Supporting A Stronger Hotel Workforce - Anna Blue, AHLA Foundation

Josiah: 0:00

Did you know the AHLA Foundation can provide both you and your employees with free skills training. Stick around, because in this episode we're learning from its president, Anna Blue, about how this works and how you can upgrade the talent on your teams and improve your ability to provide hospitality to guests and your communities. Anna Blue brings more than two decades of social impact leadership to her role as president of the AHLA Foundation, the charitable arm of the American Hotel and Lodging Association, supporting a stronger and more equitable hotel industry workforce. In this episode, we talk about the opportunity she saw that attracted her to this role, how the Foundation is supporting hotels, the future of work, and what's most exciting to her. Before we start talking about the Foundation, tell us a little bit about how you got to your role today.

Anna: 1:11

Yeah, absolutely. I have a long career in social impact and it's actually interesting. I was talking to my eight-year-old this morning about her ideal career journey and she has all these ideas. She wants to be a volcanologist and study volcanoes. Or she looked around and said, well, maybe I'll study hills. I don't know if that has a title, but she asked me what I wanted to be when I was young. I wanted to be everything, anything and everything, but I always wanted to make a difference. I didn't know that was a thing that you could do for a living, that you could get paid for. But that has really been my journey. Whether it's urban education, gender equity, creating equitable workplaces, the future of work, child safety, online, I've kind of done all of it and it really is just about where can I go and make a difference?

Josiah: 1:56

I really enjoyed listening to a conversation you had with Rachel Humphrey at DEI Advisors. I'm going to link to it in the show notes and would really encourage people to listen to that. I appreciate you talking about that journey in more detail. One of the things that you mentioned was always following the chance to drive change. It's just been a thread throughout your career. I wonder if we go to the moment where you were thinking about the next step of your career and you consider and you decide to join AHLA to lead the foundation as president, why hospitality? Of all the things you've done in your career, what did you see in hospitality that attracted you?

Anna: 2:32

You don't understand this industry until you get into it. I'm still learning. I'm seven months in and I'm still putting all of the different pieces together. When somebody brought this role to my attention, I kind of brushed it off, as you know. Okay, well, maybe I'll have a look as somebody who has run a number of nonprofits. There is always this part of you that thinks I would love to be on the side that can fund organizations. I would love to be the person making decisions about funding and capacity. A foundation has always been a little bit of a like. That would be amazing. But the hotel industry didn't immediately strike me as like yes, that's where I should go drive change. And then I started to read and to look at what all of the different hotel whether it's the brands or through the foundation just work that has been done. And the more I learned about how the hospitality industry works, the more I just kept coming back to the sense of collective impact and collective action right as part of HLA that has this incredible number of members across management companies, owners, brands, kind of everything, the entire ecosystem of hotels. And to be able to pull that together to drive collective change and collective action like that's living the dream, and there's so much resource and so much opportunities to do that and I think we're just still, even though the foundation has been around technically 70 years. There's so much more we can do, and so that got me really excited, because there is an entire workforce that we can help level up, and to be able to do that is just a cool feeling.

Josiah: 3:59

I could agree more, and I believe it's something to the order of one in 25 Americans are working in the hotel industry more than 8 million people, so a really big scale of an industry. I guess, as you were learning more about the hotel industry, were there any other elements of that beyond the scale of it that were attractive to you as you considered.

Anna: 4:20

I mean what I love about this industry and I never thought about it, right, as a person who I've traveled my whole life. I've always traveled for work. You walk into a hotel and what you see is very limited in terms of the people and they're wonderful. But you see the front desk, maybe you'll see a manager or general manager, there might be somebody in a restaurant, you see the folks in housekeeping, and that's what you think of hotels, right, and then I'm in the foundation and I'm meeting all these people and I realize that we have, you know, you can do anything. Like you can have any career and you can do it in hotels. Like, are you a social media person? Are you in marketing? Are you a lawyer? Are you like? This is an entire sort of like I said, ecosystem of all of these different things, whether it's food and beverage, beyond just the folks who might be waiting tables. But there is just this like, you can do anything. You can be a doctor and work at a resort, like I say that all the time the fact that we're going to hospitality schools, that's great. Beyond that, there, you know, we could go to any type of college or university where somebody is studying anything. You want to be like a scientist, you can come and do that in hotels, like it really is an incredible Place to land. It's just has a marketing problem and so I think there's a huge amount of opportunity. Like, when I say there's opportunity and I think about the workforce, that's everybody. Everybody could come and work in hotels and find their path to success.

