When will HR consider combining Human Relations and Critical Thinking?

Speaker A: Welcome to the HR Optimization show where we guide you on dynamic approaches to doing business in hr. Join us as we explore the future of human talent and how your business can evolve with it. Want to help your business and team to grow and evolve? Join us in the HR Optimization show where we explore a dynamic approach to doing business in HR with a human focus.

Speaker B: Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of the HR Optimization show with me, your host, Moid Ahmed, proudly sponsored by Modynamics. Before I make the introduction of the guest, I just wanted everybody to know that this is our closing episode of the first season of the HR Optimization Show. And without further ado, ladies and gents, today's introduction is for our guest, Mr. Rocco Bova. And an introduction, as always, is customary and due on the show. So, ladies and gents, Rocco is an experienced hotelier with over 25 years of international experience, having worked for some of the best International brands in 11 countries from Europe to the Middle East, Asia, India, Africa, the Caribbean and Mexico. Educated in Italy, the UK and most recently with Cornell University in Singapore, Rocco is an avid learner and continues his education investigating online to keep up to date with the latest global tourism trends. And he started his career in Dubai with the Jumeirah Hotels and Resorts Group and he worked with Four Seasons, Hilton, Amman Resorts, iag, Lux Resorts, Lux Resorts, Starwood, which is now Marriott, of course, and other independent companies managing world class luxury hotels. Rocco, of course, contributes actively as an influencer, uh, of the hospitality industry through social media, which I personally can definitely vouch for. And he writes articles in digital blogs, he's a speaker in several conferences and podcasts, and he's a visiting lecturer at hotel schools. And he's been a board member of the pro bono organization's like the Hoteliers Guild, GSN Planet and World Wellness Weekend. And ladies and gents, I could continue on further and further because Rocco definitely his quarter of a decade experience, there's no limit to it. And without further ado, the best person to talk about his experience is himself. Ladies and gents, a uh, warm round of applause for Mr. M. Rocco Bova. Rocco, welcome, welcome.

Speaker C: Hello, Mohid. Uh, good morning everyone. Or afternoon or evening, depending where you're listening from. Thank you so much, Mohid, for the wonderful introduction. It looks like an Oscar event. I do have experience, but you describe me like an Hollywood star, but thank you so much for that. I'm very humbled.

Speaker B: Definitely.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I'm glad to be on the show and I hope I can contribute to audience and hopefully somebody will learn something out of me.

Speaker B: Definitely. Ladies and gents, it's been my thorough honor to have Rocco on the show. And with that, let's kick off the first question. Rocco, could you tell us about how you started and how you eventually got to your role as the managing consultant at my humble house? What was your journey like?

Speaker C: Sure. Everything started many years ago. I was a very young boy of a few years old, maybe four or five years old. And my neighbor, who was a. An avid traveler working on cruise lines, he once told me, rocco, when you grow up, I will take you to Texas to see the cowboys. Imagine you are a young boy of 4 years old that somebody tells you this, that, uh, you're going to see the cowboy. The real cowboys.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And of course, my mind was traveling already to Texas with the cowboys on the horses. And of course, I said to myself, one day, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna travel the world, I'm gonna experience what else there is out there. And slowly by slowly, I tried to find my journey, how to get to that point. At the age of 24, uh, actually I met a Brazilian guy who told me, who asked me this very same question. He actually told me, rocco, what do you want to do in life?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And I asked him, ayelito, I'm not sure, but one thing I know I want to do, I want to travel the world. And he said to me, why don't you come to London? I can help you find a job. And then from there you can see. And I said to him, of course I'm coming. And that London was actually my platform. So I discovered hospitality. I worked as a. As a waiter in a small restaurant. And then from there I discovered hotels. I went to hotel school. And then from there I went to Dubai. I got my first international exposure. The rest is, how did I get here? It's again, probably my ambition, my desire to continue to explore the world, to learn about cultures, to learn about people, and to contribute to the industry. Here I am now in Mexico, 25 plus years later.

