TRANSCRIPT: How Do You Manage Staff Who Won't Wait for You?
The Michelle Pascoe Hospitality Podcast
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Michelle: Welcome everyone to today's podcast. I have a very dear friend that I've known for many, many years, but if you're on YouTube, you'll know her face because she's our media go-to on AI here in Australia. Kim Seeling Smith is a business futurist who helps organisations thrive through the rapidly changing world of AI and the polycrisis, where multiple crises intersect and affect each other. Kim has literally held a seat at the table with Sir Richard Branson for her innovative work on the future of work. She was named a top 101 global influencer on employee engagement, wrote the how-to guide on one-on-ones, Mind Reading for Managers, and co-wrote a career development guide with mega author Brian Tracy. You'll frequently see Kim on the Today Show, in Forbes, Fast Company, Smart Company, CEO Magazine, CNBC, the Australian Financial Review, the Sydney Morning Herald, and many other print and radio media outlets. As a former professional accountant with KPMG, Kim is a rare individual who seamlessly blends commercial acumen with cutting-edge future of work practices. Welcome, Kim, it's so lovely to have you on the podcast today.
Kim: Thank you, Michelle. It makes me exhausted just hearing about that, that can't possibly be me.
Michelle: Just before you came on, you were saying how many television slots you've had over the last 12 months.
Kim: Yeah, we were just talking about that. I'm going to be on the Today Show again next Thursday, live in studio. I did a lifestyle change about three years ago, so I live in the country now, but I'll be in Sydney, live in studio next Thursday. I think that's my 32nd appearance on Today.
Michelle: Which is absolutely phenomenal, and it's obvious why, because you keep yourself not just up to date, but ahead of what's happening, because AI and that futurist lens on what's coming is changing so rapidly, more so than ever before. We've got some set questions, but I know we'll go off on some tangents, including your rant on Instagram yesterday about employers watching out for their next interview over Zoom or Teams. We'll get to chat about that a little later. You talk about the three disruptions reshaping business right now: the AI revolution, the polycrisis, and the rise of the empowered workforce. That's a phrase that's been used a lot, then died off, and has come back, and it's so important for a hospitality operator sitting here in Australia, or in America or Europe today, managing a club, a hotel, a hotel chain, or restaurants. What does each of those actually look like on the ground, not in theory, but what are they already experiencing?
Kim: It's fascinating, because I think the hospitality industry is, in many ways, at the coalface, on the front lines of all three of these. So let's take them one by one. AI is changing how we do what we do. In a hospitality environment it can be a huge opportunity, especially for middle managers, because AI can run reports for them, do automated rostering, and take a lot of that icky work nobody likes doing. I actually started my career in hospitality. I worked in the hotel industry for four years and look back really fondly on that time. I was involved in all different parts of the hotel, and I've frequented hospitality organisations my entire life, so in some ways it's a huge opportunity, and in other ways... then you've got what's called embodied AI, which is the robots. I live in the middle of regional Queensland now, and our local sushi place, about fifteen kilometres up the road, has robots serving the sushi.
Michelle: Wow.
Kim: Yeah. I'll answer your question in a bit of a roundabout way: 2026 has become the year of agentic AI. If you think of generative AI as the head and the heart of AI, thinking about things and showing empathy, agentic AI is the hands, it can do stuff for us, and it's been a huge boon in capability in 2026. 2027 and beyond is going to be the year, and years, of embodied AI. This stuff is becoming real. So in hospitality, you're dealing with all of the AI things. The opportunity is that we can automate the dull, dirty, and dangerous work, the 3Ds.
Michelle: The 3Ds, I like that. Dull, dirty, and dangerous.
Kim: Exactly. We can automate that, and it frees up our time to do different things. The challenge, and I'm going to jump ahead a little to the rise of the empowered workforce, is that hospitality is one of the hardest-hit industries in terms of finding and keeping people. It's always been a transient industry, and when I get to that, I'll talk about the huge opportunity we have there. But if you marry the AI disruption with the rise of the empowered workforce, what you find is a group of people who are fearful of their jobs. So the opportunity AI provides, taking that dull, dirty, and dangerous work off our plate, is also a challenge, because it's really forcing us out of our comfort zone to do the more interesting things. For a lot of us, especially if we've been in our roles a long time, even across different companies, doing the same thing for a long time becomes part of our identity and our purpose, and AI is challenging that identity and purpose. So that disruption brings both challenges and opportunities.
