September 17, 2023 • 27 mins
What happens when the global food service juggernaut, Aramark, meets the trials of Brexit, a pandemic, and the passion of a Garth Brooks concert? Join us as we delve into a conversation with Rachel Malyan, Aramark's Head of Workforce Management, and David Rogers, VP of Sales and Marketing at WorkJam. With three decades of experience under her belt, Rachel offers a unique perspective on the difficulties facing the food industry, from recruitment and retention to planning high-profile events.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Productivity Podcast.
This is the third and finalepisode of our series of three,
with our friends at WorkJamDelighted to welcome back David
Rogers, vp of Sales andMarketing.
Amir Hi, david, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hi, Simon.
Yeah, good to be back again.
Thanks very much.
Thanks for having me again.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
You're welcome.
We've got a special guest, soRachel Malian, Head of Workforce
Management for Aramark.
Welcome, Rachel.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Thanks, simon, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Thanks for taking the time out.
So, just for clarity, you andyour team in Aramark use WorkJam
and you're going to join us andwe're going to talk kind of
themes in the industry thatwe're seeing at the moment, how
maybe WorkJam's helping tosupport that, some of the things
that you're seeing out there,Rachel.
And then I would say randomlyat this point and it will make
(00:49):
far more sense when we have adiscussion on it later we're
going to talk about Garth Brooks, so I've been doing a bit of
research on him.
I feel like I'm going to beenlightened by the end of this
conversation, but it will allmake sense if you carry on
listening.
So, without further ado, let's,Rachel, find out a bit more
about you.
Just tell us a bit about howyou got to where you are today
(01:10):
In Aramark, maybe some of thethings you've done in your
career.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Of course, yeah, and again thanks for having me,
Simon.
It's great to reconnect andgood to see you too again, David
.
I'm coming up almost about 30years now in the food and
hospitality industry.
I'd like to say I started as avery young teenager, but I
didn't, but I was atuniversities.
It doesn't make me that old,but I started with young brands.
I worked with Pizza Hut andWhitbread and a number of their
(01:36):
brands across the UK and I say Istarted just prior to
university and I stayed withthem for 15 years.
That culminated in a move fromthe UK to Ireland, which is
where I'm since based, and I wasleading operational franchise
support for Pizza Hut.
That's what brought me over toIreland and that pretty much
(01:56):
that culminated that part of mycareer and, incidentally, that
was a one year secondment that Itook to Ireland.
So 23 years later I'm stillhere.
So I think I'm onto a goodthing.
I moved to Aramark about 15years ago and I've remained
there.
I've always worked withinoperations and, most recently,
(02:16):
always within operationalexcellence and within functions
connected to that.
Aramark is a food serviceprovider.
We're a global food serviceprovider of food facilities and
uniform services across marketssuch as education, health care,
business and industry, sports,leisure and entertainment.
We have an annual revenue ofapproximately $16 billion and
(02:39):
our core market is North America, but we extend to an additional
20 countries serving many ofthe fastest growing global
geographies.
Across the UK and Ireland,where I'm based, we have an
annual revenue of approximately$1 billion from the provision of
food and FM services to ourclient locations, not forgetting
14 of Oka retail locationsacross the island of Ireland,
(03:01):
and I currently serve as thehead of workforce management for
Aramark and I lead workforceproductivity initiatives and
employee experience strategiesacross all the sectors.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Amazing.
So some big numbers there, bigbusiness.
And for those people that mightnot be familiar with Aramark,
where would they have typicallyseen you?
Would that be a kind of astadium event?
Or I think you mentionedschools.
How would somebody haveinteracted with your brand?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Yeah, so across the UK and Ireland, we are
predominantly based, as Imentioned, across education, so
we support a lot of universities, particularly in the London and
the Midlands regions of the UK.
You'll find us in health care,supporting hospitals, nursing
homes.
Perhaps we may be supportingyour restaurant facility in your
(03:50):
office, your place of work.
And then, as you mentioned,yeah, absolutely Sports, leisure
and entertainment.
So we're connected with lots ofbig brands and big names across
the UK and Ireland.
We support theme parks.
We're also connected with CrokePark, which is Europe's third
largest stadium.
Perhaps the Guinness Storehouseas well would be a place that
(04:12):
they may have met with us.
So we manage all of the foodservices with the Guinness
Storehouse, which is, I think,within Europe's top five visitor
destinations anyway, based inDublin.
So we've quite a broad spectrumof activity.
So you may not have recognizedus when you came across us, but
we're definitely here.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, so you'll have interacted at some point,
knowingly or unknowingly, is myguess exactly.
And I probably didn't expectanybody to ever say to me that
pizza brought them to Ireland.
So I think Guinness takes lotsof people to Ireland, but pizza
brought you to Ireland and thenyou've taken up residence.
So amazing stuff, amazing stuff.
So thanks for that background.
(04:51):
Before we got on to the kind ofthe case study and we learn much
more around Garth Brooks whichI can't wait for, let's just
have a reflection on, I suppose,the food industry in general
and a lot of this applies acrosscertainly retail, any of those
customer facing environments.
I think there's been a seriesof challenges, clearly COVID
(05:15):
being one.
I don't know, rachel, if thingslike Brexit, with you kind of
spanning the UK and Ireland,have also given you a bit of a
hangover in terms of let's justtalk people first.
So lots of people potentiallyleft out to go home for COVID
and Brexit.
Those people I don't think ormaybe wrong, you'll tell me have
really come back.
(05:36):
So recruitment retention howhas that felt since those dark
days of lockdown?
From an Aramark point of viewand I suspect your views pretty
much will echo across theindustry.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yeah, I think you're right.
There's definitely still ahangover from both Brexit and
the pandemic.