Speaker B: Ladies and gents, that is a stunning introduction to a guest who we are going to unravel in terms of our topic today. So with that being said, our topic for today is when will HR consider combining human relations and critical thinking? So let me emphasize those last two points. When will HR consider combining human relations and critical thinking? And to that particular extent, could you just m Mention to the audiences who are live here, pretty much listening today, could you talk about the change that we're going through in really just combining human relations and critical thinking. And can you expand upon this within the hoteling industry? Because it's very human centric, if not the most of many industries.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think you hear the sport here. Mohid hospitality is very human centered. However at the same time uh, is also often very mechanical. The systems that they've been using to select, recruit and eventually retain talent.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: In my experience, uh, I've witnessed a certain degree of consistency in how companies they select, recruit, interview and eventually employ people.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And what I have discovered that, that pretty much all the companies they do a uh, very similar job.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: First you apply, if you're lucky, you speak to a person. If you're not, you have to go through digitalized system where an artificial intelligence software will read your CV and then eventually we shortlist you. If your CV is according to the software reading, you are in the hand of a machine instead of a human. Anyway, if you get to the table of the recruiter, the HR manager or director. Yeah. Eventually you'll be called for an interview. And most of the time, about 95% of the time the interview questions are exactly the same. Exactly the same. Which, which there makes a little bit boring the process because I, I've done it so many times. I've changed many times my jobs and work for one company, then another company. And when you look for a job you interview sometime, uh, 50, 100 times. 150 times before you find the job that you really want.

Speaker B: Yeah. And this is where I wanted to interject ladies and gents, because I think a lot of the conversations. HR is often seen as a high and fire group, much like how it is considered in crude terms to the average Joe as a person who builds computers, your desktop computer. But the reality that I want to focus more on is when you look at the way the hotel industry is changing now, what are some of the advances or approaches that are changing or shifting from what you mentioned in terms of having a critical thinking approach to being more human centric focused in how they not just do hiring for example, but how they. Let's say, let's just start big. How they approach people in general as HR and specifically how do they use critical thinking in their approach? By integrating with a more human focused approach to HR or human relations approach. Can we start there?

Speaker C: I hit that. The thing is, if you start using software, the short list candidate, that's where already the human touch is lost, completely lost. So I think companies, they need to be realistic. Not everybody can provide a CV that a machine Learning software can provide you with the necessary feedback and selection. Yeah. So if I send you a cv, for example in PDF, what is going to happen is that the machine learning software will not recognize my CV and will scrap it immediately.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So if I don't know this, uh, that I need to send in a Word document, I lost already my chance. Even if I am the super candidate, I really lost my chance.

Speaker B: Well that's crazy.

Speaker C: So imagine just one detail. Companies, when you read online and when you educate yourself, they recommend you never send your CV in in PDF, always send it in Word. So that's already one one uh, critical mistakes that that uh, company can make when they recruit people using artificial intelligence. Instead, if they put a human. Okay, the fear is, okay, if I put myself and I put my email, I will then receive a thousand emails.

Speaker B: Yes, that is the thing. And you've raised a very good point on behalf of everybody listening here as well. I really appreciate you mentioning the artificial intelligence point of it because there's a few things. First of all, I had no clue that the hotel industry was using AI to such a big degree. Because we make, in my line of work in optimizing consulting, we use AI in a different context. It's used more hand in hand with the HR person or the people who using the software and it's used more in tandem together. But you made a very interesting point that you're saying that they're using AI based software instead of the traditional ATS or whatever and they're not uh, taking these protocols into, into place. Could you chat a bit more about that just briefly?

Speaker C: The fact is that the big companies, I'm talking about Marriott Intercontinental, Hilton, Four Season, Accor, and so on and so forth. There is, it's impossible for them to handle the uh, recruitment process only using the HR department. They definitely have to a, a, a system, an IT system that can manage all this information because at the end of the day these are huge information. So you're talking about uh, Mario, that has more than 6,000 hotels. More than 6,000 hotels. Imagine at least 200, 200 hotel, 200 staff per hotel. Imagine how many staff they need to manage hundreds of thousands of employees. So definitely they need to have some sort of uh, uh, uh, IT system that can manage all this information. Otherwise it's impossible to do that. And they use it to a larger extent because obviously when they post one vacancy there will be hundreds if not thousands of people applying for the same vacancy.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: And therefore there need to be some sort of a, uh, pre Selection before they, they get the CVs that they want to see. But again that's where the artificial part, the artificial intelligence part is still not yet 100% ready.

Speaker B: Yeah. Okay.

Speaker C: To manage this information, to provide the recruiter with the necessary information. That's where the missing link is.

