HR in the Travel Industry and DisruptHR with Trish Hewitt

In this episode, we discuss Disrupt events in Cambridge and Birmingham plus we hone in on some of the unique challenges faced by HR leaders in the Travel industry.

Bill's guest is Trish Hewitt, Chief People Officer at Grey Dawes Travel. Trish is also an HR Consultant and has been featured in The Daily Mail Online, People Management Magazine and has spoken at Disrupt.

Questions for Trish include:

• You joined Grey Dawes in August 2023. What are some of the unique challenges and opportunities for HR leaders in the travel industry?
• How is the travel industry getting better at attracting and developing more diverse talent? 
• You recently spoke at Disrupt Cambridge. Tell us about your session.
• You are speaking at DisruptHR Birmingham at the HCL Conference. Tell us more.
• You're moderating at the Peterborough AI Summit on June 6. How is AI impacting your role and the required skills of colleagues?
• You're also the Founder and MD at Tap HR. Tell us about the company's mission.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom. And visit HRGazettecom.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello, this is your host today, bill Bannam, and joining me on this episode is my friend, the awesome Trish Hewitt, chief People Officer over at Grey's Doors. Trish is also an HR consultant and has been featured because she's super famous in the Daily Mail Online People Management Magazine, and she's even spoken at a Disrupt event.

Speaker 3: 0:53

Trish welcome to the show today. How are you? I'm so good, what a welcome. You need to follow me around and give me that welcome wherever I go. Happy to do so.

Speaker 2: 0:57

This is Trish, you everybody. Hey, beyond my little introduction there, why don't you take a minute or two, Trish Hewitt everybody. Ah, round of applause. Ah, um, hey, beyond my little introduction there, why don't you take a minute or two, trish, and introduce yourself to our audience?

Speaker 3: 1:11

I'm not sure how to follow that but, um, hello, I'm Trish Hewitt. So, um, as Bill said, um, a chief people officer for a very large travel company, but I also run my own HR consultancy. Uh, been in HR for 20 years now, for my sins. Um, I absolutely love what I do, but I love having that balance of working for a big company so keeping my hand in kind of operational and international HR, as well as working as a consultant and working for lots of different awesome companies doing all different things.

Speaker 2: 1:41

Very good, and we'll get into your role at grey's door soon. Before we get there, though, um, you're a fellow podcaster, which always makes me nervous because they can tell when I'm doing things wrong. Uh, trish, tell our listeners a bit about your podcast, the tap hr pod, what it's all about and how it helps people uh, so you probably not gotta worry about me because I'm not sure I'm doing it right to, to be honest.

Speaker 3: 2:06

So, yes, I do have my own podcast. It's primarily focused on HR topics and, to be honest, when I meet cool people, I just record this having chats. There's no real massive format to it, but I wanted to put together something that was useful for everyone really. So if you're a HR person, it's useful. If you run your own business, it's useful. It's just covering topics that help individuals, really, if you know what I mean. And I also record it so that, um, the footage goes out on youtube. So sometimes the podcasts that I do are aimed at individuals or employees, but other times they're aimed at kind of the other groups I talked about. So I just talk to cool people and record it, basically rock and roll.

Speaker 2: 2:49

Um, you were recently a speaker at one of the disrupt events, as I mentioned in my intro. I believe it was disrupt cambridge at anglia, ruskin on. Was it all the way back in feb, february 28th I think, trish? Uh, can you tell our listeners a bit about your session and what you took away from being involved with the disruptive events?

Speaker 3: 3:10

uh, yeah, definitely. So I did a session on why hr professionals should wear spider-man jumpers in the boardroom, um, so that was my take on why hr professionals should just be able to be themselves in the workplace and be authentic, um, and it was kind of a bit of a rallying cry able to be themselves in the workplace and be authentic. And it was kind of a bit of a rallying cry, I guess, to everyone in the room to let down your barriers when you can when you work in HR, because actually being yourself is your biggest superpower. So what did I take from that? I met some really amazing people at that event Just really great, genuine people watched some fabulous speakers as well. So, to be honest, I'm probably going to be stealing some stuff in terms of the way people present themselves, um, and actually it kind of reignited my love for being a speaker.