Unfortunately, as you mentioned, many people did sort of leave
the industry and certainly ourorganisation, during the
pandemic.
Lots of people returned homeand many of those have found it
increasingly difficult to returnto roles with us, particularly
within the UK, due to theseBrexit related regulations that
(06:17):
affect the migrant workers, soit's been very difficult to sort
of replace that area of theworkforce.
There's lots of uncertaintiesthat still exist around
hospitality.
It was one of the first toclose.
It was one of the last toreopen.
It's not perhaps the attractiveopportunity that it once was,
(06:37):
and that's certainly sort ofsome of the issues that we're
still facing as a result ofBrexit and the pandemic.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
And David across kind of the wider client base.
Are you seeing those similarthemes and trends?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, I think exactly the same.
I think that whole kind ofhiring and retaining is really
difficult.
The resource pool has becomereally contracted and, as Rachel
says, I think there's adefinitely a move away from
hospitality and a general retail.
(07:13):
So we're seeing that across theboard with you know, prospects
and customers in the UK andbeyond.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
And we shouldn't shy away from cost.
I mean it's never really offthe front page, certainly in the
UK, in terms of rising costs,whether that be food costs,
whether that be people costs.
Certainly national living wagecomes back into play in in April
in the UK.
I think you've got the minimumwage in in Ireland, rachel.
(07:40):
How does that cost challengeimpact with, again, an
organisation I assume, that hasquite a high volume of seasonal
business?
So you talked about theme parks.
You talked about events they'renot necessarily open all year
round or a point points andmoments in time kind of needs
(08:00):
for resource.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, I mean, look it , this is an industry that
operates on tight margins, simon, as I know you're aware, and I
think it does make it reallychallenging.
And certainly all four theincreases in living wage for the
UK and for the minimum wage inIreland, and both governments
think you're tracking towardssort of reaching that actual
living wage and that is theright way to go.
(08:24):
But I suppose within industry,as I say, that does operate on
tight margins, that does pose alot of significant challenges to
us, you know, and quite oftenand not necessarily, I'm saying
within our mark, but certainlythe way that does manifest
itself is that you know, thisequates to less people within
the industry, because themargins retain tight, so we have
(08:45):
less people, but the overallworkload is still the same, you
know.
So everybody has to sort oflook at additional sort of
productivity measures and how tobe smart about managing the
workforce moving forward.
So you know it is a challengebut equally it's probably, in my
opinion, the right way to go.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah, I agree, you've got to recompense people for a
fair day's work that they canlive off, otherwise, you know,
we're kind of going backwards,aren't we to, to olden times,
rather than moving forward.
But that points around kind oforganisations and again, typical
in retail.
We're seeing typical inmanufacturing being asked almost
to do more with less, soworkload almost going up rather
(09:25):
than down.
But give me less people to do.
It plays into, you know, ourworld and your world of
productivity and reviewingprocess, stopping process,
automating, digitising is thatway kind of work jam helps to
plug some of those gaps in ourmark world.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Absolutely For us.
It does.
We're certainly moving andfast-tracking down that
digitalisation roots, and itdoes allow us to task better and
schedule better, along with allof the other additional aspects
of Wordjam that we continue touse as well, which I know David
will probably support as well.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
David, I suppose following up on that, Similar
themes, similar conversationsacross potential clients and
common client base.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, I mean, everybody's trying to automate
as much as possible, really tomax out and use the praise doing
more with less.
That's been around for a while,but I think it really does make
sense now.
So, optimising the way.
Often the biggest cost ispeople.
Rachel knows that If you canoptimise them.
(10:30):
We're seeing, with Wordjam,people really focusing on the
comms element to start with,because you get that immediate
engagement and make it a littlebit more fun and make it a
little bit more interesting forpeople to make you an employer
(10:53):
of choice.
I think it's not just in retail, it's hospitality, it's across
the board.
It's really how do we get themost out of our people and
optimise the way that we usethem?
So, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yeah, I think again, personal experience with
shopping, the rate of change,not only from colleague turnover
retention, but then, if youthink about product new products
coming in, new products goingout, legal requirements for
packaging and all the stuff interms of ingredients that are in
things the whole world, whetherit be retail, hospitality is
(11:30):
more complex and to get thatinformation down, to get that
compliance, to get thatstatutory piece to the front
line, be confident it's beenabsorbed, understood, must be
more prevalent than ever.
Rachel.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Oh, absolutely, absolutely, Simon, and I think
the last set of five years, ifthey've taught us nothing,
they've taught us that wedefinitely need to be more agile
in our approach.
Everything is constantlyshifting.
We have a frontline populationof approximately 16,000
employees and until we broughtin work jam, we were heavily
reliant on a cascade model,which obviously kinds of
(12:06):
significant challenges, andparticularly when you're working
through pandemics and periodsof time such as that as well.
So when we brought in work down, it did allow us to remain
agile and to build on that aswell and all of those aspects of
communication that areincreasingly important to our
business.
We can now direct themimmediately to the front line in
real time and, more importantlyas well is that we give them
(12:30):
the opportunity to feedbackdirectly to ourselves as well,
and I think that's a really bigpart of bringing in the
communications model.
Through work jam that we'vedefinitely enhanced how we
communicate as an organisationand on all fronts.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Yeah, it's probably an important point that, because
we've talked a lot in episodeone and two around kind of the
push models are gettinginformation down.
But, david, you just want totouch on kind of that feedback
loop.
So if I'm a frontline colleague, how I can feedback?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yeah, I mean that we talked about it in in episode
two around the kind of targetaudience capability.
So, you know, people only everreally seeing what's relevant to
them and in our arts cases,obviously the comms that's
relevant to them, the ships thatare relevant to them, based on
what skills and preferences theyhave, so they don't have to go
(13:21):
looking, it's all pushed to them, which I think is very, very
unique.