If we move to the middle circle of my model, which is the polycrisis: brains much smarter than mine coined that term, and I think it's really descriptive of where we are right now, where all these big things are happening at once. We've got wars in the Middle East, climate change, fuel prices going up, which is affecting this industry tremendously, fertiliser and food supply issues meaning restaurants can't get food, and the cost of living crisis that's been around for a while. For the hospitality industry, or really any industry, the outcome of all this is twofold.
The first is that consumer demands are shifting rapidly. The example I always give, and this actually comes back to hospitality, I say this from the stage every week when I talk about these three disruptions: do you remember in 2019 here in Australia when plastic straws just disappeared from cafes? One day you're using plastic straws, the next you're using paper ones. I'm a scuba diver, part of the reason I live in North Queensland, so I was applauding that, but I remember thinking, if I were a small manufacturer of plastic straws, how would I cope? What we're seeing, and in the States we've seen this even more, is a huge backlash against iconic brands, including Bud Light, for organisations that make moves, I won't say which side of the political spectrum I fall on, but organisations that make moves contradictory to a certain group's values face real backlash. Because of all this, companies are having to be very innovative and very agile to react, because consumers can shift their buying habits very quickly. We've seen restaurants boycotted, more so in the States and Europe than in Australia, but there's a huge backlash from consumers when the companies they buy from don't behave in line with what they see as the right values.
The second piece is that people are exhausted, frustrated, and angry, and there's a low-level simmering tension. I know you're seeing it in hospitality, with your customers and with your employees. So you have these two disruptions, and to overcome the challenges and seize the opportunities from both, you need the right people in the right roles doing the right things. Enter the rise of the empowered workforce, which is a combination of a critical skill shortage, something hospitality has had for decades, running into a generational, though not exclusive, re-prioritisation of what work looks like and what people will put up with. Together, those two factors make the talent space really challenging, especially in hospitality.
Michelle: It certainly is, and I know we want to talk about this in more depth, because this is what we're always hearing from people in the hospitality industry: the Gen Zs. We don't want to put them in a generational box, but they are coming in, and you're quite right, Kim, it's always been a transient industry. It's usually that first job someone gets from school, or someone re-entering the workforce after time away, whether it's scrubbing pots out the back, pouring cocktails, or serving. What we try to get across to them is that there's a wonderful opportunity for long-term professional development, that you can go from picking up glasses or sharpening the keno pencils to being a CEO, not just of major venues here, but anywhere in the world. But it's about showing them that.
Kim: And that's the first mistake, Michelle, and I'm going to pick on you a little because I know you so well. That's old-school thinking. Old-school thinking is that people want to come into the workplace and see that opportunity, that golden light on the hill, to become the CEO or whatever they want to do. Gen Zs don't want that. It might fit into their overall career trajectory, but it's not a career trajectory to them. 72% of Gen Zs have side hustles. That side hustle could be another job, so alongside their main job they might have another one, in the same industry or a completely different one. They invest in shares or stocks, in property. They know they've inherited a world... this is the first generation, well, arguably the second, don't quote me on the exact stats, but I think millennials were the first generation not going to do better than their parents' generation. Baby boomers expected to do better than their parents' generation, and so did Gen X. Millennials, I was talking to someone about this the other day, are the ones going, "wait a minute, I have these goals and I'm not reaching them," so there's a cognitive dissonance there. Gen Zs are different: they never had those goals. They knew early on they weren't going to own a house anytime soon. The lives their parents and grandparents lived, they know, deep down, aren't accessible to them. Which again is both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge for employers is that if we expect them to have the same attitude towards work that we did, we're going to be sorely disappointed. But if we take what we've built and tweak it, instead of only offering opportunities to learn for the next promotion, we give them a series of skills that will help them in their career regardless of whether that's in a job, in a company, or running their own business. They're the most entrepreneurial generation in the market right now, or they're doing a combination of things. So we need a very different attitude towards our Gen Z employees. And by the way, that Gen Z attitude is infecting other generations too, especially boomers who don't want to retire and ride off into the sunset.
