Waste not, want not

A recent report commissioned by Marie Curie, entitled ‘The Long and Winding Road’ estimates that poor communication costs the NHS one billion pounds every year... Yes, that’s right, one billion pounds every year. Of course the NHS is wonderful, complicated, and unwieldily beast, but in the time of the NHS crunch, 1 billion seems quite a steep price to pay for a breakdown in communications.

At Hop, this got us thinking about the cost of poor communication in the hospitality industry, and before too long, we had an unwieldily beast of our own. Staff conflict, staff turnover, additional recruitment, spiralling HR costs, mistakes, wastage, and on top of this a potentially toxic atmosphere on the restaurant floor... And all because we’ve overlooked that fundamental thing that got us out of the swamp in the first place. The ability to communicate, to empathize and to understand one another.

Thankfully the NHS is now sitting up and paying attention, because you cannot ignore these three little words; one billion pounds. However, how much is the hospitality industry doing to address the money it’s wasting through poor communication skills? Or perhaps more pertinently, how much is your company wasting? It may not be billions, but it’s enough to get one thinking.