Last Orders on staff abuse: the overdue reckoning of hospitality.
As the hospitality industry struggles to recover from government closures, are recent reports of workplace abuse at Brewdog and Kitchin Restaurant the reckoning that hospitality has faced for years?
Abuse is probably best described as the unfair or improper treatment of a person to gain material or psychological benefit; it can be physical, psychological or a combination of both. It is a wanton beast of many forms, from making derogatory comments, exerting stress upon others, overworking people, all the way through to physical abuse, psychological manipulation and worse. Some of the recent claims made regarding certain high profile hospitality employers fall well within this taxonomy.
The manner in which these stories came to light is quite telling. On one hand a team of over 100 employees formed a social media coalition to challenge working practices at the exponentially expanding Brewdog; and on the other, former employees went to the news to allege regular physical and psychological abuse in the kitchens of the Michelin-star Kitchin restaurant brand. Both were outed as abusive employers and social media drew yet more stories to the mix from former employees. Rushed excuses masquerading as apologies followed, and the industry faced yet another low blow. Yet again, as has happened many times before, the minority is slated as tainting the majority. Or is it? Is this just (to steal a phrase told to me recently) the iceberg on the horizon as we blissfully sip tea and ignore the looming threat on the horizon (thanks to ’With a H’ for that one! You know who you are).
Essentially we are looking here at whistleblowers sharing common threads in the workplace conditions they describe. These are clearly not isolated incidents where anger or stress has led to an outburst. These are everyday conditions, a modus operandi for the business. They are de facto ways of running the operation and management styles so deeply embedded within organisational culture that employees feel they cannot raise these concerns. Or worse still, they did and had them ignored or rebuked as exaggeration with no actual investigation.
What is clear from both sets of allegations is how the culture is clearly created from the top. Tom Kitchin himself is the subject of many allegations from his team, as is James Watt, CEO of Brewdog. Both had multiple employees allege abuse from them. In both cases, the responses have been, well downright appalling. Both admitted that mistakes had been made, both essentially made promises to change. But both also did one thing that infuriated me to the stage of taking several attempts to write this piece cohesively: they both said essentially, this is the way the industry is.
No
The industry is not like this; not everywhere at least. If you are shouting, swearing and screaming derogatory remarks at your employees, you are breaking the law. If you are placing them under extreme pressure and stress, you are breaking the law. If you are making them work 16 hours without breaks, you are breaking the law. If you are burning them deliberately, you are breaking the law. It is not your business deciding to do this; it is you as a grown adult choosing to adulterate your position of power. To excuse the fact you made a choice to subjugate someone through physical and psychological threats and demands, as simply ‘the way the industry is’, is downright disgusting, insulting and shameful. These examples of abusive behaviour are not even tolerated in the armed forces in this country any more; yet in kitchens and offices across the country, people get away with this in the name of it ‘being the norm for the industry’. Strip away the excuses for these behaviours and you have a public that has impressions of workplaces filled with bullying, physical abuse, slave-labour conditions and unrealistic demands for low pay. It is a trade viewed as only one small step above absolute servitude and the stories of servants, masters and slavery once thought lost to the annuls of history.
Being a third person looking in, I can see how these cultural workplace practices propagate to the point of succeeding in being the way people view the trade. It’s simple really. Bosses flip out once and realise how intimidating behaviour gets results. Because it worked quickly it becomes the default method used to ensure people stay in line with the expectations of the abuser. The use of fear to generate performance constantly feeds itself until it becomes normality. If the head of the organisation behaves in such a way, those below see this as how to succeed. As the behaviour matches that of the abuser they become part of the ‘in crowd’. Subsequently the lead abusers power grows. They now have lieutenants who ‘get them’ and this fear culture drips down. It becomes a regime. A place where rules are applied continuously in an ever-changing-to-match-what-we-say-you-did-wrong manner to those on the lowest rung of the ladder. All whilst those at the top of the ladder apply the rules loosely and without consequence to each other. In order to progress in this environment you simply become an abuser. You join in the behaviours and you join the baying pack looking for their next victim. And so the next generation of business leaders are created.