Speaker 2: 3:57

So hopefully I'm going to get to do some more things again with you soon, because I really enjoyed it oh, we have big plans for you, trish, probably no, uh, trish is awesome, so I've been on her case saying, hey, trish, can you do this with me? Can you do this with me? Can, let's, let's? What about doing this thing?

Speaker 2: 4:17

Um, so one of the things trish is going to be doing, listeners, is she's going to be moderating, uh, a panel focused on ways that AI and machine learning is disrupting how we work, and that's going to be at the Peterborough AI Summit. It's the first AI Summit we've done in Peterborough. We've done a couple in Norwich, we've got one happening in Cambridge. We're taking it to a few other cities in the UK as well. It's the first one, though, in beautiful Peterborough, in Cambridge. Here. It's happening on June 6th, and so that session is, as I mentioned, focused on ways that AI is impacting, uh, the world, the world of work. So my question for you here, trish, is how is AI impacting your role and the required skills of some of your colleagues? How is AI switching things up? How is it making you guys have to change what you're doing?

Speaker 3: 5:04

I think the biggest thing I've noticed is the impact it's having on CVs, if I'm honest, so when I'm shortlisting for roles, there seems to be a lot of CVs that have been created by AI, and that in itself isn't a problem.

Speaker 3: 5:18

I think we should be using AI to support anything that we're doing in the workplace, but it does make it fairly different to differentiate candidates because they're written in such a similar way.

Speaker 3: 5:31

It's hard to then shortlist and I'm not really sure what the the answer is to that, because I do think people should use AI for things like that, but it's how you go about kind of personalizing things. So that's definitely had an impact, and I think then there's conversations that we've been having kind of within my HR team about how far do you go with AI? So if you've got someone who's doing a good job, but they're running most of that through AI, are we judging their performance as their individual performance, or am I judging what the machine is doing? And is it even an issue that they're using a tool provided they're just using it to supplement what they're doing? So I suppose it's kind of pushed us to have some more kind of philosophical conversations than anything, but I guess the biggest practical thing I've seen is the the impact on CVs and shortlisting and how that impacts how we choose talent to join the organization.

Speaker 4: 6:23

Once in a while, an event series is born that shakes things up, it makes you think differently and it leaves you inspired. That event is Disrupt HR. The format is 14 speakers, five minutes each and slides rotate every 15 seconds.

Speaker 2: 6:59

Thank you very much. Uh, let's get industry specific for a moment. It's always good to do that with the shows, isn't it? To hone in and talk to a particular sector or industry. Um, so let's focus in on the travel industry, because that's what you work in. Uh, you joined great doors in august of last year, aug of 2023. What are some of the unique challenges and some of the unique opportunities for HR leaders in the travel industry?

Speaker 3: 7:28

Travel's a really interesting industry and I think you've highlighted it. I'm still quite new to the travel industry. One of the things I've noticed is people don't tend to move around. So once you've got someone, they tend to stay with you, which is fabulous. But that's also a bit of a challenge when you're looking for new talent, because people do tend to stay where they are Unless something drastic happens. It can be quite hard to attract talent that have got the skill sets that we need and have used the systems that we need them to use. So I'd probably say that's the biggest challenge.

Speaker 3: 8:01

Also, diversity. Stereotypically, travel companies have kind of looked a certain way in terms of their profile, not necessarily because they're doing anything specific, but just because they attract a certain type of people and a certain demographic. So I think diversity is a big thing, because all of the HR leaders that I've met within travel are committed to it, but it's making sure that we've got environments that attract diversity and retain diversity, to be honest. So I probably would say the biggest challenges are the talent retention side of things and making sure that you've got a diverse organisation.

Speaker 2: 8:39

Are you winning that battle within the travel industry? From what you're seeing so far, are companies within that sector getting better at attracting and developing more diverse talents.

