Whitbread

Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants has joined with other major employers in the hospitality sector to create a wide-ranging skills initiative that will make a significant difference to the skills and knowledge of prospective employees, existing workers who want to progress, and to the Company’s high potential employees. An employer-led skills initiative enables Whitbread and its partners to combine the rigour of national standards and qualifications with design and delivery which really works for the sector. The programme is also designed to support the hardest to reach people, who are unemployed and potentially disengaged with opportunities in their community, and to create a pipeline of talent from schools through apprenticeships into management roles.

The skills challenges

The hospitality sector suffers from negative perceptions and an outdated image amongst schools, parents and young people, proving a barrier to recruitment and a tendency to view hospitality as a source of casual jobs rather than as a career. Whitbread, which has more than 1,000 hotels and restaurants across the UK, has noted significant skills gaps and a lack of hospitality qualifications amongst key groups of employees. They and other employers in the sector face increasing shortages of potential recruits of the right calibre, a problem which is even more acute for SMEs.

The solution

Whitbread and its partners will deliver a programme to help young people to understand the huge range of career opportunities available and offer the chance to experience careers in the sector first-hand. It will also improve career progression routes within the sector. It consists of five innovative projects:

• Engagement with schools to promote the sector and careers at Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants, offering information, advice and guidance (IAG), work related curriculum materials, work placements and tasters to young people in schools and colleges
• Jobs with training and work placements for the unemployed, especially NEETs, and outreach into local communities to offer work placements
• A ladder of apprenticeship progression from intermediate to higher levels and into management development, allowing much improved career progression opportunities
• Innovative projects to offer better evidence of the return on investment of training, creating simpler methods for funding and tracking learners, and developing a new system of quality assurance
• Reinvigoration of Whitbread’s Academy network as a training resource for its supply chain and local communities.

Impact

The programme will provide:

• 540 training places for SMEs in Whitbread’s supply chain
• 2,240 work experience places
• 475 apprenticeships, including 115 at advanced and higher levels and 150 for 16-18 – all in addition to existing commitments
• 6,000 new jobs in the next three years.

Whitbread see this opportunity as a chance to work collaboratively with its partners to help shape a future-facing hospitality sector, and to pilot new ways to demonstrate how accountability for public funds can be made both more robust and simpler. It offers young people the potential for a meaningful career in hospitality, with real opportunity for structured, quality development and progression. The employers involved all want to see hospitality better recognised as a professional sector.

“Whitbread is proud to support the Government’s priorities for skills and economic growth. I passionately believe that by working together we in business can make a real difference to the lives of young people in this country and be a force for good. We are creating 6,000 new jobs over the next three years and we want all young people, their parents and teachers, in our local communities to know about the career opportunities, apprenticeships and development we offer. We are delighted that the government’s investment will enable us to speed up and scale up this work.”
Patrick Dempsey, Managing Director, Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants

Who’s involved?

Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants leads the programme, working with employers Compass, Hilton Group, Mitchells and Butlers, Spirit Group, People 1st and The b-live Foundation CIC who bring the organisations together through an integrated schools programme. Whitbread also proposes an entirely new collaboration with the SMEs in its supply chain.

Whitbread will contribute over £7million to the project, in addition to its regular training activity, and public funding of £4.3m will be provided from the Employer Ownership Pilot.

Investment

Employer investment: £7,194,490
Employer Ownership Pilot Funding: £4,393,129
Total: £11,587,619

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