A Culture of Significance

We've all done it. Bumped someone's pay to keep them when they give notice. Bolted on a perk because somebody down the road did it first. Took the team on the ale and called it “culture.” And then six months later you're sat in another leaver's chat with someone you'd hedged your bets on, wondering where it all went wrong.

Here's the thing. People don't give you their best because the money's right or the rota's fair. That should be a given. They give you their best when they feel like they matter. When they know you genuinely give a shit about them. That's it. There's nothing clever about it.

At this year's HRC panel discussion with Countertalk, I spoke about something that matters to me, a Culture of Significance. It's not a programme and it isn't a technique. It's just what happens when the people running a business genuinely care about the people in it, and it shows in how they behave in the business.

What I Actually Mean By It

If we strip the jargon out, significance comes down to your team feeling three things:

• What I do here actually makes a difference.

• I'm seen as a person, not just a pair of hands on the pass.

• People would notice if I wasn't here.

Land those three and you stop having to ask for effort. People bring it. They stay longer, they sort problems out instead of lobbing them at you, and they look after your guests because they care, not because a poster in the back told them to.

Miss them and what you get is the bare minimum. People do the job, clock the hours, and keep one eye firmly on the next gig. Which, in this industry, is never more than a notice period away.

One Thing Before We Go Any Further

If you're reading this looking for a way to get more out of people, put it down. Honestly. It won't work, and you'll do more damage than if you'd done nothing at all.

Your team are not stupid. They can spot someone who's asking how they are because they've been told to ask, at about forty paces. They'll clock the twenty minutes you've diarised and the fact that you've stopped listening halfway through. And once they've decided it's a technique, you've not just failed to build trust, you've actively spent some. That's the one thing in here that costs you money.

You cannot fake this. That's not a moral point, it's a practical one. Everything below only works if you actually mean it, which is precisely why so few places manage it.

So, no scripts here. Just the behaviours that make people feel like they matter, from someone who has got some of them wrong over twenty years and had to go back and sort it out.

And Yes, It Shows Up In The Numbers. But That's Not Why You Do It.

I'm not going to pretend the commercial side doesn't exist, because it does, and it's substantial. Turnover in hospo is brutal and everyone knows it. Every time a good person walks you're paying to advertise, to interview, to train, and you're plugging the gap with overtime or an agency in the meantime. That's real cash, gone.

When people feel they matter, they trust you. Trust turns into ownership. Ownership turns into the effort no rota can force out of anybody, the stuff that shows up in your reviews and your repeat covers. That chain is real, and it's worth understanding.

But it's a consequence, not a motive. The operators who do this well aren't doing it for the retention figures, they're doing it because they'd feel like a prick behaving any other way, and the retention figures follow them around as a result. The ones who chase the figures directly tend to get neither.

And before you tell me this only works in some cosy little independent: Hilton were named the UK's Best Large Workplace by Great Place to Work, with 95% of their people saying they feel like a full member of the team. Significance has got nothing to do with size. It's about meaning it, at scale, on purpose.

So, where would I start?

1. Have The “How Are You?” Conversation, And Mean It

This is the one I'd do before anything else on this list, and it's the one almost nobody does properly.

Not a development chat. Not a review. Not a performance conversation with a form and a rating at the end of it. Just sitting down with someone, one on one, for twenty minutes, and shooting the shit. How are you? How's it actually going? What's going on outside of here? Anything I should know about?

Two rules. First, no clipboard, no laptop, no notes unless they ask you to write something down. The second it looks like a process, it becomes one. Second, and this is the bit people skip, you go first. Be as open and as honest as you reasonably can be about how you're finding it, what's landing, what's a nightmare at the minute. Openness is contagious in that conversation. Sit there poker faced waiting for them to spill and you'll get “yeah, all good, cheers” and a shrug, and you'll deserve it.

Will they hold things back? Course they will, especially the first time. Some of them will hold things back for months, and some of them for good, and that's their right. You're not running an interrogation. You're being someone worth talking to, so that in six weeks' time, when they've got a problem, you're the person they bring it to rather than the person they hand their notice to.

I'd like to think there's very little that shocks me now in the world of people, and almost every genuine surprise I've had came from a business where nobody was having these conversations.

