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Season's Greetings from the Institute
The executives and staff of the International Institute of Modern Butlers wish you the best of holiday seasons and a prosperous 2006
Letters From Our Readers
Dear Editor,
One quick note on the tipping of concierges. Generally in urban hotel / resort settings, the concierge is the person that can get things or make things happen such as theater tickets, reservations at popular restaurants, etc. Because of these services, they tend to be some of the most highly compensated employees of the hotels or resorts.
Trey Matheu, GM, Nemacolin Woodlands Resort and Spa
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Hello Werner,
I just read your article in this month's newsletter. I have to agree and compliment you on your insight. I am faced with buying supplies/uniforms/wine etc. etc., and after the early growing pains I have earned the trust of my employer. There is still some micro management, but I have learned to ignore some and live with the rest.
The article before yours in the MBJ talks about job description and salary. I have seen a job (advertised) on another web site that sounded exactly like that and my wife and I were joking about the salary. We thought $40,000--what a disgrace. After reading the last article about the butler being the one who brings it all together, I almost feel underpaid.
Regards, George
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Dear Modern Butlers,
I read the answer to the request for more information from a restaurant chef to a private chef. You addressed many components for service but forgot one - food. I have staffed private chefs for over 8 years now and found that one of the most important ingredients (pun intended) that makes a good private chef, apart from service and attitude, is experience in numerous cuisines.
After culling through thousands of chef resumes, I found the candidates that had worked their way up from the bottom, moved from top level to top level restaurant learning different regional delights from Italian to French to Spanish to American to Mediterranean and so on, with an additional emphasis in butchering, BBQ, charcuterie and more. We were able to get these candidates placed right away.
I was unsuccessful in placing chefs that were myopically trained in just one cuisine - sadly. Our clientele is global now; they need a chef that can send your senses to any place in the world on a moment's notice!!
Bon appetit! Susan Feigon
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Dear Rick,
I very much appreciate your taking the time to write out your thoughts on hotel butlers versus traditional private service butlers. Your article on tis subject is published in this newsletter (see below). I agree with you wholeheartedly that these two types of butlers are not the same.
Putting forward the standards that used to be as the way you feel they still should be, is a vital piece of communication. Certainly, needs and standards change, but if we lose sight of the heritage, then what are we left with?
Steven Ferry
Chairman, IIMB
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Important Industry Salary Survey
Dear Readers,
Recently, Home Staffing Network sent out a request for feedback on a salary survey for the private service industry. The survey is still in progress. We invite all private service professionals (butlers, valets, housemen, housekeepers, nannies and so forth), to partake in this important data collection. The form for submitting your input, together with the raw survey results to date, may be found at this url: http://www.homestaffingnetwork.com/tools_tips.php?id=17&category=5
Eventually the survey results will be summarized and made available to industry professionals such as yourself for review and use.
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Why Good Employees Are Sometimes Hard to Find
by Steven Ferry
I believe we are witnessing a dwindling pool of service-oriented individuals in the United States-which is making it difficult for agencies, HR and management to provide the level of guest service required for private estates and high-end properties. An unlikely source has emerged recently as a possible culprit: the marketing and selling of worry to well Americans who are then sold psychiatric drugs to resolve that cleverly crafted worry. Reports indicate that almost half the US population uses these drugs now. The relevance being that the side effects of these drugs include woodenness and disassociation at the less dramatic end, through frustration and anger outbursts, to suicide and murder at the extreme end-none of which are particularly conducive to employer and guest satisfaction.
