| Journal: TWUK | Section: |
| Title: | Issue Date: 12/06/00 |
| Author: | Page Number: 20 |
| Copyright: Other |
Does coaching lead to poaching ?
Lunch with Travel Weekly this week looks at the issues of training in the industry. Two of our guests, Sue Kavanagh and Peter Brown, are human resources directors for large companies, Carlson Wagonlit and Thomas Cook respectively. Barry Butler runs the Travel Training Company in Woking and Sharon Morley, from Wickers World Travel in Newquay, gave us the view from the sharp end. Travel Weekly editor Jeremy Skidmore posed the questions
Barry Butler, managing director, The Travel Training Company, Woking, SurreySue Kavanagh, human resources director, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, Potters Bar, Hertfordshire
Sharon Morley, sales and marketing manager, Wickers World Travel, Newquay. Morley is also the World Travel Market Discovery Travel Agent of the Year
Peter Brown, human resources director, Thomas Cook Retail, Peterborough
“Some call centres in the financial services sector are desperate places to work at and there is no staff loyalty. They are like Victorianwarehouses – horrendous places to work. We have strived to make our callcentres enjoyable places.”
Peter Brown, human resources director, Thomas Cook
“Some young people find working in the travel trade is difficult. It’s not a9am-5.30pm Monday-Fridayexistence. It’s getting the trained staff which is difficult. We recently had over 60 applications for a staff vacancy, but none of them were trained.”
Sharon Morley, sales and marketing manager,Wickers World Travel
“There has been a lot of poaching of staff but it’s a bit of a myth that you train people up and then they go and join someone else. Usually if you train people and show them a career path, they are more likely to stay with you.”
Sue Kavanagh, human resources director, Carlson Wagonlit,
“You see parents turning up at recruitment fairs with potential recruits and they can often act as a buffer to them taking a job.”
Barry Butler, managing director, The Travel Training Company
Our guests agreed that there has been a shortage of good, trained travel agents during the past three years and that there were no signs it would improve.
“There has been a lot of poaching of staff but it’s a bit of a myth that you train people up and then they go and join someone else,” said Carlson Wagonlit human resources director Sue Kavanagh. “Usually if you train people and show them a career path, they are more likely to stay with you.”
The TravelTraining Company managing director Barry Butler agreed: “A lot of companies use that argument as a defensive method for not training staff. They say they will only go and get poached by someone else but generally this is not the case.”
Brown said it was particularly tough trying to get good shop staff in the southeast.
“If you are looking for experienced staff, there are problems, particularly in London and the surrounding M25 area,” he said. “Some business agencies are paying more than leisure agencies. We’ve always had a desire to get experienced people in but we should also develop our own people. The turnover of modern apprentices is much lower than if people take experienced staff.
Wickers World Travel sales and marketing manager Sharon Morley said that in her agency, people tend to stay for many years and then suddenly there will be two or three resignations at the same time.
“Bakers Dolphin have moved into our area and we have lost staff to them,” she said.
The Image
Butler believes that parents and television programmes have played a part in making recruitment in travel more difficult.
“You see parents turning up at recruitment fairs with potential recruits and they can often act as a buffer to them taking a job,” he said. “Also programmes like BBC’s Watchdog have done tremendous harm because working in travel is no longer seen as a dream. It is seen as hard work and often a stepping stone to something else like repping in resort. People are influenced by the docu-soaps they see about working in Spain or Greece.”
Butler said it was also increasingly difficult to get younger staff because of the amount of people going into further education. “When I was a boy, only one in 30 went on to higher education, now it is one in three. That means the labour pool of 16-18-year-olds and beyond is much smaller.”
Kavanagh said many agents were also poached by other industries offering more money.
“People who work in travel have good customer experience and so are attractive to other retailers. We’ve seen trade advertising from Abbey National, Barclays and BMW in recent times. They know travel people are well trained.”
“It’s getting the trained staff which is difficult. We recently had over 60 applications for a staff vacancy but none of them were trained.”
Salaries and age levels
Kavanagh said that in business travel, salary levels had improved in recent years with the move to management fees.