Speaker 3: 8:52

Yeah, but it varies depending on location. So what's lovely about Grow Doors is we have offices across the globe, so it's at the Grow Doors is we have offices across the globe, so it's at the moment and I'm generalising here but it's easier for me to recruit in the UK than it is for me to recruit in Australia, for example, because actually we need to think differently about our routes to finding talent. So are we winning the battle? Yep, partially, but also I think we need to probably think a bit broader, which we are doing around okay. Well, how can we kind of nurture talent in different ways? Are there different ways that we can bring people into the business? We're very big on things like apprenticeships, as an example. So, yes, I think we are winning in terms of the traditional ways of recruiting, but actually we have and we are broadening our approach so that we can nurture talent in different ways.

Speaker 2: 9:44

Okay, okay, you're also the founder and MD at TAP HR. We mentioned the TAP HR podcast earlier. You are such a busy person, trish, I don't know when you find the time to sleep. Tell us a bit about the company's mission.

Speaker 3: 9:59

Yeah, I don't know when you find the time to sleep, um, tell us a bit about the company's mission. Yeah, I don't get to sleep, um. So company's mission. So I really want to help organizations uplift their people and I think that's my key driver making sure that people come into a workplace where they're happy, healthy and they can do their best work. Um, so that's that's kind of where tap HR came from.

Speaker 3: 10:20

Really, I wanted to make sure that I could go in and provide the expertise and the knowledge that I've got to companies who are maybe just starting out and just don't know that stuff, because when you start running your own business, you're an expert at what you do not necessarily like accounting or hr. Um, but equally, I wanted to be able to help out bigger companies who just need an extra pair of hands but maybe need someone with a different perspective to what they've got within their business. So for me, it's all about creating environments for people where they can just be the best and be a unicorn was the way that I always say short term it.

Speaker 2: 10:53

Another event that you are involved with we haven't mentioned yet is, and it's coming up in just a couple of weeks. As we record this, that's a mini version of Disrupt HR Birmingham, which is happening at the Human Centred Leadership Conference, produced by Colmer Hay and his fantastic team, and, of course, I'm involved with the Disrupt Birmingham along with the awesome guys over at my staff shop. Hello, jamie, verity, david, if you're listening, I'm going to put you on the spot now, assuming that you've really come up with your topic for disrupt hr birmingham. Uh, what are you going to talk about?

Speaker 3: 11:27

give us an overview. Yeah, you're totally putting me on the spot and I totally haven't come up with my topic yet. So I don't know, I'm not. I'm just I've got to go through my creative process where I sit and kind of do a deck and present to the dog, um, and then I'll be able to come up with what my topic is. So sorry, I don't know the answer to that yet.

Speaker 2: 11:45

I'm not sure but it'll be so good that the dog loves it. Okay, very good. Um, this is happening on may 22nd at millennial place or millennial point, I forget which one is in the center of birmingham. Uh, be, there will be a rectangle, it's an all-day conference and, uh, the disrupt component itself, I believe, is early in the afternoon and it will last for about an hour and it will be lots of fun. Unfortunately, I won't be there because I have got to go off to sunny new orleans to cover the atd conference, or poor me. Um, but it will be a lot of fun and I do hope you can make it and see trish's talk. Hey, trish, before we wrap up for today, how can listeners connect with you and learn more about all of the things that you get up to?

Speaker 3: 12:29

oh, that's a good question. So I love a bit of social media, so I'm on LinkedIn, so if you want to follow me on there, I also have a very active TikTok channel, so if you're into TikTok, do you follow me on there. My handles are all kind of at taphr and also on Instagram as well, so just any social media platform. If you pop in either tap hr or trish hewitt, you'll find me. I'm pretty distinctive and I'm very responsive if you've got anything that you want to ask or chat about that's true, she's a lovely person.

Speaker 2: 12:59

That's why, okay, trish, that just leaves me to say for today, you are wicked awesome. I'm looking forward to coming on your pod soon with the lovely chris buehling, um, but for now, thank you very much for being my guest thanks for having me. I really appreciate it and listeners as always, until next time, happy working, happy working thanks for listening to the hr chat show.

Speaker 1: 13:26

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