The issue has been increasingly in the media, lead by British doctors who have forbidden first children and now adults from taking "antidepressants." Court cases and media have at the same time exposed inadequate testing and altered results to hide bad outcomes. Even the FDA, long beholden to the interests of the pharmaceutical lobby, is begrudgingly following suit in the US, hence those black box warning labels appearing on many psychiatric prescriptions. Suicides are the main worry, but the many heinous crimes hitting the airwaves over the last decade (mothers butchering their children, children shooting or torturing their parents or other children, to name just a few) have added to the list of outcomes when people take these drugs. A book just released, Selling Sickness: How the World's Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients (Ray Moynihan and Alan Cassels) and the recently released movie based on John le Carre's fictionalized book, The Constant Gardner, both point to a motivational shift by pharmaceutical companies: away from curing sickness to making vast amounts of money; the main strategy being to bring drugs to market by pathologizing life's normal fluctuations and the creation of "lifestyle medicines." Premenstrual tension, for instance, is now a "mental illness" called "premenstrual dysphoric disorder" requiring a psychiatric drug to "manage" (not cure) it.
Instead of relying on evidence to determine a disease and assess the risk/ benefit of a medical intervention, doctors are prescribing drugs based on corporate sponsored "public awareness" campaigns that create "illness." If this seems just fine, then might I suggest re-reading the preceding sentence? We have marketing and PR departments, and executive boards salivating over the bottom line, inventing diseases and then persuading people they have them.
As described by Vera Hassner Sharav of Alliance for Human Research Protection, "The selling of sickness and the birth of a blockbuster drug follows a familiar pattern: the marketing division of a pharmaceutical company identifies a wedge condition, and a set of symptoms or "risk factors"; the company hires a PR firm to come up with a "disease" name, either something catchy (e.g., SAD) or something connoting a serious biochemical deficiency; the company either develops a drug, or recycles an existing one for this new condition; and begins massive marketing to physicians and the public. An advisory panel of experts defines the "disease" broadly enough to include as many previously healthy people as possible, and issues guesstimates about the prevalence of the "disease"; the media pick up the story, suggesting that the 'new' disease is greatly "under-diagnosed and poses severe health hazards if left untreated"; the stage is set for the birth of the next blockbuster."
The roots of this travesty can be found in sentiments such as those expressed three decades ago by Merck's chief executive, Henry Gadsden, who wanted to expand his market by making drugs for healthy people, not just sick people.
It is necessary to grasp the reality of this trend in order to understand a previously unrecognized undercurrent that agencies and HRs have been hitting up against in finding and keeping good staff.
We have been hearing the complaint "Good employees are hard to find" for a few centuries now, but now it just might be true. While running a workshop on service for a large group of employees at a four-star facility recently, I was fascinated to see a full 50% of them had no interest whatsoever in the subject, one of them even settling down to read a newspaper during the presentation. Their attitude and lack of caring was evident in the lackluster service they offered guests (hence the workshop being arranged by an anxious management), and was also a source of upset for those staff who did care to care and who did derive new insights from the workshop. While I did not run drug tests on the attendees, obviously, and cannot confirm that the exact 50% displaying no interest were the exact 50% taking psychiatric drugs, the parallel was palpable.
The problem is that there is no way for agencies, consultants, HR, or management to reach and inspire these people until they are taken off their drugs and the drug residues detoxed from their system (there are ways to do this). Until then, they will continue to manifest a "bio-chemical personality", the antithesis of service. If the US Armed Forces do not accept recruits who have taken psychiatric drugs, then there may be a lesson to be learned here in our industry and profession. The Defense Department has learned from experience that such citizens do not make reliable and effective personnel or teammates.
Maybe the recruitment industry could benefit from examining this factor (the drugging of its personnel pool) in trying to create a team of service-minded personnel who actually do care for employers and guests, and care to service them well. Maybe the paucity of service-oriented individuals is not just the result of genes or some such wild theory, but an artificial condition created by morally bankrupt individuals and out-of-control corporations. In other words, maybe we can do something about it.
I would be interested in hearing back from agencies with their thoughts and observations on the above concern.
