Revolutionizing the Hospitality Hiring Process
Revolutionizing the Hospitality Hiring Process
Meet Falko Flamme, a hospitality professional turned entrepreneur, who has a game-changing idea to transform the way labour gets hired in the hospitality industry.
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Casual work or extra labour is a very big issue in the hospitality industry, as hotels don’t always have a high demand for casual workers. Good quality labour is hard to find when they are needed.
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Enter GrabCasual, an online platform that connects a pool of casual labour with established five-star hotel chains and restaurants in Thailand. Falko launched the platform in February this year despite still working full time as a Food & Beverage Manager at The Peninsula Bangkok.
He explains that he started the platform because he understands that it can be difficult for hospitality managers to find good quality casual workers.
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Managers or supervisors who are always looking for casual staff can easily waste precious time trying to find suitable people.
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As a F&B professional, he needs his managers and supervisors to focus more on the real task –taking care of guests and the events at the hotel. This got him thinking about how he could connect a pool of hospitality talent to hotels for these tasks digitally.
Online connection
GrabCasual works as an online community and management tool. It starts with hotel managers or supervisors posting the jobs. Then the jobs need to get approved by the respective director based on a customised approval chain. When the approval is given, the jobs get posted on the website and this is when registered casual workers can apply for the jobs. Once the job is completed, the hotels will pay the casuals cash on hand and rate the workers.
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The rating is very important because we have so many hospitality schools in Thailand and these students work all over the place as casual labour. With GrabCasual they have a track record that can also be used when they apply for a job in the future.
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Falko points out the platform only allows hotels to rate the casuals that have actually worked with them - nobody can rate you if you didn’t work at a particular hotel.
A bold step
Falko will be leaving his position as Food & Beverage Manager at The Peninsula Bangkok at the end of November to work on GrabCasual full time. He says that leaving the hospitality industry will be a bittersweet moment as he enjoys being surrounded by people and creating events for guests to remember.
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I love hospitality and I’m a little sad to leave for sure. But I believe in the spirit. I believe that things happen for a reason and that this happened in my life for a reason. Life showed me that I should go with this direction.
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Being the change
Currently, GrabCasual has a database of 3,254 casuals, 7,504 applications, 1,447 jobs and 33 hotels and restaurants in Thailand, which include familiar hotel chains and groups like Kempinski, Marriott and Accor.
His ultimate goal is to change the hospitality industry from the bottom up.
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I would like to wake up the fire in young people. If someone has the passion for hospitality, I would like to play a part in helping him or her by changing the way hospitality professionals are trained.
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Falko Flamme graduated from Hotel Institute Montreux in 2010 with a Bachelor of Business Administration in International Management and Hotel, Restaurant and Resort Management. |
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