Do it at a time scale that suits the business. I've seen twice a year, I've seen once a month. It's up to you. Diarise it or it won't happen. And if you're running a growing business, this is the habit to build before the next one opens, because it's the first thing that quietly disappears the moment you're not on the floor every day.

2. Be At Your Best When They're At Their Worst

Sooner or later somebody on your team is going to be dealing with something genuinely terrible. That's life. A parent dying. A diagnosis. A relationship ending badly. Somewhere to live falling through. A pal in trouble. What you do in the first couple of days of that is the thing they will remember about you for the rest of their life. Not the pay rise, supplier trip, or the Christmas do. That.

Most places default straight to policy, because policy is safe and it's already written down. Policy has its place, and there'll be a point where you need it. But it is not the first thing out of your mouth. The first thing is: I'm sorry. What do you need And then actually listen to the answer, because it's rarely the one you'd assume.

Sometimes it's time off and no questions. Sometimes it's the exact opposite, and work is the only normal thing they've got left, so sending them home is the cruellest thing you could do. Sometimes it's money, and it's mortifying for them to say so. Sometimes it's just not having to be the one who tells everybody. Don't make them ask twice. Don't make them explain it to three different people. Don't put a deadline on it that suits your rota.

Sort the cover yourself, tell them it's sorted, and mean it when you say don't worry about this place. If you've got an EAP, or access to Hospitality Action, this is what it's there for, so know how to point them at it before you need to.

Get this wrong and nothing else on this list will save you. Get it right and you'll have somebody who would walk through fire for you, though I'd gently point out that isn't the reason to do it. People talk about how they were treated at the worst moment of their life for years. Both ways.

3. Tell Them The Truth, Kindly And Early

The industry's version of honesty is eight months of silence followed by a disciplinary. Somebody's been coasting, or their standards have slipped, or they're brilliant on the floor and impossible with the kitchen, and nobody says a word. Then it comes out sideways in a meeting, in a written warning, or in a leaver's chat where it's far too late to be useful to anybody.

People call this courageous conversations. Frankly, that's bollocks. Dressing it up as an act of bravery is exactly what makes it feel like something you need a workshop and a run up for. It isn't. It's just telling somebody the truth, and it should be a completely ordinary part of working somewhere, not an event.

Say it early, say it small, say it in private, and say it about the thing rather than the person. Be clear about what good looks like, because “be better” is not feedback. And go back a fortnight later and tell them what's improved, because if the only time anybody hears from you is when it's gone wrong, you've turned honesty into a punishment and they'll stop listening.

Here's the part people underestimate. Not saying it isn't kindness, it's cowardice dressed up as kindness, and it has a cost you can see. Your team already know exactly who's carrying the section and who's getting away with it. When you say nothing, the message the good ones receive is that standards are optional round here. And it's not the coaster who resigns over that. It's the person who's been covering for them.

There is also a practical reason this is about to matter a lot more. You will have seen the headlines about day one unfair dismissal rights. What has actually been legislated is that, from 1st January 2027, the qualifying period for ordinary unfair dismissal drops from two years to six months, which is less dramatic than the headlines but a much bigger deal in practice.

That is ordinary unfair dismissal, by the way. Discrimination claims and many automatically unfair dismissal claims, including dismissals connected to whistleblowing and pregnancy or maternity, do not require two years' service now, and plenty of operators still think they do.

What it means is that the window where you could quietly carry somebody and deal with it later has all but closed. If the first time anybody wrote anything down about a problem is the day you decided to let them go, you are going to have a much harder job showing that what happened was fair. Eight months of saying nothing isn't much of a case.

Which is a terrible reason to start having honest conversations, and a very good reason to have already been having them.

4. Back Them When A Customer Is Out Of Order

Nothing tells someone they don't matter faster than watching you side with a punter who's just been vile to them.

The team clock exactly what happens the moment a guest crosses a line. Do you step in? Do you take it off them and deal with it yourself? Do you tell them afterwards they did the right thing? Or do you swallow it, keep the peace, comp a round and quietly leave them to it because it's easier? Be honest with yourself about which one you do at eleven o'clock on a Saturday.

