How Do You Manage Staff Who Won't Wait for You?

Managing Gen Z hospitality staff means offering skills and purpose instead of a career ladder, says business futurist Kim Seeling Smith on The Michelle Pascoe Hospitality Podcast. With 72% of Gen Z running a side hustle, old-school carrot and stick management only produces short-term compliance. Michelle Pascoe, a Certified Speaking Professional with over 30 years in hospitality, says leaders who replace it with purpose, community, and AI-ready skills keep people longer.

So if the career ladder isn't the hook anymore, what actually keeps a Gen Z hospitality worker showing up on a Friday night?

In this episode, Michelle sits down with business futurist Kim Seeling Smith to unpack the three disruptions reshaping hospitality right now: the AI revolution, the polycrisis, and the rise of the empowered workforce.

Kim has advised organisations globally on the future of work, appeared on the Today Show more than 30 times, and reverse-engineered over 5,000 exit interviews into her Nine Currencies of Choice framework. Her point for hospitality leaders is blunt. Old-school management, built on the promise of climbing a ladder, does not land with a generation that has already priced that ladder out of reach.

Carrot and stick works, in the sense that it gets fast compliance. It just doesn't build loyalty. Kim explains why that approach only ever produces short-term behavioural change, and what replaces it: consequences framed around real people, not policy.

The conversation also covers what AI is already doing inside hospitality operations, from automating rostering to changing how job interviews are run and scored, plus Kim's practical first steps for any club CEO or hotel GM who wants to start using AI properly without an enterprise IT budget.

Key Takeaways

Why 72% of Gen Z having a side hustle changes what loyalty and career development actually look like in hospitality

Why carrot and stick management gets short-term compliance but loses good people over the long term

How AI is already automating the dull, dirty, and dangerous work inside hospitality operations, and what that frees middle managers up to do instead

Why AI screening tools and real-time interview-cheating apps are already changing how hospitality venues need to hire

Kim Seeling Smith's practical first steps for any hospitality leader ready to start using AI properly