The Town House Company

Recruiting from an international talent pool has allowed The Town House Company to fill vacancies quickly and build a vibrant and diverse workforce.

The luxury hotel group employs an impressive 21 nationalities across its 4 and 5 star boutique hotels in Edinburgh – Channings, The Bonham, The Howard and The Edinburgh Residence. They could extend this mix again when it opens a new luxury 88-bed hotel in Glasgow's Blythswood Square in 2008.

The company's 156 staff include 84 Britons, 37 Poles, 6 French, three Australians, three South Africans and 16 other nationalities including Chinese, Indian, Algerian, Spanish, Swedish, Brazilian and Slovak.

Jim Sinclair, The Town House Company's training and development manager, said: "I think our overseas recruits bring a real enthusiasm to the team. It's really quite international and lively, and when they all get together there's a great buzz. They're all very politely spoken and have good family values, especially the Swedes and the Poles, who are extremely reliable."

Staff include Mando Angeles, a Filipino who joined The Bonham's reception team two months ago through the UK government's Training and Work Experience Scheme (TWES). The scheme allows employers to apply for permits for workers from developing countries for a limited time period.

Tilo Stengall from Germany is a duty manager and has been with the company for four years. Swedish chef de partie, Kamilla Persson, is taking SVQ qualifications to become a chef. She was recruited seven years ago and works under The Bonham's French head chef, Michel Bouyer. Other staff include Basque accounts clerk Ianire Fernandez, who started on invoice scanning and now has responsibility for purchase ledger.

The company helps overseas recruits find accommodation, collects them from the airport, provides training in areas including health and safety and helps to organise language lessons through Wallace College, the Edinburgh English language school. This reputation helps attract around 20 enquiries a week from prospective employees around the world.

Sinclair said: "If a member of staff is struggling to understand a particular language, there's always someone in one of the buildings that can translate it, whether it's Russian, German, Finish or French. Most of them are quite work oriented and ambitious and a lot are well-travelled. Before 2004 it was hard to fill jobs but the influx of new EU people after 2004 has helped us a great deal."

Case study:2007

Contact

Jim Sinclair
Training & Development Manager
The Town House Company
Channings, The Bonham, The Howard, The Edinburgh Residence
35 Drumsheugh Gardens
Edinburgh EH3 7RN
Tel: 0131 274 7427  
Fax: 0131 226 6080
Web: www.townhousecompany.com/about_us/thcrecruitment.html