Josiah: 5:44

I appreciate you helping us expand the scope of how we're thinking about this because, depending on where you're at in the ecosystem, sometimes we have very small pictures of here's what it means to work in hospitality, and so there's so many skills that can be put to work in our industry and, like you say, we need to do a better job marketing the opportunity that exists here. So that's been so excited to speak with you and appreciate you doing the show here. If we could talk just a little bit more around the problem of the opportunity that you saw.

Anna: 6:11

Yes. So what we focus on you know I love to always say HLA focuses on the business side right of this industry, and we get to focus on the people, and truly the people, the workforce all the way through this entire industry, are what drives this industry forward, right like it is. The greatest asset that we have is the people who work in this industry, and so the foundation is set up to be the support mechanism for that. So, whether it's looking at the introduction, recruitment, how we're bringing new people in, what we were just talking about, how are we saying that you can be anything and do it here. So how are we bringing new, creating a new path to career for people who never considered this industry before? And then retention and development hospitality. Hotels are not a job, hotels are a career, and when I first started to meet people that were, you know, I started as a line cook and now I run an entire region for you know x company. You think those are like that's the anomaly, right? That's not the anomaly, that's everywhere. It's everywhere in this industry and it's so cool to see how easily career paths are built and so for us to be able to help our companies, to help our members be able to more equitably identify talent. Think about how to keep the people that they have. This is a different world. Gen Z is a different generation. How do you keep people in a world of flexible pay, flexible schedules, all of these things? So we're really here to support people in upskilling their employees, retaining them, developing them, and then looking at advancement. So how are we advancing people? How do we help our companies identify who should be on track for promotion? In what direction can folks build careers? How do they really lean into it? Identifying skill sets and creating equitable advancement throughout the industry? Those are our main pillars of where we can drive change. Basically, anything that a hotel wants to do to support its workforce like come to us. That is what we're here for, that's what we live to do and we have an incredible team doing that. And then on the other side, also as part of the development, is our anti-human trafficking training. So how are we making sure that hotel employees can identify and report potential instances of trafficking and their hotels, that's a huge piece of development. I know that it is an empowering feeling for hotel employees to now know about that, to be able to see things a little bit differently, but yeah, we are focused on the workforce and just driving change across the board.

Josiah: 8:33

All those pieces are so important, right in such a broad range of how you're supporting people, but also could not be something that is more relevant to hospitality and to hotel businesses Than the people. Right, it all comes down to the people. I would be curious to hear your perspective before we get into talking a little bit more about the apprenticeship program. Broadly speaking, you talked about upskilling and retention, which is very top of mind for people. These hotel companies do want to make sure that these talented people stay within their organizations. What is the role of upskilling training and development in achieving that?

Anna: 9:06

Yeah, I mean development, upskilling. It's everything right. Like you have people who are already in your system. They're already bought in, they love the property and they love their job so being able to give them a new set of skills. You have folks in this industry where it's possible to try out so many different things and you know, you might find yourself in accounting, you might find yourself in housekeeping, you might realize that you want to be in the kitchen. Who knows, right, you just have all of these different opportunities to flex skills in different ways. And so what people don't realize and I'm going to like shout this from the rooftop in this podcast is that we have professional development scholarships at the foundation, and so we put aside money every year for hotels, for employers to come to us and say we want this person to go through management training. We have these different, we have money to give. So you want to upscale your employees, we will pay for that, and there is never a year where we actually spend that budget, because people it's not that I don't think people want to utilize it they don't know that we do this. We have this scholarship money so that employers can identify the talent and say, great, we have openings. We want you to stay here. We want you to gain the skills that you need, and whatever those skills are, we can help with that.

Josiah: 10:23

I want to talk more about this because I cannot underscore the potential and the opportunity here more right the reason we got initially connected. I was talking to Chip on the show a couple of weeks ago and he was talking about this being free and I didn't even know the extent, honestly, the extent to which these opportunities existed. I was like hold up, hold up, this is free. And then I talked to Amanda Gray, who leads people at Remington Hospitality, one of the leading, you know, hotel management companies, and she was saying this has been such an invaluable part of what we do, it's so important, and wanted to get more engaged. So I think, to help us kind of remedy people being unaware of this and get more people involved, can you walk us through the process? For, let's say, we have a hotel manager or hotel executive that's listening to this. They say that sounds fantastic. How do they get involved? What is that process like?