Professor Steven Ferry is author of the best-selling industry texts, Butlers and Household Managers, 21st Century Professionals, and Hotel Butlers, The Great Service Differentiators. He is Chairman of the International Institute of Modern Butlers. He can be contacted at stevenferry @modernbutlers.com
Private Service Butlers Versus Hotel Butlers
When I say something as an old traditionalist, I don't mean to be arrogant. I certainly see things differently compared with others I know, but then I have been around a long time and certain new things don't always seem good. When it comes to other Butlers' welfare, then to me it is a concern.
I am going to talk about Hotel Butlers and tell you my feelings about these guys.
About three years ago I had this major discussion with some hotel owner in Taiwan. He was telling me how professional hotel butlers look after many of the top world leaders, etc., and how brilliant they are. He then went on about how his butlers were better than the butlers that I trained. I know that keeping up the top standards is difficult at times and the modern way is often achieved by using short cuts, and occasionally they work. So I am told! I really would like the difference to be seen as that of a manufactured hotel butler as contrasted with a hand-made private-service one.
This may be true, but at the end of the day, none of these Butlers are working long enough for any one person to understand and to know this person. A VIP staying in a hotel would never have found out or discovered how useful this butler was and would not be really that interested towards them. They and you need to spend a lot of time with a person to recognize his or her ability, capabilities etc. You are not going to notice this in two-to-three days.
As soon as the VIP has left the building (hotel) and there are no more top VIP's to take care of, that butler then will go back in to the hotel system, because owners are not going to employ staff with nothing to do! Hotels are all about making money and profits. This is where a Private Household differs.
A Butler in a private household is treated completely differently. The employer himself has interviewed this man, and the two of them get to understand each other. He or she has personally chosen you. Then you become part of the family and are looked upon as a very needed commodity in the household. The Butler is respected, and the chances of being dismissed are very unlikely providing that he or she does the job well. The Butler also has a proper salary and his lifestyle is not worked out based on tips and bonuses.
I myself have not had a tip over twenty pounds for the last thirty years and even then I could probably count the number of tips on one hand, as my salary always covers the correct going rate for a professional. I find it personally lowering the profession and tone of what we are, to need to accept tips. If our employer goes away, he may possibly ask his butler what he is planning to do with his time whilst he has gone, but no more than that, as he will expect his Butler to enjoy his free time and take advantage of it. He is not thinking of losing out with his money because he has let you have a few days or a few weeks off.
I gather from other teaching staff, and I am speaking of proper trainers out in the field with lots of experience, that these hotel butlers earn very low wages and that it is the tips that they need to make a living. This is an outrage to our profession and hotels should call these so-called butlers something else, perhaps housemen or hotelmen, but the word butler should not be used, as I just think it makes a mockery of a very old and dedicated professional.
Just recently my attention has turned to some trainers who have little or no experience in this profession and are out in the world training. This is a disgrace to us that know our stuff. A traditional modern butler should be respected also. Some of the Hotels go on about how modern and glamorous they are, but it doesn't actually help if they have poorly trained staff and poor standards and they pay our profession low wages. They are not treated the same as a Butler in a private household would be.
It's about time that the Hotels started to get top butlers and correctly trained staff to really raise the standards. I have traveled and have seen these guys on cruise ships and in hotels; frankly, some look tired, lethargic, not spruced up as one would expect of a butler. He or she should always look immaculate at all times in front of the Public.
These are just my feelings and I am sure I may have got it wrong in many a case, but this is how it seems to me. My crusade at the moment is for good solid training and good information to start raising some top standards. I opened my school only with that one thought in mind. I had been working with too many other Butlers who had been trained very indifferently and with no good, sound knowledge. This is probably why I stick to private service teaching only!
Sincerely,
Rick Fink
Editors Note: In October 2002, Mr. Rick Fink, himself an English Butler, opened his prestigious Butler-Valet school. (www.butler-valetschool.co.uk) With forty-five years of experience gained in some of England's finest Stately Homes, Mr. Fink is now passing this knowledge on to those who wish to learn that unique profession, the true English Butler-Valet. This course is not for hotel or restaurant work. The course is for the highest private service that would be required by the top society of today, managing and running their private residences. This is private service taught at the highest standards by one who has been employed solely in this work all his working life and who knows the requirements of the employers and all the types of work that can be expected and involved.