“The customer is paying the staff,” she said. “But the skills shortage is still in experienced people who can do more than just take the bookings. Sales are now far more complex. It’s not like the old days when sales people just went in and had a chat with clients.”
Thomas Cook has an annual turnover of around 25% and Brown said it was particularly difficult to attract traditional back office, technology and marketing staff.
“You are in competition with a much wider field than just the travel industry and a lot of them can offer more money.”
Morley said she had taken on older people to fill staff vacancies.
“Older staff often have a great way with the public. Some younger people are scared to deal with people.”
Kavanagh added:”We’ve had to be more flexible about ages. About five years ago we looked at the leisure market when we had a staffing problem because they’ve got a fantastic pool of people.
“Internally there were some barriers to overcome but we knew we could train people and the scheme has been fantastically successful. But we were forced down that route because we were inundated with people who wanted to make the switch from leisure travel to business.
“Some have switched because they can make more money and some of them are fed up of selling packages and working on Saturdays.”
Brown said Thomas Cook has actively targeted the older market and women returning to work after their families had grown up and left home.
“It’s got to the point where you have to be more flexible with the workforce,” he said. “We have zero-hour contracts where people have no fixed hours, but they just come in when you need them and they get paid for the hours they do.
“We also allow people to take a career break for five years and this is attractive to people with pre-school children or elderly parents. We insist they work a minimum of four weeks in each year.”
Sexism
Butler felt that sexism was not a large problem in the travel industry, following research from focus groups. But Brown accepted that there were a large number of women at a junior level and far fewer in the boardrooms of major companies.
Kavanagh said that in business travel, the split was around 50/50 between men and women.
Solutions
Butler said it was unacceptable in the industry that we spend on average £250 per head a year on training – half of the nationalaverage.
“You see low margins in the industry and it’s just a vicious circle,” he said.
“I’d like the industry to come together to market careers in the travel industry. It could be marketed to schools and colleges, on video or on the Internet. We need something that focuses just on the travel industry.
“There are a few innovative training programmes in the industry, but many of them aren’t so innovative. We want people to get enthused about joining the industry because there are some tremendous career opportunities.”
Kavanagh agreed: “People from colleges have old-fashioned ideas. They just think it’s retail selling packages and reps in resort.”
Brown said the industry could do more to sell itself.
“We have incentives but we don’t sell them well enough,” he said. “For example, a travel consultant could get an extra £1,000 a year incentives, which is not huge money, but it is significant.”
He also said that working conditions were extremely important to attract staff.
“Physical conditions and management style are important. Some call centres in the financial services sector are desperate places to work at and there is no staff loyalty. They are like Victorian warehouses – horrendous places to work. We have strived to make our call centres enjoyable places.”
Kavanagh said it is much easier to attract staff when you’ve got a decent office to show them around.
“We used to operate out of a really awful site at Heathrow and we shared the car park with a lorry company,” she said. “The staff hated it. We could never recruit because potential employees would look around and say ‘no thanks’.
“We opened new offices eight months ago and it’s made a huge difference. Staff love it.”
Morley said she had managed to keep staff by encouraging teamwork.
“We’re creating a new cruise section and everyone has had a say in it. It’s created a nice atmosphere.”
Butler also felt there was opportunity for ‘dual skilling’, which has been successful in the US.
“You get a finance person working in sales for a while and vice versa, so they get an appreciation of other roles.So far we’ve done very little of that.”
Kavanagh said there needs to be more training at a higher level.
“There’s lots of training at the basic level, but there are gaps in management and senior management training. Some people have been managers for five years and you just assume they are good at that.”
Like other guests at previous Lunch with Travel Weekly features, all felt the Internet and digital television would open up new employment opportunities but many people would still want the personal service of a high-street agent.
Trends for the future
“We’ve already experimented with making appointments. You have to be able to look after your customers.
“Do you need to be open at 9am in a town on a wet Tuesday in February? Managers draw up rosters and in extreme cases we would let them decide opening hours. We want a better match. At the moment we have too many staff at a quiet period and not enough during the busy period.”