These are the words of Gary Acheson, Head of Learning & Development at Rapport Guest Services, which regularly tops lists of the best places to work in the hospitality industry.
One of the reasons for this is the employer’s commitment to investing in mental health awareness, as well as career and personal development. These are topics, as well as promoting engagement through breaking down silos, that he’ll be speaking about at our sister event, The Watercooler, on 7th & 8th May, in London.
We caught up with him to find out more…
Why is employee Health and Wellbeing so important to you personally, and as a company?
Firstly, there have been pinch points in my life where I’ve personally gone through stressful periods and, being able to embrace my identity and who I am as an individual, has been important. For instance, in relation to my sexuality when, at times, I felt a struggle to fit in and the importance of human connections and community networks became very clear to me.
Secondly, professionally, our main job is to welcome guests into our spaces and those guests will sometimes show up stressed. Some of them might even be having panic attacks, or there could be a medical situation unfolding in front of our employees. Hospitality is a pressurised industry, afterall.
Therefore, we have to look after both the physical and mental wellbeing of our people, as well as the people that they’re greeting. If we don’t do those two together, we aren’t able to best serve our clients. For that to happen, your employees must feel looked after and cared for.
I suppose you could say, you have to build a ‘rapport’ (excuse the pun!) with both your employees and your client’s guests?
Yes, our company name ‘Rapport’ is all about connecting with people. We have to ‘do what it says on the tin’ when it comes to the most pivotal points in people’s lives. These times – from a death of a colleague in service, for example, to a colleague who’s suffered an ectopic pregnancy – are times when you have to switch off the corporate part, and switch on the human part.
Covid actually really brought the ‘people issue’ to life and we saw CEOs and other leaders lean into the difficulties that people faced and took a more human approach than ever seen before.
Do you think leaders are still as committed to this ‘human approach’ now the Covid pandemic is over?
Well, if you look at what is going on in the world just now, particularly in the US, but also in Europe and potentially here in the UK, you could say there is a shift to softening, especially within tech companies, the DEI approach.
But that is not something that we feel or experience here currently at Rapport. None of our clients are asking us to pivot or tone down DEI. The science is clear, too; you get the best out of people by looking after them and making them feel welcome. The more you get the best out of the individual, the more they’ll give back to the organisation.
What is your biggest learning so far about creating a positive culture?
That collaboration across business is essential for maximum impact when building a culture, employee engagement and psychological safety.
So, while Human Resources and Learning and Development are working together to bring Health and Wellbeing to the forefront of business culture, it’s built into the strategy from the top.
As part of this, at the session at The Watercooler I’ll be looking at topics like gaining stakeholder engagement and breaking down silos.
What advice do you have on breaking down silos between different teams and functions?
Quite often it’s done by humanising teams and helping teams communicate more effectively. It’s about getting them in the mindset of ‘we’re one team’.
We’ve just delivered a ‘five ways of wellbeing’ training for one of our clients and we were looking at how do we get different employees such as security officers, cleaners, receptionists, facilities managers, caterers, gardeners and electricians to connect over the idea of looking after each other as a community. This is super important from a learning development perspective.
What do you think is the best way to help line managers to start a conversation with their team about wellbeing?
Training line managers as Mental Health First Aiders is one way. We have about 130 in our business but that, on its own, is not enough. We find that people get the qualification but don’t necessarily live and breathe it.
One way we help our managers is through our onboarding process. A fundamental part of this is two days off the job where we cover the foundations of DEI and what it means to be an inclusive organisation and to look after your wellbeing. We also cover the resources available like the 130 MHFAs and traditional things like the EAP and healthcare benefits, and so on.
But more than anything it’s about creating a sense of community in everything we do and to facilitate this we also have a platform called My Rapport, because our staff are so scattered so it’s a way of bringing everyone together. Another way we are helping our line managers is through pulse learning. Gamification is built into this with, for example, questions to answer each month around a theme.
What are the biggest challenges you’re addressing right now?
We are seeing a massive uplift in the number of HR cases and we are trying to dig into the data to find out the reasons behind this. Key topics are neurodiversity, as well as the millennial culture of expectation.
One thing we’re kicking off as a result is providing introductory sessions about neurodiversity. The strategic leadership team have all already completed this but we are now rolling it out. One part is a 90 minute online introduction to neurodiversity, and another is a skills workshop for managers lasting four hours including case studies on how you handle situations.
It covers everything from language and what questions you could ask and to identify whether action needs to be taken. In most cases we actually find that employees just want to be heard and line managers just need equipped with knowledge so they can be confident in these conversations.
What do you find best builds line manager confidence?
We have monthly, or six weekly get-togethers and we try to do these in person. And again, it’s about community creation.
We cover different topics but we mandated, over a year ago, a development programme of mandatory, as well as elective, modules. We’ve established various partnerships to help deliver this, for example with Down Syndrome Ireland, which has given us some free learning modules.
Against, I think the biggest benefit comes, not from being in the classroom, but from learning alongside a network of peers who are going through the same situations, and can also see it from different angles. Being able to bounce ideas around with peers is invaluable.
We’ve built on this with more informal leaning sessions, too. For example, take the topic of menopause. Rather than bringing an expert in who would talk on a theoretical basis, we had a bit of fun in our head office by taking it over for a Friday afternoon and getting a group of employees to come in and talk about their personal experiences.
That’s a lot of resources available. Which is great. But also potentially overwhelming for already-busy line managers. How do you help them not feel overwhelmed?
The strategic leadership are there to help line managers and, in my team, I also have a dedicated individual who is a coach who is available to individuals. Also, almost everyone in my team is a MHFA so they are also supportive contacts for managers.
We also realise that it’s natural to have a dip in engagement as people get stuck into their day to day jobs and they feel they don’t have the time and the space. That’s why we are constantly bringing Health and Wellbeing onto their agenda in operationalised learning sessions; that’s these get-togethers that we put in diaries when they come together as a community. Giving them this time, and building it into their diaries, is part of the culture of who we are as a company and how seriously we take their learning and development.
What are you most looking forward to at The Watercooler?
I’m actually looking forward to questions from the audience after the session and sharing ideas and best practice. Even people challenging us, and saying they disagree, is an opportunity for new ideas.
Taking place on 7th and 8th May 2025 at ExCeL in London, The Watercooler Event is Europe’s leading trade show, with free-to-attend content, dedicated to creating workplaces that empower both people and business to thrive.
Now in its fourth year, it’s two days of cutting-edge employee health, wellbeing, workplace culture, networking and product discovery – celebrating the future of work. Co-located with The Office Event for the full 360 degree workplace experience.
You can find out more and register to attend here.
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