Your Colleagues are your Customers too

Many a times while working in hotels I heard the phrase “your colleagues are your guests too” often used to promote cooperation between departments. The importance of establishing good work relations within and without your department, in my opinion is only truly appreciated once we leave the place and we are then in need of contacts and recommendations to find another job or source clients.

A good professional (in all fields but especially in hospitality) will always be in demand. Gaining the respect of both you subordinates and superiors can be invaluable. Many a times in my career I saw examples of workers becoming their manager’s manager (it did happen to me as well). One never really knows what life will bring and your today’s colleague could well open his/her own company in the future and look for somebody to fill some key positions, and who do you think it will turn to first? Their previous colleagues that impressed him/her with their work, work ethic and attitude, of course!

I can easily give you a real life example: myself! Before setting up Salt&Pepper Events, I had been working for a while as a freelance, getting to know, mostly, some amazing and hardworking people. Of course along the way I met some less inspiring workers too. Some would sit down at every occasion and browse their mobiles, others claimed they never washed their black shirt so it wouldn’t wear out and others again that said to me they hated hospitality. You can easily guess that the latter group is not working for me! On the other side of the medal (I don’t mean to brag) in the past week I received one call and one email, respectively, from an ex-supplier and an ex-colleague (both unsolicited) offering to help me find some clients through people they knew (this was by the way one of those time where you are glad you actually have a profile on Linkedin). In this case the professionalism I showed in my past job came in handy.

You and your work are your best marketing and advertising tools.

How much to hire a waiter?

Often I see people googling this keyword and sometimes I must admit I try to find out myself how much it costs to hire someone offering a service.

I have been considering adding the prices to my website, but then again it’s not as easy as that. Different clients get different prices depending on the service they require, the number of hours the book, if they are private or corporate clients and above all depending on the business they can generate.

Here is a guideline based on my competition checks:

Most London catering staff agencies will charge anything between £9.50 and £15.00/h per staff, plus VAT. No need to say that you have to make sure whether the prices are inclusive of VAT. Most agencies charge around £12.50/h.

As mentioned in my other blog post “6 tips to choose the right staffing agency”, in most cases what you pay is what you get and you should inform yourself as to what experience the waiting staff have.

Besides it’s always preferable to use smaller agencies for smaller jobs like house parties and larger agencies for big events, like product launches or sporting events.

When shall I ask for payment?

Sometimes freelance feel uncomfortable with this stage of the negotiations and don’t want to look stubborn or put pressure on the potential client for fear of losing the job.

Just yesterday I was talking to a make-up artist freelance and she was telling me she is still chasing some payments. This can really affect your cash flow and it can be very difficult to retrieve a payment from a private client or even a company as very often the time and hassle are not worth the money you are after.

In my opinion and experience all jobs should be paid for in advance. For larger bookings or far in advance bookings you can ask for a %50 deposit with the balance being paid before you start or complete the job.

Once I received a last minute enquiry for a large job, the day before the event. I gave them my quote and told them they should pay straightaway via BACS, the person on the phone almost fainted and said “do you want us to pay £xxxx now?”, to which I conceded and asked them to pay only %50 in advance and the remainder after the event. This was the worst decision in my life, as it then took me a lot of phone calls, emails and more than one month to retrieve the money, including phone calls, emails.

I think it’s always useful to check out the company you are dealing with and their directors, for this you can use those two websites: www.duedil.com and www.companycheck.co.uk.