do from a retention perspective. Encore. Encore is the name of our recognition platform and it allows for a wide variety of ways in which we can recognize folks, not just on the spot, you know, where managers recognize their, their employees, but also allows for peer to peer recognition and other non traditional recognition.
Matt Alder [00:16:09]:
You talked about your office space and obviously the changes that are now happening with that space. And one of the key things that we always talk about on the podcast is employer brand. How important is workspace to employ a brand?
Ash Hanson [00:16:24]:
That’s a great question. You know, to me the workspace is truly a physical manifestation of the company’s value proposition. Right. So, and it, and I do believe that it’s a tool to attract and retain great talent. So I’ll give you a couple of examples from our own experience. So health and wellness is a core characteristic of our culture. So there are a number of things at our headquarters that points towards that. You know, as I mentioned earlier, we have a state of the art fitness center with robust programming that meets the needs of all kinds of users at different places in their health and wellness journey. We have biophilia rooms and meditation rooms for stress reduction. Our cafe offers healthy nutritional choices and opportunities to educate our employees on health and wellness, for example, or going back to diversity, which is again another hallmark of our culture, our space can support that as well. So there are spaces designated for our employee resource groups to come together and lead events that create community amongst our team members. We’re able to bring in guest restaurant concepts that support local, diverse businesses. And then a third hallmark of our culture is collaboration and innovation, as I mentioned earlier. So a lot of our spaces are set up, you know, to allow for groups to come together in different formats and collaborate together and build new ideas together. So there are very physical, tangible ways in which you can articulate what’s important to you as a company in, you know, in how you design the physical space for your employees.
Matt Alder [00:18:07]:
What about employers who are not in the position to have a new building or redesign their building? How could they incorporate some of those strategies into their sort of physical workspace?
Ash Hanson [00:18:20]:
That’s a great question. And look, I may be a little bit biased in my perspective on this because of the business we’re in, but I do believe that your food and beverage programs, for example, can showcase your values to your employees. Right. So whether it’s because you offer healthy choices or you use food as a way to provide education on health to your employees, or even use food as a way to open up dialogues about other cultures, there are so many ways that you can leverage food to tell stories. And I think that is an example of something that you can do without making significant changes to your physical space. Then there is the aspect of safety, especially in the current environment. So how can you ensure that your location is truly set up to put the safety of your teams at the very center in a visible way that expresses to your employees how much you value them and how much their well being and safety matters to you? So there are definite signals that you can send using your existing space without necessarily investing in building out new capabilities or areas within your building.
Matt Alder [00:19:35]:
Final question. What’s next for Aramark? What are you going to be focusing on for the rest of this year and then into 2020?
Ash Hanson [00:19:43]:
Well, we’re very excited about Eversafe and you know, like I said, for us, part of the excitement is the opportunity to bring our safe operations expertise not just to existing clients and our traditional clients, but to really open it up to a whole new space in terms of small and medium sized businesses. The other thing we’re very excited about is supporting our clients across sectors as they open back up, whether it’s colleges and school districts this fall or businesses across the country as they reopen their offices, professional sports leagues as games start back up, or hospitals as they return to regular operations. From a people perspective, there’s some really fun work ahead of us in the employee value proposition and recruitment marketing space. We’re in the midst of a global HR systems implementation, so that will definitely keep us busy over the next year. And most importantly, we will spend a lot of time and energy on our diversity and inclusion agenda. DNI has always been central to this company, but the events of the last few weeks here in the US has given us even more of a push to show up and act and we intend to do just that.
Matt Alder [00:20:57]:
Ash, thank you very much for talking to me.
Ash Hanson [00:20:59]:
Oh, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:21:01]:
My thanks to Ash Hanson. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow us on Instagram. You can find the show by searching for Recruiting Future. You can also listen and subscribe to the show on Spotify. You can find and search all the past episodes@www.recruitingfuture.com. on that site, you can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