Also allows you to kind ofremove some of the shadow
systems, that kind of Rachelreferences around, that kind of
whole cascade model where you'rereliant on, you know, whatsapp
and Facebook and email.
(13:41):
Having one one place to go andbeing, you know, optimized
through the system is obviouslyone thing that I think that our
marks benefited from excellent.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Okay, let's get to the main event then.
Let's talk country, let's talkGarth Brooks, and so disclaimer
before we start.
Country I don't know about you,david isn't particularly high
on my Spotify playlist.
I must say I think that,ironically, the only country
song that's on there is probablyGarth Brooks.
So I feel like this is going tobe an education, rachel, in
(14:17):
many things and work jam ourmark and American single
songwriter, garth Brooks.
So over to you to set the scenethanks very much.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Great introduction, okay, yeah, so I guess Garth
Brooks, this was the greatestshow on earth, as I should
suggest and for our mark, andthis happened last year.
Garth Brooks for the uneducated, and I certainly was, as you
admit to.
That's me, that's me and I wastoo, and and certainly I have to
(14:50):
admit as well, outside of beinguneducated last year, I was
also highly uneducated eightyears ago, when we went through
something very similar and, withGarth Brooks and as those, the,
the overall adoration and thefan base across Ireland for this
gentleman is beyond compare andsomething, as I mentioned, I'm
here 23 years.
It's perhaps, in fact, the oneand only thing about Ireland
(15:13):
that I still fail to fullycomprehend, and they are just
mad for him and they love him,they love his music, they love
his interaction with them.
He's written songs about thecountry and you know it's just a
national event.
Anytime he has any sort ofvisits here or any concerts, etc
.
Everybody's behind him.
So, as we mentioned, back in2022, garth announced that he
(15:37):
was going to bring his concerttour to Croke Park and, as I
mentioned previously, croke Parkis one of our site locations
and we partner with Croke Parkfor over 10 years now, and it's
the third biggest stadium acrossEurope.
It has 83,000 capacity and sowhen Garth Brooks comes to town,
it's a big night.
When he comes to town for fivenights, then that is the
(15:58):
greatest show on earth and thisis what we were posed with last
year and so think about sort ofearly 2022 when he made this
announcement.
We're still definitely sufferingfrom the hand hangover of the
pandemic and we would needapproximately 1100 staff per
night to support these concerts,and our labour pool had been
(16:18):
significantly ravaged at thisstage and we've been working
hard to re-establish the, the,the teams that that we had on
site and, of course, across therest of our business as well,
and this was also furthercomplicated by the fact but for
the first time ever, becausewe've hosted many concerts and
big names Bruce Springsteen, edSheeran, scripps, you know,
(16:39):
we've had lots of concerts atCroke Park, and but Garth
decided he was going to make iteven more difficult for us by
hosting his concerts out ofseason.
So this is predominantly asports stadium for us, and the
National Sport of Ireland andGAA finishes in September and
most of our staff would be laidoff outside of that seasonal
period.
(16:59):
So he announced he was going tohost these concerts outside of
season and also a school hadstarted and so we've lots of,
you know, sort of late teens andearly 20s employees across that
workforce, many of whom are inschool or back to university,
and so, realistically, heprobably couldn't have picked
the worst time for us, and sothe challenge was on and, as I
(17:20):
mentioned, eight yearspreviously, garth had also
attempted to host a five nightcomeback tour to Croke Park, and
this fell now to licensingrestrictions.
And you might be thinking, okay, that's no big deal, but it was
every bit the big deal and,because of Garth extensive fan
base, we sold out that tour inless than two hours.
But that was 400,000 tickets wesold out back in 2014 for these
(17:42):
five nights, and that's acountry that had a population of
approximately four million atthe time.
So you know those big numbersand probably gives you a really
good feel for the extent of theadoration for this artist.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
So if we pause there a second, so we've got almost
was it?
10% of the population want tosee him or can get a ticket in
the last round.
He's kindly or not so kindlydecided that he's going to do it
off season, so everybody's goneback to school, the workforce
population in terms of yourpools dwindled and he's going to
(18:16):
do his five nights.
Everybody's excited.
David, did you have a ticket atthis point?
Speaker 2 (18:21):
No, I didn't have a ticket and, like you, although I
did know of Gareth Brooksbecause I lived in the US for a
couple of years, I did not havea ticket.
Living in sunny Southampton,travelling to Ireland to see a
country singer probably wasn'ttop of my list.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
So it is set well, not set you personally a
challenge, but it becomes achallenge.
I assume that kind of falls onsomewhere around your doorstep
to work through.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Exactly, yeah.
So we obviously went straightinto Croke Park and started our
discussions, and I mean,obviously, even just the team
behind this is a small part ofthis overall experience that
we're providing to support thisconcert.
So there was obviously lots ofother conversations that were
happening at the same time, butto me, most importantly was the
(19:12):
lack of staff that we hadavailable for this concert and
the predicament that we foundourselves in.
And I think, just to sort ofhark back to 2014 as well, and
we were all very conscious ofthis the fallout of 2014, which
was that Gareth wasn't given thelicensing that he required to
host his five nights, whichultimately culminated in him
(19:33):
pulling the entire concert, eventhough he was offered three.
He did give us the ultimatum,or gave the country the
ultimatum, I should say, of it'seither five or nothing, and he
ended up with nothing and thecountry ended up with nothing,
and the situation back then wassubject to probably every news
and current affairs program.
It was just everywhere.
You couldn't get in a taxiwithout the taxi man having an
(19:53):
opinion on it.
Dogs on the street were talkingabout it.