Michelle: That is so very true.
Kim: So if we can equip them with skills... I talk very differently to my clients now about training and development. In fact, the Australian Financial Review runs the Best Places to Work survey every year, and this year, for the first time, they found something different in what drives employee engagement and motivation. Career development has always been one of the top three, but this year it's not career development as a trajectory, it's giving people the skills that help them stay relevant today and prepare for tomorrow. Not three years from now, not five years from now. People want to outrun AI, and they want to learn things that will actually help them.
Michelle: You're right on all those levels, because what we're seeing in hospitality is Gen Z coming in and within a few weeks saying, "I need more." The conversations I'm having with CEOs are about giving them projects, giving them those extra skills, because as soon as we lose them, we lose them from the industry altogether. What I'm saying is: give them the idea that they can go for that, maybe not right now, but if we don't show them there's a path, they'll just move on to something else. It's a fantastic industry, you can start off scrubbing pots and end up running major hotels overseas, or managing your own company. I completely agree with you, Kim, that they've got these side hustles, and it's not just... you and I have been running our own businesses for multiple decades now, so when I'm talking to a team, particularly the middle managers, I say, what you're learning from me isn't just for your job today and tomorrow, it's for if you start your own company in a few years, or even if you're already doing that, you can bring that with you.
The other thing I've noticed with Gen Zs is this community spirit. It doesn't always start with the Gen Zs themselves, it's usually a middle or senior manager, of any age, who starts that connection, building that sense of belonging. Registered clubs have been doing that for decades, but we're seeing the growth of it now, going into schools, helping local organisations. It takes the young ones a while to get behind it, but once they do, it becomes a big part of why they want to work for a company. What are your thoughts?
Kim: Absolutely, and I think that goes back to people wanting purpose. This is what I wrote a book about back in 2014, though don't go and buy it, it's horrendously out of date, I keep saying I'll update it. I do have a white paper, and anyone who wants to reach out for it is welcome to it free of charge, which goes through what I call the nine currencies. I was a recruitment consultant for fifteen years before starting this business. I interviewed over five thousand people, and I reverse-engineered those five thousand exit interviews into my first model, the Nine Currencies of Choice. I pressure-test these nine currencies every year against the latest research, like the AFR survey I just mentioned, and purpose and values sit at number twelve on the circle, on the clock face, for a reason: they're actually number one, and that's only gotten stronger since Covid. Especially in the light of disruption and the polycrisis, people don't feel they have control over much, but they do have control over giving back to their community, and the community they connect with, and I think that's what drives that behaviour.
Michelle: I'm seeing that too, I absolutely agree, and it's lovely to see, because they get the chance to be proud of where they work, and then they have a stronger connection, particularly in hospitality, because it's quite an unusual workplace. You might only work with one person once a week or once a fortnight, you're like ships in the night, especially in management roles. So when they build that connection externally and bring it into the workplace, instead of thinking, "it's Friday night, I really don't want to be on," and this isn't for every case, I know a lot of listeners will say some of them will still only work when they want to, and that's true, but on a Friday night, perhaps what we're seeing now is instead of thinking "I can't be bothered, I'm not going to go in," they think, "if I don't come in tonight, I'll be letting Jack and Mary down," people they had a good time with at school or wherever. I don't know that we hear that said outwardly, but I think and hope it's being felt internally, and that it's reducing those no-shows.
Kim: I can guarantee it, Michelle. When I was running the Mind Reading for Managers program, one of the things I taught managers to use was this currencies of choice model, the nine keys, for short. When I taught them to use that wheel to increase motivation, productivity, and engagement, and I can give you case studies on this, one of the things that came up: from time to time you always have to have tough conversations with people, that's just how it is, and old-school thinking has us conditioned as managers to go back to the carrot and the stick, "if you don't do your job, young lady..." That might get you short-term behavioural change, but it won't get you long-term change. So when I worked with managers, instead of "I'll give you a verbal warning, then a written warning," we worked on the consequences to their team members. When they brought that in, behavioural change happened naturally.
