Move of the Month: 7/14

Fifteen years seems a long time to wait to turn over a new sheet – but that’s how long Nando’s HRD Julia Rosamond spent with the flame-grilled hospitality retailer. Now Rosamond has agreed to be the latest high-profile hire at Travelodge, starting at the ‘value’ hotel chain in October.

Rosamond’s approaches to recruitment and development in particular brought success to Nando’s, both in terms of facilitating  growth and garnering gongs for the mantlepiece. Perhaps most notably, the chicken-bothering grub shop ranked first in the Sunday Times Best Companies list in 2010.

But if Rosamond thinks the Travelodge gig will be one long lie-in, she has another think coming. Challenges abound at the chain, and have done for a while. The organisation underwent a curious restructuring in 2012, involving a series of closures and sales, and a rumble around overbooking cost them a lot of customer goodwill.

Perhaps worst of all, there are anecdotal suggestions that things are not entirely as robust as might be in terms of day-to-day hotel management. These quotes are from Glassdoor, the appraise-your-workplace site:

The tight budget that was allocated to the hotel wasn’t even enough to cover costs for ample amounts of toilet paper and as a result, the manager was out of pocket due to filling in the gaps with their own money. The place was an embarrassment. I was there for a year and a half and had three different managers during that time. The second one refused to pay for things with his own money (fair enough) which left us without toilet roll for rooms. It’s impossible to care for a job when you feel like the meat shield cast in front of the abuse that guest threw.

Advice to Senior Management – Just shut all the hotels down.

However, things are arguably looking up. Rosamond arrives when the organisation is spending £25 million on a new advertising campaign, and £57 million on a renovation programme that includes the introduction of 37,000 bespoke beds.

So probably not a nightmare: but if Glassdoor is to be believed, Rosamond might need to step up the pressure on Operations to smooth a few matters if she isn’t going to end up in a pillow fight every time she visits one of her hotels.

About the author

Andrew Baird

Andrew is the CEO of HRville. He is also Employer Brand Director of Blackbridge Communications, Editorial Director of Professionals in Law and an associate of The Smarty Train. Previously, he was the MD of TCS Advertising.