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Certificates for Institute Members
To become a member of the International Institute of Modern Butlers, simply visit our website's new membership page to study and pledge your agreement to the Code of Ethics for Household and Hospitality Service Professionals.
As a service to members, the Institute offers an official Certificate of Membership to those IIMB members who wish to display such a Certificate on their wall, or for inclusion in a resume/CV. Please visit the membership pages on our website, and follow the link to purchase a membership certificate. There is a small fee to cover costs and shipping.
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Interesting News Article Links
Worlds Most Expensive Resorts:
http://ehotelier.com/browse/news_more.php?id=D6346_0_11_0_M
Homes of the Billionaires:
http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/2005/09/22/billionaire-05rich400-homes-05rich400-real-estate-cx_sc_0922home.html?partner=netscape
Most expensive Cruises:
http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/2005/09/http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/bestlife/2005/10/19/luxury-travel-cruises-cx_sb_1020feat_ls.html
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The Background Check - USA
by Werner Leutert
The background check is a very important part of the hiring process and is most likely to take place at the pre-hire stage - when an offer to the prospective private service professional has been made. While some employers do this as part of the mid-point screening process, most rely on their agency or staff to ask the candidates a series of due diligence questions. Typically you may be asked about four areas of your personal life:
Do you have any past issues with the criminal system, such as a conviction of any sort, or are you currently involved with an unsettled matter such as an arrest?
Are you involved in any civil lawsuits as a plaintiff or defendant? If you have been involved in lawsuit(s) in the past, are there any that you wish to describe at this time?
What is your motor vehicle driving record?
What is your credit record? It is important to realize that, regardless of what you feel the relevance and importance is of the information being provided to the employer, it is a necessary part of the process.
Sometimes candidates are offended that information about their credit needs to become known. From the employer's perspective, the new employee will have access to his valuables, to credit cards and cash. It makes sense to screen for people who have poor financial judgment which resulted in bankruptcies or other defaults. Sometimes these situations have reasons, such as identity theft, serious illness, uninsured damage and so forth. Sometimes these poor credit situations do not have an excuse, such as poor financial decision-making, addictions such as gambling, drug, alcohol. All of these make situations make employers nervous, the proverbial red flags.
Here are some of my thoughts on the subject of background check:
If you are not of sterling character, professional private service is not a good career choice.
Be up front about any issues early on in the process. The employer's are more inclined to be understanding if they know about issues in advance.
Check your credit report. In the US you are entitled to one free credit report per year.
If you have questions email me at wernerleutert@modernbutlers.com
Visit my web site www.homestaffingnetwork.com
Institute Training and Educational Programs
The International Institute of Modern Butlers draws upon the widest selection of trainers available in the field to train Hotel Butlers, and is the only source for training on the new Spa Butler program. If you are seriously considering butler service, improving or expanding upon existing butler service, or implementing the Spa Butler program in your hotel or resort, then contact the registrar or visit the Institute's website today.
If You Can't Make it to a School, Try Studying at Home
Continuing education for those already in service, who may be long on experience but short on formal butler training, is hard to do when one is too busy to take time off work. The same holds true for anyone wanting to move into the service industry.
That's when a correspondence course has value. The Institute has therefore created two correspondence courses and is providing each at an introductory fee of US $2,000 (plus materials).
The course for those in the hospitality industry is based on the best-selling industry text, Hotel Butlers, The Great Service Differentiators. To see an outline, click here.
The course for those in private service is based on the best-selling industry text, Butlers and Household Managers, 21st Century Professionals. For an outline, click here.
Both courses include many other industry reference books and DVD's and numerous practical assignments.
For more information or to enroll, visit the Correspondence Course page of the Institute's website.
