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| Hospitality Today | Oct/Nov 2016
Hogan also spoke of a ‘growth mentality’.
When you are in growth people want to
work with you as you emanate positivity
and confidence. In the States, there is an
inherent growth culture, whereas in the
UK, he saw that there was a plethora of
fantastic people and talent, who often just
lacked the confidence to ‘go for it’.
The Compass UK & Ireland business
is growing and diverse, and Hogan is
committed to its being best in class in
every area. As the company has grown
and acquired new businesses, their brand
identities have been kept and supported,
and this approach is respected and
something people want to be part of.
Looking to the horizon, Hogan sees there
being great opportunities for foodservice
providers across all of the sectors it
operates in and with a really strong
competitor landscape, the industry is a
very exciting one to work in right now.
When asked to offer advice to budding
entrepreneurs with a start-up idea, he
replied that it’s tough but if you’re built
with the entrepreneurial gene you have
to ‘go for it’. You need to be resilient, keep
going and have self-belief, and also have a
good business plan that makes sense.
The contract catering sector is tough and
hard-working but Hogan wants to make
it a natural career choice for people, and
this boils down to raising awareness and
supporting employees.
Compass has a wide range of training
programmes such as the Compass Chef
Academy – a dedicated programme for
Compass’ culinary apprentices - supporting
the business’ drive to deliver 1500 new
apprenticeships by the end of 2017 and build
more culinary talent. Improving the worklife balance and driving female participation
is also important. At present 18% of chefs
in the industry are women, but at Compass
the figure is 35%, with the ambition to reach
50% by 2020. Hogan is proud of the business’
support of LGBT employees, commenting,
“for people to be their best selves, they need
the freedom to be themselves.”
Hogan believes in empowering his
managers, as they are closest to the business
and clients. “If I sat in my ivory tower and
micro-managed them, that would be incredibly
demotivating”. The number one thing in
leadership was trust, he said: “when the chips
are down, they’ve got to know that you’re in
the boat with them”.
Hogan described how Compass looks to
its supplier partners to constantly innovate
and confirmed that they are ‘bringing it
in spades’.
Innovation is essential for supporting
clients. They are looking to attract the
brightest recruits and being able to provide
a great food offer is part of this. Creativity
and competing with the high street, be that
through own brands, high street partners
or creative chefs, is paramount.
The model was “bringing creativity off the
high street and into our business.”