Speaker B: Sure. And I know we've spoken a lot about recruitment, but there's this entire other piece, Human relations is as I mentioned, the topic is more so when you've already hired and I know everybody's talking about the hiring piece right now because of layoffs and all these things that are happening right now. But could you tell me in terms of the human relations piece because you've been in ops for quite a While in your 25 years of your experience and lifetime pretty much in, in the industry. What have been some of the base mechanisms within the smaller mid to larger size organizations in terms of human relations, in terms of building easily scalable systems to make sure that employees are supported in terms of let's say the operating staff or the kitchen staff or front desktop. What are some of the mechanisms that HR has used in those organizations that may be a lot of the listeners who are in the smaller motel industry or those sort of a more small to mid sized scale, you could say segments, what they could benefit from?

Speaker C: Well, I think Mohit M. What, what hospitality is very good at is actually the program, the recognition program that we have for team members. Training, development, recognition for employee of the month, celebrations of achievements, uh, career progression. You don't need to be a rogue science to, to work in hospitality. This is one of the things I learned since the beginning. You know, my, one of my first manager told me, Rocco, if you know how to hold the plate and you have a genuine smile, you will always find a job. And that is true, completely true because everybody needs to go to a restaurant every once in a while. They need to go to eat in the restaurants and they need to, they don't know how to cook so they need to go and eat out. So the kind of service will always provide you with some kind of work. And so this part I think is the best, most scalable activity that HR and hospitality has been able to actually uh, uh, achieve. Yeah, reproduce and make it from one hotel to uh, 1,000 hotels. So that has proven to be consistent, easily to be done program, uh, again recognition, career progression, training and development, uh, celebration of achievements. All these kind of activities that motivate and bring together the team to keep it always up to date with information and at the same time Celebrate victories, why we shouldn't do it. Other industry, I'm afraid they don't do that.

Speaker B: And that is where I was going to shift. My next question, ladies and gents, because when you, when I often look at the way HR was done, and I'm sure you could empathize with this Rocco, is that a lot of industries have done HR based on a task based approach, meaning that it's been very transactional. It's been, I need to do payroll, I need to do admin work because that's my job now.

Speaker C: Very much.

Speaker B: Administration, 150% administrative. Even when I chatty, most internal staff, they're like, okay, well things are going right now because we're small enough, we don't really have anything that requires us to refocus or retool our approach to doing HR or doing things in a more dynamic or robust way. And so I want to ask you as an expert, what are some of the aspects of human relations? I know you mentioned them, such as training and development, you mentioned employee recognition. Could you just talk about some of the mix of these things that a general HR person who's in a small to mid sized company or business owner in a small to mid sized business could start applying to the way they manage their staff so that they can have a better human relations aspect in their company.

Speaker C: I can definitely tell you a couple of things. One is to get out of their office and actually get on the floor.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Listen to the team members just go and say hi, you know, how are you, you know, everything is fine. But really meaningfully do it meaningfully, not just for the sake of doing it. The second thing is that uh, to actually incentivize an open door policy, most administrative HR department they are, you know, obviously task oriented. So solving problem or uh, doing payroll, paying checks, uh, and firing and hiring, whatever that is. But instead of just focusing on that, call a, a like a monthly meeting with all the team members.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Or maybe just per uh, department, do a departmental meeting with the team members or maybe representative of the team and listen to what they have to say. Because I'm sure if we listen proactively to our team members sometime, if not all the time, they come with great ideas instead of always us to have to come up with new ideas.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: And, and this word of, or this uh, sentence of managing by walking around, for me is the best way to do it. Manage people by walking around. Because if you stand to in your office, you actually don't know what's going on out there.

Speaker B: Yes. That is very true. I once saw a documentary on how they do the buffet planning for Caesar's Palace. I think it was one of the other big uh, hotels and one of the key chefs, she actually showed how they would prepare the materials, everything from the supplies to the execution to the timing. And um, it was through walking around as you said. Correct. Yeah. So with that being said, I think one of the key things a lot of people do wonder is that what's the most significant aspect of implay? Applying that into a more, let's say organization that is a combination of administrative people management and let's say staff. So let's say manufacturing or other people intensive processes. How can you install that? Because within the full, within the hospitality industry, everything is visible. If I don't see a bed made properly or if there's no proper routine for the cleaning service, that's something visible. But how do you do that critically in an organization? Let's take uh, manufacturing as a case study. What are some of your experiences from a critical approach, some approaches you could share to the listeners.