What is interesting is that the law now agrees with me. You have had a duty since 2024 to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of your staff, including sexual harassment by customers. From 30th October that duty got tougher: employers have to take all reasonable steps to prevent it. Separately, employers became liable for harassment by third parties, customers and suppliers included, unless they have taken all reasonable steps to prevent it. For once the legislation is pointed squarely at the thing that makes people feel like they matter.

Worth being precise, because this is the bit people get wrong. Harassment in the legal sense isn't just somebody being unpleasant. Broadly, it is unwanted conduct related to things like somebody's sex, race, disability or religion that violates their dignity or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. Sexual harassment is unwanted conduct of a sexual nature meeting the same sort of test. A customer being a generally obnoxious prick does not automatically meet that bar. Plenty of what your team put up with never will. Step in anyway, because the operators who only get involved when a solicitor might be are not the ones people stay for.

If you already step in, you're starting from a better place. But this isn't just about recording what happens afterwards. It's about being able to show that you thought about the risk and took sensible steps to prevent it before it happened.

And to be straight with you, the paperwork does matter here. A policy, a risk assessment, training, a way of reporting something without it becoming a whole thing. All reasonable steps is judged on what you actually had in place, so anybody telling you culture alone will carry you is wrong. But a policy on its own will not save you either. They will ask what happened on the floor, whether anybody was trained, and whether your team believed any of it. Your team answer that, not your handbook.

If you have read about the changes and quietly parked them, you are in the majority, not behind. But now is the time to talk through it, and we’re here to help. 

5. Show Them The Point Of It

A clean room, a perfectly poured pint, the lights needing to be dimmed. In the moment it can feel like just another task on a never ending list. Your job is to keep showing them the other end of it.

The regular who came back and asked for them by name (in a non weird way). The review that mentioned the service, not the food. The night they pulled off that nobody thought was possible. People graft harder for an outcome they can see than a job they can't, and more to the point, they go home feeling different about their day.

6. Give Them The Authority To Sort It, Not Just The Task

Significance and permission are the same muscle. If someone can't fix a guest's problem without finding a manager, what you've told them is that they're a pair of hands, not a person with judgement.

Give it a number and say it out loud. Anyone on shift can sort a problem up to a fiver, a tenner, whatever your margin can carry, without asking a soul. Then, and this is the important half, back the calls they make, including the ones you'd have made differently. One public unpicking of somebody's decision and nobody makes another one for a year.

7. Back Their Growth, Budget Or No Budget

The development people actually remember rarely shows up on an invoice. A trial on the section they've been after. A shadow shift with you. Ten minutes teaching them to break a carcass down properly.

If you've got a training budget, brilliant, use it. But the real signal isn't the money, it's that somebody bothered to bring them on. Growth is one of the loudest ways of saying there's a future here, not just a shift pattern. And be straight with them about where it leads, including when the honest answer is that the next step doesn't exist here yet.

8. Ask What They Think, Then Actually Do Something About It

Asking your team for their opinion and then doing nothing with it is worse than never asking at all. You've told them their view isn't worth acting on, and you've told them in writing.

Get into the habit. Ask what they'd change, pick one thing, do it, and tell them you did it because they raised it. That little loop, ask, act, credit, is what turns “they never listen” into “they actually listen round here.” One thing done beats ten things noted. And when you can't do the thing they've asked for, say so, and say why. People can live with no. They can't live with silence.

9. Treat People On The Way Out As You Would On The Way In.

Everybody's watching how you treat the person who's leaving, and they're quietly working out what they can expect from you when it's their turn.

The sulk. The sudden cold shoulder. The last fortnight of being handed every close. Your team see all of it. Whereas the operator who says congratulations and means it, works the notice properly and leaves the door open gets a team who trust them, a leaver who recommends them, and quite often that person back eighteen months later, better than when they left. Some of the best hires I've made were people coming back.

It's also just the decent way to treat somebody who gave you a couple of years of their life. 

10. Your Team Have Got AI Too

Here is something that has changed in the last couple of years and that most operators have not caught up with. Your people are checking you.

Somebody photographs their contract, drops it into ChatGPT and asks whether it is legal. Somebody knocked back on holiday asks what they are actually entitled to. Somebody who has just been spoken to badly asks what a grievance looks like, how long they have got, and how much money they could win. It takes about eleven seconds, it is free, and it is happening in your business whether you like it or not.

