What are the issues?
The UK government has set a target to ensure 95 per cent of the adult population of working age achieve functional literacy and numeracy. A proportion of our team members join Whitbread without nationally recognised qualifications in these key areas.
What are we doing about it?
Our target:
We are aiming for 3,000 qualifications from the Whitbread hotels
and restaurants apprenticeship and Skills for Life programmes and
200 Costa learners by the end of 2010.
A key strand of Good Together is our commitment to providing team member training at all levels. The hospitality sector provides a first job and entry into the professional and service environment for many people. As a leading company in the sector, we believe we have a responsibility to run a quality training programme that helps meet the government targets and supports our commitment to the Skills Pledge. It should equip people with the life skills they need and increase their options to move on from the hospitality sector if they wish.
We now have four key parts to our core learning and development programme:
- Skills for Life.
- The Whitbread apprenticeship programme.
- General technical and skills development.
- Management development.
Skills for Life
We help people gain nationally recognised qualifications in literacy and numeracy. They are for people who do not have English or Maths GCSE. Team members can either study them as part of the wider apprenticeship programme or as stand-alone qualifications.
We have a diverse workforce with many of our team members speaking English as their second language. To support them through this professional challenge, Costa gives team members the opportunity to sign up for 'English for speakers of other languages', this is an e-learning module which team members can complete at their own pace.
Whitbread apprenticeship programme
An apprenticeship is made up of several qualifications including NVQ, technical certificate and key skills and is equivalent to 5 GCSEs.
Technical competence and skills training solutions
A range of courses to help team members be the best they can be in their current role - competent and confident team members are vital in delivering a consistent customer experience. Within Costa, technical skills are considered to be paramount in the delivery of a great cup of coffee. Team members are initially trained on the job to become a Barista and from then on they have the option to extend their skills and attend one of our four training academies and be trained by our own coffee experts as part of their development to attain the role of Barista Maestro.
Management development programmes
We have a number of development programmes that managers and team members can take part in to support their continual career development, either moving from team member to attaining their first management position or moving forward from a department manager to managing their own coffeeshop, restaurant or hotel. The programmes aim to help people to grow their technical competency and management skills and are conducted through workshops where they can share their experiences with employees from other sites and on-the-job activities so they can practice their new skills at work. All learning is consolidated within a final project which is presented and signed off by their multi-site manager.
How do we conduct training?
We recognise that people learn in different ways so we offer a blended approach using a mixture of classroom work, e-learning, workbooks and self-study as well as on-the-job learning. For example, we introduced a change to the Premier Inn room-cleaning programme this year. We ran workshops and then housekeepers were able to access a new housekeeping e-learning module which we made available in nine languages to reinforce the workshop learning and provide ongoing support to newly-recruited team members.
How are we doing?
Following a successful pilot of our new programme that started in September 2008, we re-launched our Skills for Life and apprenticeship training programme in May 2009 at the House of Commons.
Our goal is to deliver 3,000 qualifications through our nationally recognised apprenticeship programme by the end of 2010. We are just over halfway there, with 190 completed apprenticeships (representing 760 qualifications awarded) and over 850 Skills for Life qualifications awarded.
This means a total of over 1,600 qualifications awarded to the 364 employees currently in learning at the end of fiscal year 2010. And the programme continues to grow every month.
| Qualifications breakdown August 2008 to February 2010 | Total |
|---|---|
Completed apprenticeship, consisting of the
following four qualifications:
|
190 (i.e. 760 qualifications) |
| Completed skills for life | 854 |
| Total number of qualifications to date | 1614 |
|
|
|
| Completed qualification breakdown |
|
| Certificate in adult literacy | 476 |
| Certificate in adult numeracy | 378 |
| Level 2 apprenticeship in Food and Drink Service | 44 |
| Level 2 apprenticeship in Food Processing and Cooking | 44 |
| Level 2 apprenticeship in front office | 31 |
| Level 2 apprenticeship in housekeeping | 20 |
| Other level 2 apprenticeships | 7 |
| Other level 3 apprenticeships | 44 |
Costa Coffee's NVQ-based learner programme was only launched this year and so we are not yet able to report on progress, but we will do so in our next Corporate Responsibility Report.
In 2009 Whitbread's Apprenticeship programme was inspected by the Government's Office for Standards in Education, 'Ofsted'. Grades given:
- Overall Grade 'Good'
- Hospitality and Catering training and materials 'Outstanding'
- Skills for Life, literacy and numeracy programme 'Good'