Speaker C: For example, I'll give you a current example. At the moment I'm working for a company that is a manufacturing company, but they just recently moved into tourism.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: And, and I can see the huge difference between uh, the way the HR team manage the team of the manufacturing factory and obviously the team and the tourism park that we manage.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: You know, for me everything needs to start from the top.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: The leader should be the one leading the way, uh, and directing the course of action for the rest of the team. Yeah, we, even if I send my HR team to a uh, conference talking about the latest trend in hr.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: It makes absolutely no sense. Uh, if I, the owner of the company or the lead or the CEO of the company, I don't care what the conference is talking about. And I keep doing what I've been doing for the past 20 or 30 years because my company's been doing this already for so long. So everything needs to start from the top. If the top has a commitment to change, then everything will happen throughout the organization. If the leadership is not ready for this change, then I'm afraid that it's not going to happen. There is nothing else that can be done first, the leadership, for example. Another example I'm giving you and that is uh, of a tourism company that just moved into a new business still within tourism and hospitality, but in a different segment. Their bread and butter is like a three star hotel. Now they want to move into five star hotels.

Speaker B: Okay.

Speaker C: But the issue is the same. They have this company that has been, has been on ongoing for the past uh, 50 years. It's an old company, is family owned for already second generation. So the father started and now is the son continuing. But the son, despite being much younger in a more new generation, still works and run the company as his father used to. I don't know if, I don't know if this is for fear of change or uh, maybe fear of making mistakes and losing everything that the father built. I have no idea. But yeah, but me as a consultant and going there and talking to them and giving them advice in uh, how to change and what steps need to be taken. You know, there is no action taken. So sometimes I think uh, why do they pay so much money to employ a consultant? And then they, they don't apply what I tell them to do. You know, it's, I think it's a waste of money and time. More, more than uh, anything else.

Speaker B: I want to comment on that ladies and gents, and give Roko a, a follow up question on that. In my experience Rocco and ladies and gents, I'm sure as internal HR people and management people you would be able to empathize and concur with us to some degree. I think Rocco, what is people want to, people are used to what is comfortable and not necessarily what is uh, the right thing to do or which can bring about embedded for them. Because at the end of the day if staying comfortable lets me yield the same level of results which is staying three star, how can I go five star? What's my incentive to go five star if everything is going okay at three star? Uh, so I think the pain agitation point, meaning that a lot of things have to go bad for a company to want to reconsider their approach or strategy towards doing something before they wake up and consider calling in a consultant. And that is crazy that people would have to have a post emptive approach to putting out the fire instead of having a preemptive approach or strategy with the end in mind. What are your thoughts around having that misconception that you need things to go wrong first before you can rectify them or before you can consider a new course of action as being appropriate?

Speaker C: You know, I, I, I, I guess is that is that there is always a this 1 or 10% top performers and 90% average performers.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker C: Which is the case in every organization or in every enterprise that you have around the world globally. You always see that on only 10% they really get into the billion dollars mark and they go global and they go public, uh, and they go for IPO and so forth. There's only so many companies that they really reach that kind of uh, expansion point. The majority companies, they just cannot make it. They just cannot do it because they have this uh, fear of change or they have this limit, auto limitation, self limitation of saying I'm not sure I can do it, I don't know how to do it or I'm scared to do it and I don't want to

Speaker B: learn how to do it because it will reflect poorly on me or because I don't know how to do it. I cannot ask for help on how to do it.

Speaker C: I come. I was born in a small village, for example. I was born in a very small village in the south of Italy. And I remember even my mother used to tell me, rocco, don't speak loud because people can hear you. And I said okay, and if they hear me what, so what? I don't care what people think about me. I just wanna, I wanna do something, you know, I think this, something is wrong and I wanna do it differently. And if people have a different idea about me, okay be. It doesn't matter. I'm not concerned about what people think about me. So the getting opinions from other people, this is not just uh, it's been amplified by social media of course, but uh, this has always existed. It's not nothing new.

Speaker B: So essentially as we start winding down for the podcast, I just wanted to. They won't necessarily be everything that we discussed, but I wanted to do a summation and then have you give a, a brief takeaway for everybody and then we'll move into the rapid response round with uh, our five rapid questions and then we'll close off for the evening. Sure. So first recap. Basically you said that the hospitality industry the one of the best, if not the best case studies or examples when it comes to being people centric and people first in the approach to doing business and hr because they have the right intersection of some of the things that you mentioned like training and development, people recognition, professional development among a few other things that you mentioned. And the other thing is that you have to have a top down approach to leadership and you have to have a growth mindset approach which would probably be like point number three or four and being having a misconception that change bad for us simply because it's uncomfortable. It creates stagnancy in our own approach whether that's in a management position or an ownership role. And that really impacts how you're able to be successful as a leader. And that has a direct correlation to the human relations component that you have with your people in general, how you serve your clientele. And at the end of the day if you don't critically think about your approach to dealing with clients and your people, then you don't have a very good human relations approach. What are your thoughts on my summation, Rocco?