It was just insane.
The Mexican ambassador puthimself forward for negotiations
and to support mediation.
Gareth was quoted as saying atthe time that he would crawl and
swim and run and do anything hecould to our government, which
was also having discussionsabout this at the time, in order
(20:15):
to get this over the line, andeven sort of the Irish examiner,
which is one of our mainnewspapers at the time, like in
the reaction of the nation, isonly equal to having a death in
the family.
So this was all of the historythat we were hoping was not
going to repeat itself,obviously, and it seemed as
though in 2022, enough time hadpassed that he could come back
(20:38):
and I was being welcomed back tothe country and everybody was
very excited to see Gareth again.
So again we're sort of talkingan 80,000 seat arena, five
nights, 1100 staff a night.
That's equivalent to about halfa million pints and bottles of
beer that we're going to serve,quarter of a million measures of
Gareth, hundreds of thousandsof burgers, tons and tons of
(20:59):
fries.
So you know it's a hugeundertaking for us to support
that, but we refused to bedeclared we couldn't be.
We knew that the eyes of thenation were upon us and at that
stage was when we thought asolution that would engage our
Croke Park team, both out ofseason because, as I mentioned,
a lot of our team would havefinished up by that stage.
(21:20):
So we needed to remain engagedwith our team outside of season
and secure their skills andexpertise for the concerts and,
alongside that as well,something that would give us the
opportunity to engage withexisting Aramark colleagues
across the Dublin region andbeyond and engage with them and
give them the opportunity alsoto work at Croke Park to support
(21:42):
the concerts.
And I think it's that stage,that Aramark QS that came to me
and myself.
Having met with the work jamteam, probably about six or
seven years ago, very, veryearly days, they came back to me
and said look, will we look atwork jam?
Will we go down the work jamroute?
Is that something that youwould like to proceed with?
(22:02):
And, absolutely, having been ahuge fan of work jam for the
past seven or eight years, weabsolutely bit that handoff.
And so, really, the journeybegan with work jam.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
So that that was kind of the catalyst that meant you
could move on, get the softwareengaged without the software,
would it?
Would it have actually beenpossible?
Speaker 3 (22:25):
That's a great question.
It certainly wouldn't have beenthe success that it was, and by
success I'm talking that we hadno agency workers across any of
our public locations.
We filled all of our openshifts well in advance of the
concert.
So we were safe and secure inknowledge that we had the right
team and we were ready to gofrom as early on as sort of four
(22:50):
or five weeks beforehand.
And I don't believe that wecertainly would have been in
that position without Workjam.
And certainly, looking at someof the communications and the
way that we engage both with thelocal team and the Greater
Aramark team, as I mentioned, weopened our doors and asked them
would they like to pick up newshifts across Croke Park, which
(23:10):
was a very new thing for uslabour sharing across the
business.
Ultimately, we were verycognisant of the fact that this
posed a bit of fear andintrepidation across our
workforce.
And what is this stadium?
And if you looked at it youwould see it's quite a huge,
large, imposing building and forour general front-line worker
(23:30):
that's quite an imposing sort ofconsideration to think okay,
what am I going to be doingthere?
How am I even going to getthere?
And we managed to communicatethat out through documents and
processes.
We recorded some really greatfun videos literally almost from
the bus stop.
This is where you arrive andthis is how you're going to get
through the gates, and all ofthose pieces too, and that
(23:52):
absolutely we would not havebeen able to achieve without
Workjam.
So, yeah, there's a lot ofsuccess that we absolutely
attribute to deploying Workjamspecifically to support this.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
So swift deployment.
So Garth rolls into town forhis five nights.
How did it all pan out?
Was there a happy ending?
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Oh, absolutely.
As I mentioned there, we hadour Garth Brook dedicated
channel on Workjam as well.
So we were always providinggreat updates, fun updates Again
, I did mention earlier and Iknow David mentioned that you've
spoken about this on previousepisodes but we found it really
important to give our employeesthat platform to share their
(24:32):
feedback.
They can ask questions in realtime, they can look for help and
assistance in real time.
We could support all of thatthrough there as well.
So it was a huge successoperationally, financially,
everything.
Our client was absolutelydelighted with the overall
experience that we provided allof the visitors, the 400,000 of
(24:54):
them that came through the gatesacross those two weekends and
ultimately as well.
It certainly led to us thendeploying Workjam across the
wider UK business as well.
So, without a shadow of a doubt, it was a huge success.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Excellent and, david, that must be kind of really
nice to hear in terms of atangible story with a, now that
we know, an amazingly big namein Ireland and across the world
involved.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
I love it when a plan comes together, I think is the
phrase but yeah, it's well.
I think the relationship's beengreat.
I think we've listened reallywell, we've developed the
solution to really work for ourmark and when it comes to a
really successful end like this,that's what we're here for
(25:40):
really.
That's what we love to hearthose success stories, and that
just helps everybody.
So it's been great working withRachel as well as a team.
So I think we've learned anawful lot from it, you know, and
we'll apply that back intoeverything else that we do with
other customers as well.
So love it.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Brilliant Thumbs up to Garth Brooks, garth Brooks,
garth Brooks is somebodydifferent than me.
He's a football bundit, I think, anyway.
So, yeah, well, garth Brooks isinstrumental in Workjam and our
remarks at Cess.
Who'd have thought, who'd havethought?
So I think we'll come to aclose there on episode three, so
our final one with the Workjamteam and our special guest today
(26:23):
, rachel.
So it just leaves me to saythanks once again for joining.
David really appreciated thechats on this one.
Rachel, again, massive thanksfor coming on.
As I said at the start, lovethe stories, love the insight.
Always great to hear kind offirsthand how things have worked
and some of the challenges thatare presented.
