Tag: coffee

Want the Best Talent? Give Them Great Coffee!

Regular readers and followers of my social media accounts will know that I like a coffee.

It isn’t just the taste and revitalising powers of caffeine that do it for me, but the whole culture that has grown around coffee and coffee shops in recent years particularly in reference to business. When I started as a recruiter, if you wanted to interview someone offsite then you had to head to a smoky pub, or greasy spoon cafe, hardly the ideal location to discuss someone’s aspirations and career plans.

The role of coffee in the workplace has grown too. Moving from the jar of instant and a kettle, to the ‘proper coffee’ machine, there’s an expectation that people do their best work with a decent coffee, have great ideas in a break out area over a few cappuccinos, or just connect and share thoughts and experiences with a latte. It can help people switch off, get creative and engage.

So I was interested to see some research from Nespresso and Comres about coffee in the workplace. I’ve seen other studies that show the importance of valuing people in the workplace, and decent coffee would seem to be a small perk that people like.

I’ll write more about the research another time, but for now I’ll share this infographic.  I wasn’t surprised to see coffee rank as a higher perk than fresh fruit, but free drinks on a Friday?? Times have changed!

And neither was the recruiter in me surprised by the fact that 11% would reject an offer based on the coffee served. I’ve taken feedback from many candidates over the years who have been turned off a company by their first interview experience – and hospitality is often one of the key indicators of attention to detail.

And 44% of HR people have a creative idea on a coffee break…almost as many as the creative and comms industries!

 

(Disclaimer : Eagle eyed readers will be aware that I joined a number of other bloggers, journalists and marketing people at a recent Nespresso event to launch a new coffee in their range. The research that I’m referencing here wasn’t connected with that evening. It’s something that I’ve been talking to them about over a few months, alongside some other work that I’ve been doing on workplace happiness)

Froth Free HR

There’s been some banter on the HR twitter timeline recently about coffee shops. It started when myself, Michael, Emma and Anne were sharing the worst misspelling of our names (mine was Murvy) on cups from a certain chain that tries to personalise the experience. We’ve joked about trying to set up an HR Coffee Shop.

Fairly typical early morning Twitter banter but today Emma shared the above picture from coffee art and the chat turned to froth. I said that there should be no froth in the conversations at the HR Coffee Shop.

Around the same time Neil’s latest blog popped up in the timeline about big data vs big thinking and whether the rush for HR to understand and use analytics was an act of cowardice, an avoidance of dealing with some of the more pressing, creative issues by hiding behind numbers.

When a serious post meets a bit of fun banter on social media a there’s usually an interesting point to be made and it’s this…

…..to many a lot of HR’s work and concerns are seen as froth. I don’t for one minute believe they are, but many people out there do. As someone who is not a practitioner but is closely tied to the profession I hear it a lot, especially from people who aren’t (and unlikely any time soon to be) part of the Social HR echo chamber.

Recently I was lucky enough to be invited to an espresso tasting at Nespresso’s London boutique. There’s a thin layer of froth on the top of a new espresso which you push to one side to taste the real coffee.

So whatever’s on your agenda today, this week or this month – push away the froth.

Smell the real coffee and make sure everyone else does too…

Customer Experience and the Importance of Making People Feel Special

Every morning I stop on my way to the station to get a coffee…my Soya Latte is very much a part of my commute, even in summer! I have stopped for a couple of years at one particular coffee shop (Cafe Nero, for those in the UK) initially for their loyalty scheme which basically gives you every tenth coffee free – a free coffee every other Friday seemed like a good idea!

I say initially because they started charging extra for soya milk. Other coffee shops didn’t, but I stayed loyal. That was because I had got to know the 3 or 4 baristas who worked the morning shift. They were friendly, warm, engaging, always smiling and went out of their way not only take the time to indulge in some small talk but also (very important for coffee fans) they remembered what you liked to order. I was only in the shop a minute or two, but for that minute or two they made me, and no doubt anyone else stopping for a coffee, feel valued and important.

Now they probably didn’t earn much, and I don’t know what customer service training their company did, and they may have only done it to make a repetitive service sector job more interesting…but the thing is they got my custom because they made me feel special and valued, even though their product now was not the cheapest, and to be honest, the coffee was probably no better or worse than any other shop I could have gone to.

Now I’m not a master of suspense, and I’m writing in the past tense, so I’m sure that you can guess what’s coming next!

Yes…they’ve all moved on. One left completely to do something different, and the others were promoted to different branches. Unbelievably, management just let it all happen within a week or so…one week they were there, and within what seemed a few days there were different baristas.

And guess what…I don’t go there anymore. The new baristas most certainly did not make me feel special or valued. In fact, with possibly one exception, they made me feel the opposite, as if serving me was a chore. There were a couple of specific instances of rudeness and off-handedness (I won’t bore you with details) that made me think – enough is enough, I can get better value elsewhere.

When the experience is good, factors like cost can often come second…but when the customer experience is bad…

All businesses can learn from this, but I wonder how many of us really put their heads on the block and find out how we’re doing?

It reminded me of a customer satisfaction survey that I got handed on a plane on my way home from a holiday last year. The tour company usually performs well in independent reviews. The final question was…

 ‘Did we make you feel special on your holiday??

If so tell us what we did to make you feel special, and if not please tell us how we could have improved, to make you feel special.’

 Clearly they want to get feedback, and aren’t afraid to give their customers a voice to find out how they are really performing.

Which makes me wonder….

 Are there any recruiters out there brave enough to ask those questions of their clients and candidates?? Willing to find out from their community what they could do to create a special experience?