Anna: 11:12

So it depends on so that the other piece and you mentioned this early as the apprenticeship program. So the apprenticeship program is specifically the Department of Labor funded through the foundation program that that has an entire curriculum attached to it. So it's on-the-job training plus curriculum. It is an incredible program. Right now, we have the largest class of apprentices in industries. We have 500 apprentices across more than 80 employers who are taking advantage of this program. We have over 1500 total apprentices to ever come through. And I want to plug something because I just learned this recently - we have a case study with one of our employers I'm going to give a shout-out to Sonesta they had since 2020 so not that long ago they had 110 apprentices and their hotel management, that specific program. Out of the 110, you have 96 who have completed the program and received their certificate from the Department of Labor. Of that, 41 have been promoted and we now have 15 promoted to general manager. This is a program that works and you and we can point to it and we could do that with company after company who have invested in their time because, again, it's no financial investment. We take care of that. The Department of Labor takes care of that. So it really is just they the jumping into the program. Carrie Alexander runs that program. It is her baby. She does that at the foundation. She is the person to contact. But really, just coming on to our website, we have all of those forms. Hlafoundationorg will get you to be able to connect in for the professional development scholarships, which if you just if you don't want the full program, the entire thing through the apprenticeship program. You just reach out to us directly through the website and we can give you the entire list of what all the opportunities are and we can make it happen pretty quickly.

Josiah: 13:03

That's fantastic. I'll make sure to include a link in the show notes. I want everyone to go there and check it out. But that's awesome to hear about synest and I know there are many that are participating. Many more should and probably will after hearing this. But is there anything that's anything else that stands out to you in either talking with Sunesta or other organizations? That has been sort of surprising for you and may be something for people listening to this to be aware of in terms of going Through this process with you.

Anna: 13:29

I mean, what's been surprising to me but if you are a hotelier this isn't surprising to you is just how much Employers really do want to invest in their workforce and how there are so many questions, as I mentioned, sort of this, this bigger question of the future of work. How does the hotel industry catch up to what has changed really significantly in the last three years since the pandemic sort of pushed us into a different world where people Couldn't, they were furloughed in almost every industry and had to then think about driving over or door-dash or you know and, and then that changes your life and it changes how quickly you're getting paid and what you can do with your Schedule, and so how do we bring that into hotels? I think that, but the compassion and the care and the commitment and the dedication that I see over and over and over from individual hotels all the way up to the bigger brand level is has been pleasantly surprising for me and that's why I get so excited about the work that we're doing because it's like help me, help you, like right, like I'm here, you know, I'm just like I'm waiting to get off the bench and be put it like put us in, we're here, we've got the resources. We know you're committed to your employees, so let us like help you see that through, see that you know being committed to them and their growth. Let us help you see that through.

Josiah: 14:46

Well, it's encouraging to hear those who are moving beyond just lip service and saying that the people matter to the hotel industry Right, and actually investing and working with you and your organization, training their teams, upscaling them and it's awesome to hear those stats at Sunesta. This has a real yeah, impact on people's ability to better themselves. You know better the organizations that they work with. You mention the future of work and I have to ask a follow-up question about this because it feels coming out of the pandemic, everybody's thinking about the future. What can it, should it look like? I'm curious what's going through your head these days in terms of what things you think are remaining constants. You know what's timeless and what are some new areas that you see are becoming more important and you're thinking about more now.

Anna: 15:28

So in my background, you know, I come from the United Nations Foundation and I specifically worked with Gen Z. I ran a global movement for equity, and so the future of everything has been very top of mind. Like the number of things that I learned from 16, 17, 18-year-old girls is like enough, like goes far beyond any education I received prior to that, like everything good in the world that I know I learned from these girls, and so I think the future of work is, especially as we look at the corporate world, sort of thinking about empathy and compassion, diversity, equity, and inclusion. No matter how many people are trying to walk away from that, we will never be able to walk away from that. This is a generation that is demanding more equitable, more Inclusive company cultures. They want a system of belonging. They want to be able to prioritize self-care. These were not words that were being used when I came into the workforce over 20 years ago. Nobody was talking about this, and this is a generation that's demanding it. And you know, I think, how we respond to that, in addition to all of the ways that technology is rapidly changing everything that we do. You know there is going to be a spotlight on how this industry Responds to that and where we see equity and where we have young people being able, you know they immediately go on to Google. They pull up a company's you know leadership page and they say I don't see myself there, that company's not an option for me, and so how can we really have those conversations? Do the training? Think about, you know, succession planning for senior leadership, and who are they looking at to come up behind them? I mean, there are so many ways that we can sort of tackle that piece of it. And then on the tech side you said, you know what remains constant this is where it's hard for hotels, right, because you can have a lot of ways that we bring AI into a hotel, but AI isn't going to make a bed. So like, yes, I can check in now on my phone and maybe I don't have to stop by the front desk. I always do because I actually like that moment. And then interaction my mobile key never works. It doesn't matter what hotel I'm staying in, so I like that. You know I'm old-school in that way, but you know there. So there are some things we can adapt and change and evolve for technology. And then there are some parts of hospitality that you don't want to go away like. You want People who are caring and smiling can help you and assist you when you walk through the door, or the voice on the other end of the phone when you have a question. Or just the other day I was at a resort and I was about to go on stage. I'm speaking at our off-site event and I spelled something on my dress and I don't have another dress. I'm not at home, and so to be able to call down and like can somebody send me a stain stick, that's huge and you need a person to be able to do that. So that balance in hotels for the future of work is the big question. Right, how do we balance what is continuously evolving and changing and what's great about what tech is doing across every industry, with where the human connection in hotels has to remain, and I think that's true on the employee engagement side too, like I don't want my manager to be a robot, like I want a real person, like I do. Maybe that makes me old school, but human interaction still has to remain. But how we balance that is a big question.