So I know you're very busy, butI appreciate you giving up the
(26:46):
time to come on.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Appreciate the opportunity Great to catch up.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Thanks everybody.
Take care and we'll catch upsoon.
Thank you.
Welcome to the Productivity Podcast.
This is the third and finalepisode of our series of three,
with our friends at WorkJamDelighted to welcome back David
Rogers, vp of Sales andMarketing.
Amir Hi, david, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hi, Simon.
Yeah, good to be back again.
Thanks very much.
Thanks for having me again.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
You're welcome.
We've got a special guest, soRachel Malian, Head of Workforce
Management for Aramark.
Welcome, Rachel.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Thanks, simon, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Thanks for taking the time out.
So, just for clarity, you andyour team in Aramark use WorkJam
and you're going to join us andwe're going to talk kind of
themes in the industry thatwe're seeing at the moment, how
maybe WorkJam's helping tosupport that, some of the things
that you're seeing out there,Rachel.
And then I would say randomlyat this point and it will make
(00:49):
far more sense when we have adiscussion on it later we're
going to talk about Garth Brooks, so I've been doing a bit of
research on him.
I feel like I'm going to beenlightened by the end of this
conversation, but it will allmake sense if you carry on
listening.
So, without further ado, let's,Rachel, find out a bit more
about you.
Just tell us a bit about howyou got to where you are today
(01:10):
In Aramark, maybe some of thethings you've done in your
career.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Of course, yeah, and again thanks for having me,
Simon.
It's great to reconnect andgood to see you too again, David
.
I'm coming up almost about 30years now in the food and
hospitality industry.
I'd like to say I started as avery young teenager, but I
didn't, but I was atuniversities.
It doesn't make me that old,but I started with young brands.
I worked with Pizza Hut andWhitbread and a number of their
(01:36):
brands across the UK and I say Istarted just prior to
university and I stayed withthem for 15 years.
That culminated in a move fromthe UK to Ireland, which is
where I'm since based, and I wasleading operational franchise
support for Pizza Hut.
That's what brought me over toIreland and that pretty much
(01:56):
that culminated that part of mycareer and, incidentally, that
was a one year secondment that Itook to Ireland.
So 23 years later I'm stillhere.
So I think I'm onto a goodthing.
I moved to Aramark about 15years ago and I've remained
there.
I've always worked withinoperations and, most recently,
(02:16):
always within operationalexcellence and within functions
connected to that.
Aramark is a food serviceprovider.
We're a global food serviceprovider of food facilities and
uniform services across marketssuch as education, health care,
business and industry, sports,leisure and entertainment.
We have an annual revenue ofapproximately $16 billion and
(02:39):
our core market is North America, but we extend to an additional
20 countries serving many ofthe fastest growing global
geographies.
Across the UK and Ireland,where I'm based, we have an
annual revenue of approximately$1 billion from the provision of
food and FM services to ourclient locations, not forgetting
14 of Oka retail locationsacross the island of Ireland,
(03:01):
and I currently serve as thehead of workforce management for
Aramark and I lead workforceproductivity initiatives and
employee experience strategiesacross all the sectors.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Amazing.
So some big numbers there, bigbusiness.
And for those people that mightnot be familiar with Aramark,
where would they have typicallyseen you?
Would that be a kind of astadium event?
Or I think you mentionedschools.
How would somebody haveinteracted with your brand?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
Yeah, so across the UK and Ireland, we are
predominantly based, as Imentioned, across education, so
we support a lot of universities, particularly in the London and
the Midlands regions of the UK.
You'll find us in health care,supporting hospitals, nursing
homes.
Perhaps we may be supportingyour restaurant facility in your
(03:50):
office, your place of work.
And then, as you mentioned,yeah, absolutely Sports, leisure
and entertainment.
So we're connected with lots ofbig brands and big names across
the UK and Ireland.
We support theme parks.
We're also connected with CrokePark, which is Europe's third
largest stadium.
Perhaps the Guinness Storehouseas well would be a place that
(04:12):
they may have met with us.
So we manage all of the foodservices with the Guinness
Storehouse, which is, I think,within Europe's top five visitor
destinations anyway, based inDublin.
So we've quite a broad spectrumof activity.
So you may not have recognizedus when you came across us, but
we're definitely here.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, so you'll have interacted at some point,
knowingly or unknowingly, is myguess exactly.
And I probably didn't expectanybody to ever say to me that
pizza brought them to Ireland.
So I think Guinness takes lotsof people to Ireland, but pizza
brought you to Ireland and thenyou've taken up residence.
So amazing stuff, amazing stuff.
So thanks for that background.
(04:51):
Before we got on to the kind ofthe case study and we learn much
more around Garth Brooks whichI can't wait for, let's just
have a reflection on, I suppose,the food industry in general
and a lot of this applies acrosscertainly retail, any of those
customer facing environments.
I think there's been a seriesof challenges, clearly COVID
(05:15):
being one.
I don't know, rachel, if thingslike Brexit, with you kind of
spanning the UK and Ireland,have also given you a bit of a
hangover in terms of let's justtalk people first.
So lots of people potentiallyleft out to go home for COVID
and Brexit.
Those people I don't think ormaybe wrong, you'll tell me have
really come back.
(05:36):
So recruitment retention howhas that felt since those dark
days of lockdown?
From an Aramark point of viewand I suspect your views pretty
much will echo across theindustry.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yeah, I think you're right.
There's definitely still ahangover from both Brexit and
the pandemic.
Unfortunately, as you mentioned, many people did sort of leave
the industry and certainly ourorganisation, during the
pandemic.