Two things follow from that, and you need both of them.

The first is the obvious one. Your paperwork has to actually be right, and a fair amount of what is out there is not, because the same tool your team are using has been quietly writing HR documents for years. We see contracts quoting legislation that has been repealed. American law dressed up as British. Notice periods that do not exist. Grievance procedures that fall apart the first time anybody uses one. It all reads beautifully, which is precisely the problem, because it looks exactly like the real thing right up until somebody tests it.

And it is not just the legal exposure. It is how it makes you look. A contract with an American clause sat in it. A handbook nobody has updated in four years. An all staff email that is so obviously machine written you can hear it. Your team clock every bit of that, and what they take from it is not that you are behind on your admin. It is that you could not be bothered. You are asking people to care about every detail of what leaves your pass, while handing them a document you have plainly never read.

So if your handbook was downloaded, assume it is wrong until somebody qualified has read it. Ours go through Chartered MCIPD HR pros and our own solicitor before they go anywhere near a business, and honestly that is the minimum I would expect of anybody handing you a contract.

The second is the bit people miss. AI can be flat wrong. Sometimes it will be right. And increasingly what I am seeing in disputes is basically AI versus AI. An employee has put their version into ChatGPT, an employer has put theirs into Claude, and both arrive absolutely convinced that the machine has told them they are right.

But AI can only assess the situation it has been given. Leave out a conversation, a clause, six months of context or one fairly important fact and you can get a beautifully written, completely confident answer to the wrong question.

So before two AI-generated positions turn a disagreement into a full-blown dispute, ask a human who actually knows this stuff and can look at the whole picture. It'll probably save everybody a lot of time and money in the long run.

And there is a bigger point here. What matters is whether your person brings that ChatGPT answer to you and says, “Is this right?”, or whether they have already decided you are not worth asking. 

That is significance.

So yes, get the paperwork right, because they are reading it properly now and they are checking your working. But the paperwork is not the thing that saves you. Whether the person holding it thinks you are on their side is the thing that saves you.

Final Thought: You Can't Fake It, Which Is Why Hardly Anyone Does It

None of this is going to fix the rota, solve the rising costs of produce, or magic up staff who simply aren't out there to be hired. And none of it works as a tactic, which is rather the point of the whole piece.

Your team wont always read your values off the wall. They read them off your behaviour, and off whoever's running their shift. The conversation, the way a cock up gets handled, how somebody's worst week gets handled, who gets told the truth, who gets developed, what gets celebrated, and what quietly gets tolerated. That's the real culture, and it's built by managers, not posters.

I always say, people treat us like we're the last properly unregulated industry. Not because hospitality actually is unregulated, far from it, but because some of the behaviour we still tolerate would be completely unacceptable almost anywhere else. Some of the people praised the loudest are some of the most toxic going, and too often being brillaint at the food or the room, or having deep pockets buys you permission to be dreadful to the people around you.

If you want to know where you actually stand, that is a big part of what we do at The Saint Group. An honest look at what your people genuinely experience, what you actually have in place, and where the significance is quietly leaking out.

This is not a league table. The lists have their place, their pros, their cons, and being on one is a genuinely lovely thing for a team to celebrate. But recognition and diagnosis are different jobs, and this is the second one. Most operators have never actually been told the truth about their own place, and you cannot fix what nobody has told you, honestly.

People don't give their best because they're managed well. They give their best because they feel like they matter, and they only feel that when it's real. That's in your gift, every single shift.

What makes hospitality better than any other industry is the people we work with. Be the reason they stay.

About Jonathan Mercer:

Jonathan Mercer is a hospitality operator and people and culture specialist who has spent more than twenty years building teams that stay. He co-founded All the Best, the national award-winning independent hospitality group, on the belief that great places are made by people who feel trusted, valued and backed to do their best work. 

Through The Saint Group, which he founded, he now works with independent and growing hospitality businesses to raise the standard of how work actually works. He brings with him years of senior HR and people leadership roles with global hospitality and fashion brands, including Great Place to Work, and he brings a straight-talking, practical approach to culture as something you practise rather than something you theorise about. You can get in touch with him at jonathan@thesaintgroup.uk.