Michelle: So it sounds like what you're describing happens quite naturally from these interactions people have outside the workplace. I can absolutely see that. There's a strong correlation, because they're starting to feel that connection with that person, and they don't want to let them down, not just the roster, but the person. I'm sure a lot of my listeners are thinking, "well then why did five of them not turn up last night," and it does happen, people are individuals, and we can only hope they grow. It really is a wonderful industry to be in, it gives them those opportunities, but we do have to show them the skills, and nobody's waiting around for Fred or Mary to finally retire. If we don't give them those opportunities now, we lose them, to other industries entirely, and we saw that during Covid.
Kim: Absolutely, and I think there's also an opportunity to think laterally about baby boomers who don't want to ride off into the sunset. Myself included, I'm a prime example. I loved my time working in hotels so much that I've always said when I get old and crusty and don't want to do this work anymore, I'll go find the front office of a hotel and work behind the front desk for a while.
Michelle: Yes!
Kim: Because you get that engagement with people, and I think that's what's so lovely, and what hospitality offers us.
Michelle: But right at the start, you were talking about changes in customer behaviour, and we do see a lot of that, a lot of stress because of people's financial situations, all the crises happening out there that we can't control ourselves, and that comes out in some pretty poor behaviour. It's disappointing, and it's beyond resilience when people say "just be resilient, don't let them get to you," it's really hard when you're trying your best and someone's throwing food at you, swearing at you, or just getting upset, and you're thinking, I'm trying to do my best here. You can see why a lot of people go, "I don't really want to be in this business." But I think what we have to remember, Kim, is that's a really small percentage. Most people who come into a club, a restaurant, a cafe, or a hotel are going to have a really nice time, and it's about how you approach it. You're dealing with somebody who has feelings, and you never know their backstory.
Kim: You never know. They may have saved for months for a dinner out, and they're under pressure because they want to show their partner a good time or give their family a good experience, you just never know. I learned that myself, my senior year of high school I worked as a waitress, I was a terrible waitress, they used to call me Crash, because I dropped so many things.
Michelle: Haha, I'd forgotten about that, maybe I'd blocked it out.
Kim: It was awful! I'll admit, if you haven't been to America, when you go to a function at a conference centre and see the staff coming in with those massive trays, holding twelve or fifteen plates with one hand, I think, my goodness, their wrists must be tortured. Things have changed as they've gotten older, though I was at a conference recently in America and they were still doing it, just with fewer plates.
Michelle: You're right, yes. Crash could carry two plates, I could talk, that's what we're good at, Kim.
Kim: We're good at that, exactly! For me it was mostly, I worked at a brand I'm not sure even still exists, Swensen's Ice Cream, and I'd carry one milkshake to a table and it would mysteriously leap off my tray, I don't know how that happened. I'm sure a lot of people listening have held a tray with a cocktail, a bottle of beer, a schooner, and you can see it coming, especially in a restaurant with a group and a new team member, you think, please don't pick up the heavy bottle, everything's about to tip, and you want to jump in and help.
Michelle: This is where it gets interesting, where people might overstate their skill set. Let's talk about your Instagram post yesterday, where you had a bit of a rant about the use of AI in interviews. Can you share that? I'm sure my listeners will think, "you've got to be kidding," and then think, "actually, that's probably exactly what's happening."
Kim: I heard about this a few months ago and kind of blocked it out, thinking, that can't possibly be true, because I didn't want it to be true. Let me preface this by saying I'm a huge proponent of AI, I think it can help us solve so many of the challenges we face in the world. What terrifies me is how human beings use AI. So let's get those two things straight. When I first heard about this, I thought surely not, and then over the weekend, my sister, who lives in Chicago and works in HR, she's excellent at what she does, was deciding between going fully into fractional work, which she'd had a lot of success with, or taking a full-time role. She noticed a pattern: every single full-time role she applied for was rejected outright, while she was very successful getting interviews and offers for fractional roles. She mentioned to me over the weekend, almost offhand, that she was just going to concentrate on fractional roles now because it was too hard to find a full-time job. I thought, I wonder why, and it sat in the back of my mind. Then I was scrolling my news feed and saw some Stanford research showing that a lot of companies are using AI screening tools, and it's just a handful of them, and one of them gives you a score that can follow you for almost a year.