Lots of people returned homeand many of those have found it
increasingly difficult to returnto roles with us, particularly
within the UK, due to theseBrexit related regulations that
(06:17):
affect the migrant workers, soit's been very difficult to sort
of replace that area of theworkforce.
There's lots of uncertaintiesthat still exist around
hospitality.
It was one of the first toclose.
It was one of the last toreopen.
It's not perhaps the attractiveopportunity that it once was,
(06:37):
and that's certainly sort ofsome of the issues that we're
still facing as a result ofBrexit and the pandemic.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
And David across kind of the wider client base.
Are you seeing those similarthemes and trends?
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, I think exactly the same.
I think that whole kind ofhiring and retaining is really
difficult.
The resource pool has becomereally contracted and, as Rachel
says, I think there's adefinitely a move away from
hospitality and a general retail.
(07:13):
So we're seeing that across theboard with you know, prospects
and customers in the UK andbeyond.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
And we shouldn't shy away from cost.
I mean it's never really offthe front page, certainly in the
UK, in terms of rising costs,whether that be food costs,
whether that be people costs.
Certainly national living wagecomes back into play in in April
in the UK.
I think you've got the minimumwage in in Ireland, rachel.
(07:40):
How does that cost challengeimpact with, again, an
organisation I assume, that hasquite a high volume of seasonal
business?
So you talked about theme parks.
You talked about events they'renot necessarily open all year
round or a point points andmoments in time kind of needs
(08:00):
for resource.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, I mean, look it , this is an industry that
operates on tight margins, simon, as I know you're aware, and I
think it does make it reallychallenging.
And certainly all four theincreases in living wage for the
UK and for the minimum wage inIreland, and both governments
think you're tracking towardssort of reaching that actual
living wage and that is theright way to go.
(08:24):
But I suppose within industry,as I say, that does operate on
tight margins, that does pose alot of significant challenges to
us, you know, and quite oftenand not necessarily, I'm saying
within our mark, but certainlythe way that does manifest
itself is that you know, thisequates to less people within
the industry, because themargins retain tight, so we have
(08:45):
less people, but the overallworkload is still the same, you
know.
So everybody has to sort oflook at additional sort of
productivity measures and how tobe smart about managing the
workforce moving forward.
So you know it is a challengebut equally it's probably, in my
opinion, the right way to go.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah, I agree, you've got to recompense people for a
fair day's work that they canlive off, otherwise, you know,
we're kind of going backwards,aren't we to, to olden times,
rather than moving forward.
But that points around kind oforganisations and again, typical
in retail.
We're seeing typical inmanufacturing being asked almost
to do more with less, soworkload almost going up rather
(09:25):
than down.
But give me less people to do.
It plays into, you know, ourworld and your world of
productivity and reviewingprocess, stopping process,
automating, digitising is thatway kind of work jam helps to
plug some of those gaps in ourmark world.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Absolutely For us.
It does.
We're certainly moving andfast-tracking down that
digitalisation roots, and itdoes allow us to task better and
schedule better, along with allof the other additional aspects
of Wordjam that we continue touse as well, which I know David
will probably support as well.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
David, I suppose following up on that, Similar
themes, similar conversationsacross potential clients and
common client base.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah, I mean, everybody's trying to automate
as much as possible, really tomax out and use the praise doing
more with less.
That's been around for a while,but I think it really does make
sense now.
So, optimising the way.
Often the biggest cost ispeople.
Rachel knows that If you canoptimise them.
(10:30):
We're seeing, with Wordjam,people really focusing on the
comms element to start with,because you get that immediate
engagement and make it a littlebit more fun and make it a
little bit more interesting forpeople to make you an employer
(10:53):
of choice.
I think it's not just in retail, it's hospitality, it's across
the board.
It's really how do we get themost out of our people and
optimise the way that we usethem?
So, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yeah, I think again, personal experience with
shopping, the rate of change,not only from colleague turnover
retention, but then, if youthink about product new products
coming in, new products goingout, legal requirements for
packaging and all the stuff interms of ingredients that are in
things the whole world, whetherit be retail, hospitality is
(11:30):
more complex and to get thatinformation down, to get that
compliance, to get thatstatutory piece to the front
line, be confident it's beenabsorbed, understood, must be
more prevalent than ever.
Rachel.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Oh, absolutely, absolutely, Simon, and I think
the last set of five years, ifthey've taught us nothing,
they've taught us that wedefinitely need to be more agile
in our approach.
Everything is constantlyshifting.
We have a frontline populationof approximately 16,000
employees and until we broughtin work jam, we were heavily
reliant on a cascade model,which obviously kinds of
(12:06):
significant challenges, andparticularly when you're working
through pandemics and periodsof time such as that as well.
So when we brought in work down, it did allow us to remain
agile and to build on that aswell and all of those aspects of
communication that areincreasingly important to our
business.
We can now direct themimmediately to the front line in
real time and, more importantlyas well is that we give them
(12:30):
the opportunity to feedbackdirectly to ourselves as well,
and I think that's a really bigpart of bringing in the
communications model.
Through work jam that we'vedefinitely enhanced how we
communicate as an organisationand on all fronts.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Yeah, it's probably an important point that, because
we've talked a lot in episodeone and two around kind of the
push models are gettinginformation down.
But, david, you just want totouch on kind of that feedback
loop.
So if I'm a frontline colleague, how I can feedback?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yeah, I mean that we talked about it in in episode
two around the kind of targetaudience capability.
So, you know, people only everreally seeing what's relevant to
them and in our arts cases,obviously the comms that's
relevant to them, the ships thatare relevant to them, based on
what skills and preferences theyhave, so they don't have to go
(13:21):
looking, it's all pushed to them, which I think is very, very
unique.