Josiah: 18:37

Totally, and I think that's why I love what you're doing at the Foundation, because it's holistically thinking about people, supporting and protecting them, empowering them, and just hearing you talk about some of the elements of this for me it brings up the opportunity and how exciting it is to have an industry that covers so many types of jobs to more from, you know, kind of manual, maybe a little more unskilled work into highly technical roles, because it presents an opportunity for everyone to get into this environment where you can accelerate, and one of my first jobs was cleaning rooms out of a property and welcoming guests and doing these kinds of very manual labor type roles. But then as you learn stuff, you get more exposure and as you pointed out earlier, there there's so many stories of people that have rapidly accelerated because they get in this environment where you can learn, and for me, that's really exciting to think on the personal level, like the change this makes to people and to families and things like that yeah, absolutely, I agree as you kind of think about the rest of this year, heading into next year, I'm curious what's on your mind? what are you excited about, proud of, as you head into the months ahead?

Anna: 19:42

oh, everything makes me excited. You know I'm still learning. I'm seven months in. I certainly know a lot more now than I did when I recorded my first podcast a few months ago. You know, I think it's great. We are fully staffed up at the foundation now which, um, you know, you come into a new role and you sort of look at everything and you're like we need to move these pieces around a little bit, and so it's a really exciting time for us to actually have the capacity to deliver in the way that we can and should be able to as an organization. I'm also really excited. You know we haven't talked about the survivor fund. The no room for trafficking is, you know, the trafficking training through our partnership with PACT, which is formerly ECPAT, and the training created by Marriott, and we have now hit over 1.2 million hotel employees that have completed the training, which is absolutely incredible. However we launched the survivor fund. We launched it last fall. We have raised over 3.5 million dollars and the foundation is actually matching it. So really, we're at 7 million with a hope of getting to 10 by the end of this year, and that is just purely to then grant money out to survivors, supporting organizations that are doing incredible work to create new paths, new opportunities and a new future for human trafficking survivors. And we launched those first grantees. Um, we are funding four organizations a total of half a million dollars this year, which is just a toe dip into the impact that we can make in this space. And I just want to kind of bring that full circle to what I said earlier about being a nonprofit and doing impact work and always saying like I would love to be the person on the other side of this, the person who grants the money and can just give it to organizations doing incredible work and to give them the opportunity to increase their capacity. And so that was a really cool moment for me, in partnership with Eliza McCoy, who runs our anti-human trafficking work, to really just identify these organizations and and think about how much impact that we can have to support human trafficking survivors, and so I'm excited to see how that continues to grow and expand, and we're already talking about the next round of grantees for next year. And that's just. You know, that's one of those. We're doing a lot for employees, but to also just have that the survivor fund is really just because it's the right thing to do, right like it's not necessarily about our industry. These aren't organizations that are supporting survivors necessarily in connection to the hotel industry at all. It is actually just something beautiful we can do as a foundation and I'm really excited to see that continue to grow yeah, that is really important work and I appreciate your efforts and your commitment to that.

Josiah: 22:17

Is there any kind of calls to action or things that you would point people to after listening to this?

Anna: 22:23

Yeah, the biggest thing is truly just to connect with us. I think right now we want to have as many conversations with folks in the industry about ways that we can help support your goals and what we're what you're trying to do. So the AHLAfoundation.org/connect gives you that one page, so you don't have to click around the entire website, which can always be daunting and then you forget why you were there in the first place. So the backslash connect is really helpful and that'll get you to a landing page that gives you a little information about us, but just a way to directly connect with us, which is the most important thing awesome.

Josiah: 22:58

Well, thanks for joining us. I really appreciate what you're doing and I appreciate you taking some time to talk 

Anna: 23:03

Absolutely, thank you. Thank you for having me. This is fun.