The importance of being earnest….

The Importance of Being Earnest, one of Oscar Wilde’s best known plays, a romantic comedy with a satirical view on Victorian England. Also made into a 1952 movie and then again in 2022 movie. The 2002 movie didn't set the world on fire despite an IMDB rating of 6.8, a cast including Colin Firth and the pedigree of the underlying work. With a budget of $15m and box office receipts of $17.2m, so hardly yielded a pay back for those involved.  

But that brings me in a roundabout way to something with a far greater payback potential….the pursuit of strong environmental values in the hospitality business, delivered in an earnest and genuine way as a tool to align the largely Gen Z workforce with a large Gen Z customer base. 

An article in ESG Today focuses on the outputs of  Deloitte’s Gen Z and Millennial Survey 2023. One of the headlines is “over 40% of Gen Z, Millennials would switch jobs over climate concerns”. This is quite staggering, and poses a real opportunity for the hospitality sector which is perpetually struggling with attracting and retaining good staff. So surely having a strong stance on climate, with tangible impact metrics that aligns with your Gen Z and Millennials work force seems surely a no brainer?! 

Then on the consumer side, its well documented that the environment is always ranking in the top considerations of Gen Z and Millennials, this article in Forbes has some great stats on this including that “45% stopped purchasing certain brands because of sustainability or ethics concerns”. All the while green washing or misleading claims are getting more spotlight so empirically based claims are the way to go, especially in light of more pressure on ‘carbon neutral product claims’ as reported in the Guardian this week.   

So your staff care about it, your customers care about it. Its time to embrace the importance of being earnest…..not idle…