Michelle: Wow.
Kim: So if you apply for a job, regardless of your seniority, at a company using one of these tools, and you're rejected for not being a fit, the next time you apply you might be the perfect fit, but because you're carrying that score, it's an automatic rejection.
Michelle: Wow.
Kim: That's when I thought, this is problematic, let me do a deep dive into AI and interviewing, because it's something I've worked on from time to time. I don't spend a lot of time teaching interview skills, because everybody needs to learn how to interview, but nobody realises they need to, or wants to pay for help with it. So I thought, let me look into this properly, and I remembered something I'd heard a few months earlier: there are apps, and let's say we're on a Zoom call right now, and this is an interview, you're interviewing me for a job. I could have an app running as an overlay on my screen that you wouldn't see. You ask me a question, and the AI listens and feeds the answer to me like a teleprompter.
Michelle: So the AI is actually listening in real time?
Kim: In real time, that quick. Candidates have always done a better job of preparing for interviews than hiring managers have of preparing to interview them, that's been true since I started in recruitment in 1994. That's why so many hiring managers make bad hires, because they don't know how to screen people properly. Fast forward to 2026, and now you've got AI tools doing that preparation for candidates in real time. So I went on a bit of a rant, specifically: if you're a candidate, don't do this, it's cheating. But more than that, say you get the job that way, is it actually the right job for you? Who knows, because you haven't gone through the valuable experience of having a real conversation with a hiring manager and finding out about them, you've just answered questions fed to you by AI. So hiring managers need to be aware of this too.
Which is why I say, in the hospitality industry, and I've had a lot of hospitality clients, Food Co, which owns Muffin Break, Jamaica Blue, and Dreamy Donuts here in Australia, was a big client of mine about ten years ago, and they had one of the best interview processes I've ever seen in hospitality. This was before virtual interviews became popular, they're probably doing some now, but you always want to pair virtual interviews with in-person ones if you can, even if it's not you doing it. If the candidate's in a different city and you're a large company, have someone from that city meet them in person and ask the same questions, or at least a subset of them, then put them into an on-the-job situation to really see their skills. Food Co did a marvellous job of that. So as hiring managers, we need to be aware these AI technologies exist, and that candidates now have incredibly good tools to game the system. But we also have to recognise the other side: these AI screening tools, and I wrote a lengthy LinkedIn article about both sides of this, I get why they're used, they save time. But it is soul-destroying work, having gone through hundreds of thousands, and I'm not being hyperbolic, hundreds of thousands of applications and resumes, it is boring, and I haven't found anyone who actually likes screening resumes. But unless a human eye looks at that resume, it can't pick up either the red flags or the hidden gems. We can almost train AI at this point to spot red flags, but there's still something about human judgement that reads between the lines and recognises patterns. More importantly, in a candidate-short market, we want to look for people who aren't obvious fits, who we can train and mould, because they'll end up being better fits, and they'll stay longer. So my problem isn't with the technology, it's with the way humans use the technology.
Michelle: I think that's the root of all evil, isn't it, it's the way humans actually operate it. It's interesting, that first example, where you get a score, it's a bit like a credit rating, you don't know what it is, and it sticks with you for years, so that can be really damaging for that person. Any tips on how they could get around it, or other options?
Kim: I've been thinking about this, and I'm still formulating a plan, but where I've landed is: if you can connect with the hiring manager directly. A lot of job ads, and by the way advertising for roles is the worst way in the world to find people, don't get me started on that, we'll be here for another two hours, but a lot of ads will only let you apply through a portal. So apply through the portal, but then reach out to the hiring manager directly and say, I've applied through your portal, but I really wanted to connect with you, and not about how great you are, but positioned around what's in it for them: your brand is exactly the type of brand I want to be aligned with because of your values, or, I was in your restaurant in Kansas City a few weeks ago and had the most marvellous experience, and I can only imagine that's a testament to how you train your people, and I'd love to be aligned with a brand like yours. Position it around what's in it for them, not how great you are. If you can connect with them on a personal level, it's not going to work every time, but that's the first thought I had when my sister told me her story. I've been on LinkedIn for nearly two decades, and I think that was one of the first things I did when it came out, is realise you can make those connections with people, or at least get on their radar, and I think that's what matters, breaking through.
