A hospitality design studio shapes hotels, restaurants and resorts that must open on a fixed day. This is how to run designers, draughtsmen and site coordinators when the launch date is the only date that matters.
Not sure what you need? Tell us about your business in six short steps and we will come to the first meeting prepared.
Share your requirementsA hospitality interior design studio designs and often oversees the fitting out of hotels, restaurants, cafes, resorts and banquet spaces. The team is led by principal designers and design heads, supported by junior designers, 3D visualisers, draughtsmen, procurement coordinators and site supervisors who visit properties across cities. Projects pass through concept, detailed drawings, vendor selection and a site phase where hundreds of items must arrive and be installed before the owner's opening date. Clients are hoteliers and restaurateurs who change their minds as menus, brands and budgets shift. Staff work long evenings before presentations and travel often to sites. The studio's value is in the eye of its senior designers, so losing one hurts. For the wider sector, read HR for construction and real estate.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in hospitality interior designers. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Delays upstream in design approvals or vendor delivery compress the site phase, and the studio team absorbs the squeeze.
A vendor builds from an old drawing because the revised one was not sent to the right person, and the cost falls on the studio.
Young designers spend months on schedules and revisions with no share in design decisions, and leave for a larger studio.
Designers are called to a property three hours away, come back to missed deadlines and then work late to catch up.
A hotelier asks for a new lobby finish after procurement started, and nobody records the extra hours.
One coordinator knows which carpenter or lighting supplier delivers, and their exit leaves the studio blind.
Teams stay overnight before a client pitch, then get no easy time off afterwards.
A skilled renderer or lighting specialist is offered a better role elsewhere with a single phone call.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Organisation Design; Career and Succession Management; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for construction and real estate, not in general.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a hospitality interior designers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Concept, detailed design, procurement and site phases, each with a named approver and a freeze point after which changes are priced.
Concept, detailed design, procurement and site phases, each with a named approver and a freeze point after which changes are priced. Record the roles in your organisation design.
One person issues drawings, every revision carries a number, and vendors acknowledge receipt.
One person issues drawings, every revision carries a number, and vendors acknowledge receipt. Store the log with project documentation.
A path from schedules to a room, then to a floor, then to a whole outlet, with a review each six months.
A path from schedules to a room, then to a floor, then to a whole outlet, with a review each six months. See learning and development.
A visit calendar showing who is out of studio and who covers their desk, so deadlines do not collide with travel.
A visit calendar showing who is out of studio and who covers their desk, so deadlines do not collide with travel.
Log hours spent on late changes against each project so the studio can bill for them or decide not to.
Log hours spent on late changes against each project so the studio can bill for them or decide not to.
A shared vendor sheet with a second contact owner for each major supplier, so a resignation does not strand a project.
A shared vendor sheet with a second contact owner for each major supplier, so a resignation does not strand a project. Tie it into exit steps.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Clear role descriptions, drawing-issue rules and project hand-off records that stop version mix-ups.
A visible path from drawing schedules to leading a design, which keeps juniors longer.
Reviews that recognise design quality, deadline reliability and client handling.
Understanding why skilled people leave and what keeps them.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in construction and real estate, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Site engineers, supervisors, crews and sales teams leave for different reasons. How to ask what shaped their decision and act on it between projects.
8 min readRead article
A founder's guide to building job grades, titles and billing levels for a growing IT services firm, with a step-by-step method and a grade description outline.
6 min readRead article
A two-hour exercise that names the roles you could not fill quickly, who could cover them, and what readiness would actually require.
7 min readRead article
What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
You may not, but you can reduce the pull. Offer ownership of projects, a share in outcomes and honest development. Ask a qualified professional about what restrictions are fair and enforceable.
Practices vary, so decide a clear rule on extra pay or time off and apply it consistently. Confirm the legal position with a qualified professional.
Have one issuing person, number each revision and ask vendors to acknowledge receipt. A single shared folder with open access invites mistakes.
Record the hours when changes arrive, write a freeze point into the contract and send a short change note before work starts.
Pair them with a senior on one live project, rotate them through site, procurement and drawing, and review progress every six months.
Publish a travel calendar, name a cover for each desk and avoid scheduling visits on presentation weeks.
All 109 business types in construction and real estate · Find another business type
See all HR topics for construction and real estate, or another industry.
Tell us what is slowing your team down. We’ll help you find a practical way forward, starting with a conversation.