Speaker C: That's great. That's you summit up perfectly and ah, I think as a last maybe sentence, don't be afraid of change, you know, just do it. Because you can always go back. The thing is we are afraid of changes, but we can always go back. We always forget that we. If it doesn't work, I can go back and do the same. Instead of being afraid, try something new. What if it works? Cause the majority of people have this mindset what if doesn't work? Instead of if you can change that uh, into what if works, uh, then you completely have a different mindset and then you see opportunity instead of challenges.

Speaker B: Yeah. And then you can always move into, from ah, from that perspective to another perspective which is what happens if it does work. And then whatever challenges comes up may shift you to a new direction completely.

Speaker C: Right, Totally. I, I, I always uh, take my, my personal example. I left home with a one way ticket. Yeah. I did not even question myself what am I doing when I was 24 years old and I did not question myself of what am I doing. I questioned myself uh, uh, in the other way say wow, this is what I'm doing. I'm just buying one way ticket. Imagine the difference in mindset. Instead of you, you questioning yourself, you know, with fear. I question myself with excitement, you know. And uh, what can I say? That one way ticket took me to 11 countries, uh, all the way around the globe, uh, with a great career to date, you know, I change your life. I cannot spend too much about it.

Speaker B: No, definitely. Ladies and gents, that's a excellent way to sum up that portion of our podcast. And we now move into the customary rapid response round. So it's going to be just roughly five questions and we're gonna go very rapidly as the word is pun intended. Question number one. Favorite quote or phrase.

Speaker C: Never be afraid. Just do it.

Speaker B: Excellent. What is your favorite business book or movie or magazine?

Speaker C: I forgot the title of the movie now, but it's the one of Will Smith that he was the one he was trying to sell a typewriter or something like that, you know, uh, Happ. Yeah, exactly. The pursuit of happiness. Exactly.

Speaker B: That next one is There a business or HR leader that you follow or study?

Speaker C: No one in particular. I try to learn from the best and I catch the best. The best learning from the best people. I open my uh, opportunities. I don't keep any closed door because you never know what's behind the door.

Speaker B: Definitely that makes there's a lot of wisdom behind that. So I guess I don't know if this would apply to you but what do you wish you told your 20 year old self?

Speaker C: I would do exactly what I'm doing. I will not change a single thing. But sometime I think uh, what if I started earlier instead of leaving my country at the age of 24? If I would have started earlier but then uh, later I thought maybe it was good for me to live at the age of 24 because I think I was more mature at the age of 24. They're living at the age of 18. 30 years ago were other times we didn't have the wisdom of Internet m. We could not learn online everything that we do today very quickly. Those days we had to go to a library, buy a book, invest a lot of time, uh, find a library first if there was one available and so forth. Nowadays you can find information very quickly so it's a very different way to do that.

Speaker B: Definitely. And the last important and most important question. How can somebody get a hold of you?

Speaker C: You can follow me on, on, on LinkedIn. I, I'm quite active on LinkedIn. You can follow me under my humble house, my my company page or you can follow me under my, myself my name Rokubova or you can find me on Instagram where I'm less interactive or again on Facebook. But my preferred channel is definitely on LinkedIn.

Speaker B: Definitely. Ladies and gents, Rocco, on behalf of everybody listening and everybody listening in, let's give a warm round of applause once again to Rocco for actually gracing us with his presence, his wisdom on the show and what marks definitely the end of a very humbling and a very thought provoking and wisdom fulfilled really. I'm stumbling on my words. It's been an absolutely great season and what an episode it's been. Just to cap everything off for this entire wonderful season, ladies and gents, this is your host Moid Ahmed signing off for the first season of the HR Optimization show, proudly sponsored by Mo Dynamics Consulting for any of your HR support, HR consulting and also HR optimization support, reach out to them. They're there for you when you need it. With that ladies and gentlemen, I uh, want to bid you farewell for now. It's not goodbye till the next episode of the HR Optimization show sponsored by Mode Dynamics. If you want to learn more, please do not hesitate to contact us and learn how we can support you at www.with that. Have a wonderful day and stay blessed.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening. This was the HR Optimization show where we explore dynamic HR solutions. Make sure to share our podcast and tune in for the next episode and click the link below so you are up to date with the shifting HR paradigms.