Who’s Teaching Your Young Staff the Judgement AI Can’t?

Young hospitality staff are missing the judgement that earlier generations picked up on the job, because the repetitive tasks that used to teach it are now handled by technology. Leaders have to teach that judgement on purpose, and the most important part of it today is service recovery: knowing what to do when a system has made a promise to a guest that the floor can’t keep.

When I started out in this industry in the eighties, nobody explained anything. You did as you were told. But in doing it, you learned. Every booking went into a diary by hand, so you knew who was coming in and which table they liked. You took the phone calls, you poured the same regular’s drink every Friday, and after a while you could read a room before anyone had said a word. None of that was formal training, yet it built the instincts that every good hospitality professional relies on.

Much of that work is now done for us. Bookings are made online, loyalty apps remember the preferences, and automated messages go out before a guest has even left home. I think that’s mostly a good thing. But I’ve been asking myself a question all month, and it came up in every one of my October podcast conversations: if technology is doing the work our young people used to learn from, where are they learning the judgement?

Why are young staff missing the instincts older generations built?

The short answer is that the repetition has gone, and the repetition was the training.

Danica Smith, an executive coach who spent years working for hospitality technology vendors, told me about a wedding coordinator who stood up at an AI conference and explained that no system could have told her what she picked up during a 45-minute show round. She could see from how the couple treated each other that they weren’t going to make it to the wedding. That one observation could have saved the venue $60,000. Danica’s worry, and mine, is whether a 20-year-old who learns the job inside an automated, seamless process will ever develop that kind of read on people.

That isn’t a criticism of young people. They’re quick, capable and incredibly ambitious, and many of them will move from washing dishes to running a kitchen faster than any generation before them. The gap is in what we give them to learn from.

Why does leading several generations at once make this harder?

I’ve mentioned many times that this is the first time in history leaders have had to manage so many generations at once. In most clubs I work with, there are baby boomers, Gen X, millennials and Gen Z on the same roster, and Gen Alpha is starting to come through in the some venues at 15 and 16.

Each of those groups learned hospitality differently. Your longest-serving team members carry an enormous amount of knowledge in their heads. They know that Fred likes his beer poured before he reaches the bar and that Mary always wants the corner table near the window. That knowledge was never written down, and as that generation retires at their own pace, a lot of it walks out the door with them.

Meanwhile, your Gen Z team members have no interest in spending seven years learning to pour a beer before they’re trusted with the gaming room, and honestly, they shouldn’t have to. Good systems, clear procedures and a decent checklist can teach the mechanics of a role in weeks. What a checklist can’t teach is the part that happens between the steps, which is reading the person in front of you and deciding what they need.

How has AI changed service recovery?

This is where the gap really shows. Every booking platform, chatbot and loyalty app you use is now making promises to guests on your behalf. James McIntyre, a customer experience and loyalty strategist who has worked with some of Australia’s biggest loyalty brands, calls this promise governance, and he argues that when one of those promises breaks, it’s a leadership question first, a training question second and a technology question last.

In practice, when a promise breaks, it usually lands on the least experienced person in your venue. The guest who was promised an outdoor table, a dietary option or a loyalty reward doesn’t arrive at the CEO’s office. They arrive at the front desk or the bar, where there’s a good chance a 19-year-old is standing.

Service recovery used to be something the duty manager handled a few times a week. As more of the guest journey becomes automated, it becomes something your frontline team handles every shift. Your people now need to know when to trust the system, when to step in and override it, and how to recover well when it’s got something wrong. That’s a real skill, and very few venues are training for it.

How do you teach judgement to a generation that wants to know why?

The good news is that Gen Z hands us the answer. They want to know why, and that question is the opening rather than the obstacle.

Tracey Boeck, Executive Manager of Hospitality and Customer Experience at Maroochydore RSL, shared how she gives her young team the reason behind the service. She describes Bob, who comes in every Thursday for his hot roast pork, as having his own “Splendour in the Grass” moment, because it’s the highlight of his week and anything that gets in his way spoils it. She brings local suppliers in after the lunch rush so her staff can taste the wine and smell what they’re describing. Once young staff understand why something matters to a guest, they start making better calls on their own.

Here’s how I’d build that into your venue.

Teach the reason before the rule. Every standard in your venue exists because of a guest. When you train a new team member, explain who that standard protects and what it feels like for the guest when it’s missed. Judgement grows out of understanding, and young people will apply a reason far more flexibly than they’ll apply a rule.

Capture what your long-serving staff know. Pair your most experienced people with your newest ones and give them time to share the stories about the regulars, the quirks of the venue and the things that went wrong, and how they were fixed. Mentoring across the generations works both ways, because your younger staff will often know more about the technology than anyone else in the building.

Make recovery permission explicit. Your team should know exactly what they’re allowed to offer a disappointed guest without finding a manager, whether that’s a complimentary drink, a different table or simply a sincere apology and a solution. When young staff are unsure of their authority, they freeze or disappear, and the guest’s frustration doubles while they wait.

Practise the moments when the system is wrong. Role-play the scenario where the booking says one thing and the guest at the door says another. Walk through what your team should say, what they can offer and when they should trust the person over the screen. These conversations are hard to get right for the first time with a real guest in front of you.

Have the honest conversation about AI. Many young people entering hospitality are anxious about whether technology will take their jobs. Danica made the point that leaders don’t need every answer to be honest with their teams. Telling your people that AI will handle the routine work so they can focus on the guest, and that you’ll work the rest out together, removes a fear that gets in the way of learning.

Where should a club or hotel leader start?

Start small and start this week. Choose one automated touchpoint in your venue, such as your online booking confirmation or your loyalty app’s welcome offer, and sit down with one of your youngest team members. Look at what it promises a guest together, then ask them what they would do if that promise couldn’t be kept when the guest arrived. Their answer will tell you a great deal about the judgement your team has today and the training they need next.

Technology will keep taking on more of the routine work in our venues, and that gives our people more time for the moments that really matter to guests. Those moments still depend on a person with the confidence, the knowledge and the permission to make a good call. Making sure every generation on your team has that is one of the most important jobs a hospitality leader has right now.

If you’d like help building these skills in your team, my customer service workshops, the Middle Management Movement and the Executive Leaders Movement are designed to develop your people from the frontline through to your senior leadership team. You’ll find all of them at https://www.michellepascoe.com/traininganddevelopmentprograms

You can also hear my full October wrap-up episode, “Who Owns the Promise When AI Gets It Wrong?”, along with my conversations with James McIntyre, Danica Smith and Tracey Boeck, on The Michelle Pascoe Hospitality Podcast: https://youtu.be/qdF6O0YPfD8