As for the AI answering for the candidate, I always think about the impact when you actually get there on day one and you're sitting there thinking, I really don't know what this is. So just be honest, be yourself, that's what's key.
Michelle: I've got one last question for you, Kim, and I'm sure we could talk all day about all of this, I'd love to have you back, because AI certainly isn't going away, and as you said, what's happening this year is different to last year, or even last month, let alone next year. You're the person the Today Show and the AFR, and plenty of other media outlets, call on when they need someone to make sense of AI for business leaders, and I do thank you for not talking in a lot of jargon today, and for giving us some real, true insight. Kim, when a registered club CEO or a hotel general manager asks you where to start with AI, not the big-picture answer they could hear anywhere, what would you say are their first three steps?
Kim: Great question. The first step is understanding there are three types of AI implementation. There's the big enterprise version, where your IT department comes in with specialists and automates workflows, those implementations are problematic, 95% of them fail at this point. So if you're in a position to make that decision, be aware of that, and I can give you a white paper that walks through it all. The second type isn't really an implementation, it's what everyday people can use, what I call in-app AI. If you use Salesforce as your CRM, for outbound sales or inbound customer service, Salesforce has a fantastic embedded AI. Copilot does the same. Whatever program you're working in, when you see that little AI symbol, it might be stars, might be diamonds, Microsoft has its own, my friend Barry Honey says just click that damn button and see what it does. So start there, with the AI you already have access to. If you're working with a larger company, talk to your IT department about what you have access to, and about data security, that has to come first. But there's a whole host of AI tools you can use on your own too.
What I like to say is: look at your role, look at what you find yourself doing again and again, because in 2026, that's very likely something that can be automated easily with an off-the-shelf AI tool. So the first thing to do is a job audit. What do you do on a repetitive basis that you could automate, and then how do you actually go about automating it? Well, you can ask your AI, and it'll tell you. There are so many agentic applications available to us now. I was actually having a conversation with an AI assistant about something I'd had in my head for years, this diagnostic I'd been trying to build, and it finally said, would you like me to just do this for you? I said yes, and it did it in three minutes. And you think, how many sleepless nights have I spent thinking about that?
Michelle: Exactly, and I agree with you, I love how it doesn't just give you the answers, you've really got to be talking it through, speaking it out. I love how it questions you back.
Kim: Me too, I think that's phenomenal.
Michelle: I'll put something in, and it reads through it and goes, "but Michelle, you said five and you've actually listed six," or, "you've mentioned this person's name, but are they really that person at that company?" It really gets you questioning yourself. It's a bit like having a school teacher with a red pen going, "just check this again," instead of just saying, "this is phenomenal." That's what I love about it, because even though it's there to help you, it's still your words, but it challenges you.
Kim: It's a sparring partner, which is the best possible use of AI. The other thing I can offer your listeners is a list of my favourite AI tools, I update it every month, so happy to share that too.
Michelle: Perfect, before we finish up, I'll put the links in for that, and for the white paper, Kim. Would you like to share with my listeners, who are global, and I know you speak at conferences all over the world, both in person and virtually, and work with a number of large organisations internationally, how they can connect with you?
Kim: Absolutely, all they have to do is remember my name, because I'm the only Kim Seeling Smith on the planet. Seeling is pronounced like "feeling," but spelled S-E-E-L-I-N-G, Kim Seeling Smith. You can find me on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, my website, everything is just my name. I'm everywhere, as well as in the magazines and on television, as you said, again next Thursday, you'll see me on your screens here in Australia.
Michelle: Thank you so much, Kim, for joining us today. I've really enjoyed this conversation, and having you share it with such authenticity, no jargon, and real understanding of where we're going from here. Thank you so much.
Kim: It's been my absolute pleasure, always a pleasure to talk to you, Michelle. Take care.
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