Creating Consistency - Introducing Professional Organizing
by Paul Hogan
Have you ever heard of Professional Organizing? It is a relatively new field, just over two decades old in the United States and about a decade old in Canada. Because of its newness, you likely aren't the only one asking "What is a Professional Organizer?" And once you understand what they do, you might even start believing in Santa all over again.
A Professional Organizer simplifies lives and does what clients do not have the time or the ability to do for themselves. To summarize quickly, an Organizer can do any of these three things:
Streamlining: Getting people down to the essence of who they are without all the extra baggage. This can be anything from a search and rescue mission bringing them up to a functional level, to tweaking an already well-organized space into an optimal working or living environment
Simplifying: Paring down a person's life for maximum results with minimal effort. This is done by asking the question WHY? - What is the benefit of doing something? What is the cost of doing it or not doing it? How can someone do what he or she has to do more quickly and with less wasted effort?
Substituting: Taking over for someone when they don't have the time or inclination. For example, a move is a nightmare of details to consider. A Professional Organizer takes care of the details so that clients don't have to worry.
In other words, Organizers make things simple and free people from clutter and stress.
Organizers aren't necessarily the sort of people who walk around with a label maker, boxing everything up including the family dog! Organizers work to find the right level of comfort for their clients. They also provide a necessary objective view point, and are able to make decisions about things that often clients can't look at from a practical viewpoint.
Usually a Professional Organizer comes in when people don't know where to get started. In the case of multiple-estate management, a client might ask staff to make sure their collection of wine is catalogued and is consistent across all their homes. An Organizer will come in and create a cataloguing scheme that suits the people who will be accessing the information - staff or client - and then would work with the staff or the client to create systems for easy maintenance by everyone.
I was recently introduced to this field of service by Alex Fayle, President of Professional Organizers in Canada, and owner of House Therapy Residential Organizing Services. Alex has a unique background for residential organizing as he has a Masters of Information Studies and a Records Management background. He approaches his residential organizing projects from an information management perspective - everything is information, whether it's furniture, paper, ways of doing things or room layouts.
Alex impressed upon me the need that most people have for organizing, especially when living in multiple homes - if things aren't consistent across all the homes, confusion, and frustration results for the homeowner. But due to different cultures and styles of living throughout the country and the world, having staff create a consistent operating mode in each home can be a challenge.
With his many connections to the museum world, Alex also has the resources for collection management, a definite need for many of our clients.
To find out more about Professional Organizing and the services Alex Fayle's House Therapy offers, visit his website at www.housetherapy.net.
Contact Paul Hogan directly with your feedback and comments.
Cadbury - Advice from a Butler
Dear Cadbury,
We recently received information that our former Employer is not giving us a good reference when contacted by phone. When the position ended, we were told our service had been very satisfactory and they would be happy to provide a reference for us and the also provided us with a letter of recommendation.
We have now learned the Lady of the Home is providing inaccurate information regarding our employment. We are disappointed by this news, but are not surprised.
As we provided the majority of services to the client, there are no other coworkers or vendors to use as alternate references.
We would greatly appreciate your advice on how to proceed in regard to this matter. T & T
Dear T & T,
You situation is not that unusual. Some employers become silently angry when good employees move on for whatever reason. Sometimes the reasons are not rational. I offer two ideas to consider.
(1) Ring up the employers and discuss the reference with them and the feedback that you have gotten. Whoever called them may have misunderstood them or annoyed them.
(2) On their letter of reference, add a note from yourselves explaining that "it has come to our attention that despite the nice reference letter, the employers now seem to be unhappy with our departure and we have reason to believe that their verbal reference will now tend to negate the one that they freely gave us in writing when we left their employment. We would like the potential reference checker to be aware of this fact and ask that you verify that they wrote the reference letter and if their comments now are uncomplimentary, question the change in attitude. We hope that the reference taker will take the whole situation in perspective when evaluating the usefulness of the former employer's comments."
Cadbury
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with any article ideas, concerns, comments or suggestions for our next issue.