Also allows you to kind ofremove some of the shadow
systems, that kind of Rachelreferences around, that kind of
whole cascade model where you'rereliant on, you know, whatsapp
and Facebook and email.
(13:41):
Having one one place to go andbeing, you know, optimized
through the system is obviouslyone thing that I think that our
marks benefited from excellent.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Okay, let's get to the main event then.
Let's talk country, let's talkGarth Brooks, and so disclaimer
before we start.
Country I don't know about you,david isn't particularly high
on my Spotify playlist.
I must say I think that,ironically, the only country
song that's on there is probablyGarth Brooks.
So I feel like this is going tobe an education, rachel, in
(14:17):
many things and work jam ourmark and American single
songwriter, garth Brooks.
So over to you to set the scenethanks very much.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Great introduction, okay, yeah, so I guess Garth
Brooks, this was the greatestshow on earth, as I should
suggest and for our mark, andthis happened last year.
Garth Brooks for the uneducated, and I certainly was, as you
admit to.
That's me, that's me and I wastoo, and and certainly I have to
(14:50):
admit as well, outside of beinguneducated last year, I was
also highly uneducated eightyears ago, when we went through
something very similar and, withGarth Brooks and as those, the,
the overall adoration and thefan base across Ireland for this
gentleman is beyond compare andsomething, as I mentioned, I'm
here 23 years.
It's perhaps, in fact, the oneand only thing about Ireland
(15:13):
that I still fail to fullycomprehend, and they are just
mad for him and they love him,they love his music, they love
his interaction with them.
He's written songs about thecountry and you know it's just a
national event.
Anytime he has any sort ofvisits here or any concerts, etc
.
Everybody's behind him.
So, as we mentioned, back in2022, garth announced that he
(15:37):
was going to bring his concerttour to Croke Park and, as I
mentioned previously, croke Parkis one of our site locations
and we partner with Croke Parkfor over 10 years now, and it's
the third biggest stadium acrossEurope.
It has 83,000 capacity and sowhen Garth Brooks comes to town,
it's a big night.
When he comes to town for fivenights, then that is the
(15:58):
greatest show on earth and thisis what we were posed with last
year and so think about sort ofearly 2022 when he made this
announcement.
We're still definitely sufferingfrom the hand hangover of the
pandemic and we would needapproximately 1100 staff per
night to support these concerts,and our labour pool had been
(16:18):
significantly ravaged at thisstage and we've been working
hard to re-establish the, the,the teams that that we had on
site and, of course, across therest of our business as well,
and this was also furthercomplicated by the fact but for
the first time ever, becausewe've hosted many concerts and
big names Bruce Springsteen, edSheeran, scripps, you know,
(16:39):
we've had lots of concerts atCroke Park, and but Garth
decided he was going to make iteven more difficult for us by
hosting his concerts out ofseason.
So this is predominantly asports stadium for us, and the
National Sport of Ireland andGAA finishes in September and
most of our staff would be laidoff outside of that seasonal
period.
(16:59):
So he announced he was going tohost these concerts outside of
season and also a school hadstarted and so we've lots of,
you know, sort of late teens andearly 20s employees across that
workforce, many of whom are inschool or back to university,
and so, realistically, heprobably couldn't have picked
the worst time for us, and sothe challenge was on and, as I
(17:20):
mentioned, eight yearspreviously, garth had also
attempted to host a five nightcomeback tour to Croke Park, and
this fell now to licensingrestrictions.
And you might be thinking, okay, that's no big deal, but it was
every bit the big deal and,because of Garth extensive fan
base, we sold out that tour inless than two hours.
But that was 400,000 tickets wesold out back in 2014 for these
(17:42):
five nights, and that's acountry that had a population of
approximately four million atthe time.
So you know those big numbersand probably gives you a really
good feel for the extent of theadoration for this artist.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
So if we pause there a second, so we've got almost
was it?
10% of the population want tosee him or can get a ticket in
the last round.
He's kindly or not so kindlydecided that he's going to do it
off season, so everybody's goneback to school, the workforce
population in terms of yourpools dwindled and he's going to
(18:16):
do his five nights.
Everybody's excited.
David, did you have a ticket atthis point?
Speaker 2 (18:21):
No, I didn't have a ticket and, like you, although I
did know of Gareth Brooksbecause I lived in the US for a
couple of years, I did not havea ticket.
Living in sunny Southampton,travelling to Ireland to see a
country singer probably wasn'ttop of my list.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
So it is set well, not set you personally a
challenge, but it becomes achallenge.
I assume that kind of falls onsomewhere around your doorstep
to work through.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Exactly, yeah.
So we obviously went straightinto Croke Park and started our
discussions, and I mean,obviously, even just the team
behind this is a small part ofthis overall experience that
we're providing to support thisconcert.
So there was obviously lots ofother conversations that were
happening at the same time, butto me, most importantly was the
(19:12):
lack of staff that we hadavailable for this concert and
the predicament that we foundourselves in.
And I think, just to sort ofhark back to 2014 as well, and
we were all very conscious ofthis the fallout of 2014, which
was that Gareth wasn't given thelicensing that he required to
host his five nights, whichultimately culminated in him
(19:33):
pulling the entire concert, eventhough he was offered three.
He did give us the ultimatum,or gave the country the
ultimatum, I should say, of it'seither five or nothing, and he
ended up with nothing and thecountry ended up with nothing,
and the situation back then wassubject to probably every news
and current affairs program.
It was just everywhere.
You couldn't get in a taxiwithout the taxi man having an
(19:53):
opinion on it.
Dogs on the street were talkingabout it.
It was just insane.
The Mexican ambassador puthimself forward for negotiations
and to support mediation.
