From the travelling showmen of old, to the international operators of today, the amusements industry has always been about people; making them laugh, keeping them comfortable, and giving them a great all-round experience. With an eye for excellence in customer service, Nikki O’Wellen, head of HR for Luxury Leisure Talarius, ensures the Admiral brand’s ‘people strategy’ brings in big personalities to deliver customers with the warmest welcome on the high street.
Coinslot: What attracted you to Luxury Leisure Talarius and how have you enjoyed your time with the company so far?
Nikki O’Wellen, head of HR: I’ve worked with the business for 6 years now, originally joining as national HR Manager for Luxury Leisure and became head of HR for the combined Luxury Leisure Talarius management team following Novomatic’s acquisition of the Talarius business.
Up until that point in my career, I had been in a number of industries that were downsizing. With that comes a lot of redundancy and restructuring work and general instability that can be a really draining experience.
I wanted to add value in a growth industry and the role has more than lived up to those expectations.
I’m gifted significant autonomy within the company and have had the freedom to implement a number of firsts within both our own business, but the industry at large. Examples of these include our national recruitment processes – creating the benchmarks and standards by which potential employees should be identified – enabling the business to comply fully with employment law.
We’ve also introduced the first ever onboarding, induction and elearning platform in the business and as I talk to you, we’ve just completed our Admiral Leadership & Management program to 65 participating future leaders in the business.
CS: How much attention is given to Luxury Leisure’s company culture, and in what ways does that filter through to the companys end product?
NO: The company culture is one of investment in people and creating a culture in which people feel valued. We stress the importance of this throughout the business and strive to ensure that all employees feel valued and invested in.
For a business like ours – with over 230 national venues – it’s of significant importance that our employees in the high street stores feel this investment in their training, development and rewards. This gives those employees the confidence, belief and knowledge to deliver the best possible customer service to members of the public who become our customers – no matter what time of day or night they choose to play.
We celebrate a very diverse workforce with strong equal opportunities for people of all walks of life. Given we attract customers from diverse ethnic backgrounds and a wide age range, it really resonates when our customers find our team members who are warm, confident and chatty – in no matter what language! It really helps to deliver our brand message and reinforce our product proposition.
CS: How important is it for companies to create an environment where employees can thrive? What does Luxury Leisure do to achieve this?
NO: It’s quite telling that over one third of our management team started their careers in Luxury Leisure Talarius as either venue staff or management and have been promoted into their current roles.
This is vitally important to a business like ours, not least of all because of the lowered rates of absenteeism and staff turnover – but also in increased productivity and industry acumen that can only be built up through practical experience.
We just launched our Admiral Leadership & Management program and have 65 new delegates working toward various levels of CMI (Chartered Management Institute) qualification. This will produce the next wave of leadership roles in our business. Equally we have just hired our first Technical Apprentices for our Family Entertainment Centres to support the ongoing quality of our product and capture the unique technical knowledge within our industry with engineers just starting their career.
Furthermore we support our staff progression through a series of reward and recognition programs for standard things – length of service and commercial performance – but also for “going the extra mile” and productivity/project based bonuses. Beyond our own internal training, we have also funded substantial professional development in specialist areas like HR and marketing.
CS: When you bring in new people, what character-traits do you look for that tend to indicate a good fit with Luxury Leisure?
NO: We’re looking for people who know how to deliver our company ethos – and main company objective – of customer service excellence.
This is typically made up of big personalities that can have fun, make people’s day, interact freely with customers from all walks of life but can also take seriously the significant regulatory requirements in our industry enabling us to safeguard the customers.
We believe our customers are looking for a business that cares and that starts first and foremost with our people. They help to deliver our brand messages, introduce the technological developments that we’re consistently introducing to the business and help to deliver excellent customer experiences throughout.
CS: Over the last decade, the international business community has witnessed a long term trend towards the increased prioritisation of Corporate Social Responsibility. Where Luxury Leisure rank on this measure?
NO: Luxury Leisure Talarius have strict codes of conduct when it comes to the protection of our players through social responsibility.
All employees joining the business must undertake two core training modules in the scope of social responsibility, with up to four refresher training modules per annum – it’s therefore taken very seriously and is front of mind for everyone!
We test our process robustly through a number of 3rd party test purchase audits and we can be proud that our business performs exceptionally – higher than the national average in all instances. To that end, the company has just been accredited by G4 for its responsible gaming practices and our entire workforce deliver that.
Never ones to rest on our laurels, we are furthermore engaging additional well-respected industry-wide best practice to develop more robust training modules and tools for our staff.