Shockingly these allegations did not surprise me. I have seen and been subjected to similar events in my career. Told that is ‘just the way the industry is’. I realise now how wrong that actually was. I also realise how illegal most of it was. Ask yourself if you would accept a partner or stranger deliberately burning you? Or accept them calling you derogatory terms every time they saw you? Or whether you would accept them demanding you spend 16 hours on your feet working non stop and not allowed to even have a toilet break. Maybe the breaking point for you would come when they and their team start to punch you regularly or drag you around the kitchen by your collar? What does it take for someone to say enough is enough? If it were a domestic relationship, you would expect the abuser charged and sentenced in a court of law, but because it happens in a commercial kitchen it gets swept away under the carpet, some foundation applied to the bruise and we carry on like everything is fine. The victim loses their career and the abuser gets promoted or quietly given the opportunity to resign and move on with nay a mark against their name.
So why do we accept this behaviour in hospitality? Is it simply because it has been so deeply ingrained over the years that people expect this to be the status quo. Or is it because some abusers are masters of using their power to exert control, to the point that they make themselves indispensable? They create an alliance with those around or senior to them, that permits them to operate in ways that leave them almost untouchable. Where the word of a long term employee is valued over that of a new recruit who has been there two weeks; not one person connecting the dots to the multiple prior allegations or unexplained losses of staff. The claims being dismissed as rumours or over-exaggerated imaginations on what really happened. Adults dismissed in the same way as a toddler would be.
If one thing is clear as mud from the allegations and more so their responses by the businesses, it is little will actually change unless it is forced. The stories of Brewdog and Kitchin are repeated in countless hospitality businesses in the country. I won’t share my stories here however I can assure you that these kinds of environment are far more common than you would think in varying levels of severity. All too often managers are trained by simply emulating those above them, rather than actually receiving any formal training whatsoever. People thrust in to management roles with no actual idea how to manage people, instead they just get through day to day by copying what their managers have done and the cycle continues time after time.
The media use of figureheads such as Gordon Ramsay give expectations that success is founded on abusive behaviour, all in the sake of TV ratings and controversial behaviour. Shows like Masterchef showing professional chefs pushing people to tears and excusing this with phrases such as ‘it’s good because it shows you care’ have done little to elevate the standards of employment expected from the role. In fact that phrase is almost synonymous with any distress ever caused in the workplace that is hospitality. It is a phrase HR and management have used with me on occasion. It is a culture of almost victim-blaming; subconsciously saying people need to be broken in to the industry. As though they need to have something inside them snap to hit emotional breakdown before they will fully graduate to the echelons of being ‘one of us’. And a reminder here that if a guest did that to your staff, you would likely evict, ban and maybe even prosecute them…. So why the hell don’t you apply the same rules to your own employees?
Hospitality is a career, not a prison initiation.
It is long overdue for business leaders to remove their blinkers and see exactly what life is like on the floor for their teams. Both back, and front, of house. Staff surveys don’t cut it, they never do. Observation, discussion and consultation are key here. This isn’t about a paperwork exercise, nor making it an airy-fairy workplace where tough days are treated with group hugs and flower dancing. It is about making an environment where every member of staff feels safe. Where they feel they belong and are treated as a human being, not a payroll number.
The answer here involves a lot of soul searching from the top of the organisation all the way down. The creation of open door cultures where behaviours are not tolerated; or should that be that excuses for behaviour are not tolerated? Where HR teams are actually given the autonomy and power to address concerns from the very top of the organisation to the very bottom of the organisation without fear of repercussion. Where change actually happens.
Maybe once this happens, we can start discussing how to attract talent to the industry and how to retain it, rather than arguing that everyone else is the problem.