Gareth was quoted as saying atthe time that he would crawl and
swim and run and do anything hecould to our government, which
was also having discussionsabout this at the time, in order
(20:15):
to get this over the line, andeven sort of the Irish examiner,
which is one of our mainnewspapers at the time, like in
the reaction of the nation, isonly equal to having a death in
the family.
So this was all of the historythat we were hoping was not
going to repeat itself,obviously, and it seemed as
though in 2022, enough time hadpassed that he could come back
(20:38):
and I was being welcomed back tothe country and everybody was
very excited to see Gareth again.
So again we're sort of talkingan 80,000 seat arena, five
nights, 1100 staff a night.
That's equivalent to about halfa million pints and bottles of
beer that we're going to serve,quarter of a million measures of
Gareth, hundreds of thousandsof burgers, tons and tons of
(20:59):
fries.
So you know it's a hugeundertaking for us to support
that, but we refused to bedeclared we couldn't be.
We knew that the eyes of thenation were upon us and at that
stage was when we thought asolution that would engage our
Croke Park team, both out ofseason because, as I mentioned,
a lot of our team would havefinished up by that stage.
(21:20):
So we needed to remain engagedwith our team outside of season
and secure their skills andexpertise for the concerts and,
alongside that as well,something that would give us the
opportunity to engage withexisting Aramark colleagues
across the Dublin region andbeyond and engage with them and
give them the opportunity alsoto work at Croke Park to support
(21:42):
the concerts.
And I think it's that stage,that Aramark QS that came to me
and myself.
Having met with the work jamteam, probably about six or
seven years ago, very, veryearly days, they came back to me
and said look, will we look atwork jam?
Will we go down the work jamroute?
Is that something that youwould like to proceed with?
(22:02):
And, absolutely, having been ahuge fan of work jam for the
past seven or eight years, weabsolutely bit that handoff.
And so, really, the journeybegan with work jam.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
So that that was kind of the catalyst that meant you
could move on, get the softwareengaged without the software,
would it?
Would it have actually beenpossible?
Speaker 3 (22:25):
That's a great question.
It certainly wouldn't have beenthe success that it was, and by
success I'm talking that we hadno agency workers across any of
our public locations.
We filled all of our openshifts well in advance of the
concert.
So we were safe and secure inknowledge that we had the right
team and we were ready to gofrom as early on as sort of four
(22:50):
or five weeks beforehand.
And I don't believe that wecertainly would have been in
that position without Workjam.
And certainly, looking at someof the communications and the
way that we engage both with thelocal team and the Greater
Aramark team, as I mentioned, weopened our doors and asked them
would they like to pick up newshifts across Croke Park, which
(23:10):
was a very new thing for uslabour sharing across the
business.
Ultimately, we were verycognisant of the fact that this
posed a bit of fear andintrepidation across our
workforce.
And what is this stadium?
And if you looked at it youwould see it's quite a huge,
large, imposing building and forour general front-line worker
(23:30):
that's quite an imposing sort ofconsideration to think okay,
what am I going to be doingthere?
How am I even going to getthere?
And we managed to communicatethat out through documents and
processes.
We recorded some really greatfun videos literally almost from
the bus stop.
This is where you arrive andthis is how you're going to get
through the gates, and all ofthose pieces too, and that
(23:52):
absolutely we would not havebeen able to achieve without
Workjam.
So, yeah, there's a lot ofsuccess that we absolutely
attribute to deploying Workjamspecifically to support this.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
So swift deployment.
So Garth rolls into town forhis five nights.
How did it all pan out?
Was there a happy ending?
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Oh, absolutely.
As I mentioned there, we hadour Garth Brook dedicated
channel on Workjam as well.
So we were always providinggreat updates, fun updates Again
, I did mention earlier and Iknow David mentioned that you've
spoken about this on previousepisodes but we found it really
important to give our employeesthat platform to share their
(24:32):
feedback.
They can ask questions in realtime, they can look for help and
assistance in real time.
We could support all of thatthrough there as well.
So it was a huge successoperationally, financially,
everything.
Our client was absolutelydelighted with the overall
experience that we provided allof the visitors, the 400,000 of
(24:54):
them that came through the gatesacross those two weekends and
ultimately as well.
It certainly led to us thendeploying Workjam across the
wider UK business as well.
So, without a shadow of a doubt, it was a huge success.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Excellent and, david, that must be kind of really
nice to hear in terms of atangible story with a, now that
we know, an amazingly big namein Ireland and across the world
involved.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
I love it when a plan comes together, I think is the
phrase but yeah, it's well.
I think the relationship's beengreat.
I think we've listened reallywell, we've developed the
solution to really work for ourmark and when it comes to a
really successful end like this,that's what we're here for
(25:40):
really.
That's what we love to hearthose success stories, and that
just helps everybody.
So it's been great working withRachel as well as a team.
So I think we've learned anawful lot from it, you know, and
we'll apply that back intoeverything else that we do with
other customers as well.
So love it.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Brilliant Thumbs up to Garth Brooks, garth Brooks,
garth Brooks is somebodydifferent than me.
He's a football bundit, I think, anyway.
So, yeah, well, garth Brooks isinstrumental in Workjam and our
remarks at Cess.
Who'd have thought, who'd havethought?
So I think we'll come to aclose there on episode three, so
our final one with the Workjamteam and our special guest today
(26:23):
, rachel.
So it just leaves me to saythanks once again for joining.
David really appreciated thechats on this one.
Rachel, again, massive thanksfor coming on.
As I said at the start, lovethe stories, love the insight.
Always great to hear kind offirsthand how things have worked
and some of the challenges thatare presented.
So I know you're very busy, butI appreciate you giving up the
(26:46):
time to come on.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Appreciate the opportunity Great to catch up.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Thanks everybody.
Take care and we'll catch upsoon.
Thank you.
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