Entry Level Initiatives featuring Hayley Connor, Head of People, Brewhouse & Kitchen

Written by
Nick Clover - Director of Hospitality Jobs UK
Brewhouse & Kitchen

Published
11 Nov 2019

11 Nov 2019 • by Nick Clover - Director of Hospitality Jobs UK

Your route from entry level up to CDP / Assistant Manager – it’s up to you!

Hospitality is a great place to work. The Best in fact, and for so many reasons. That’s what we know, it’s what we say internally and what the UK is hearing and need to continue to hear more and more.

I talk about the fact that the retention piece is directly your recruitment piece and it’s simple when you know how. What isn’t!

When attracting people to businesses, you are selling the reason that people stay and enjoy progressive careers through junior management positions such as Chef De Partie (CDP’s) and Assistant Manager positions up to Senior Management and beyond.

This view is shared from a localised level (businesses) to an industry level (hospitality). Our retention piece as an industry is the attraction piece for people of all ages to enter hospitality. The case studies that ‘we’ are is the reason that people should and will want to join the fun and positive world of hospitality with all the opportunities that it offers.

This could be a long article if I’m not careful so I’ll swiftly turn to Hayley Connor, Head of People from the amazing Brewhouse and Kitchen Pub Company who celebrate amazing environments and micro-breweries in every pub and are an amazing place to work.

Knowing that Brewhouse & Kitchen is amazingly people focused, I wanted to ask Hayley a couple of questions in regards to why it’s a great place to work and why people choose to join the business over many others before looking at how this translates as a bigger picture as part of an industry attraction piece as we support the industry brand- UK Hospitality!

Q- Hi Hayley- can you give us an insight into the internal initiatives that you and your team have put in place to make Brewhouse a great place to work.

A- We do so much to make sure that we maximise the happiness of our teams. From unique career pathways to mastery training sessions in leadership, products, and wellbeing. A great example is our beer specialist program. This is a mastery development program that trains our teams to become true knowledge experts in the world of beer. We designed this initiative to not only commercially align our training to our company mission, but also to inspire the next generation of hospitality leaders. We see a lot of our managers and brewers progress from this route, as it not only opens their eyes to the world of beer, but also what the careers that hospitality has to offer. We have versions of this development program in wine, gin, coffee and service. We believe at Brewhouse and Kitchen that everyone should have the opportunity to learn something new.

Q- What are your views on the Apprentice Scheme and how does it benefit Brewhouse & Kitchen and Hospitality as a whole?

A- Apprenticeships are our industries bread and butter when it comes to future talent and pipeline, and in my opinion behind the survival of our business as we know it. The traditional education vehicles no longer work, and we need apprenticeships to challenge the conventional university routes and empower young people to earn whilst they learn without getting into crippling debt. The benefits for businesses are huge in the areas of engagement, retention and skills, but the true long term benefit is for the industry, as apprentices grow into skilled chefs, servers, brewers or managers they will fill our much publicised skills gap, and recruitment will become easier for hospitality. For this plan to work SMEs and big business need to group together and attract people from the age of 16 - 18 onto apprenticeships, we need to re-educate parents that careers in hospitality are credible, and we need to stop playing lip-service to work life balance, and make sustainable working hours a priority.

Q- What areas of social responsibility does Brewhouse & Kitchen employ and why?

A- As community focused operation our areas of social responsibility can vary site to site. As a company we are dedicated to providing meaningful jobs to diverse groups. We have worked closely with OAPA since its early days to build the right processes to support people getting back into work after experiencing homelessness. We are also developing new initiatives on attracting multi generations and different backgrounds into pub work through providing flexible work opportunities, apprenticeships and eradicating 0 hour contracts. We are passionate about these initiatives as we think hospitality businesses have a fantastic opportunity to challenge the status quo and drive social mobility.  

Amazing- thanks for the insight and sharing the great things you and the Team do at Brewhouse & Kitchen to make your pubs great places to work. Hospitality, a great place to work.

#hospitalityambassadorsuk

#brewinghappiness

Brewhouse & Kitchen