Our people
Our people are at the heart of our business. It is important that we provide them with the development opportunities to reach their full potential.
There is something very special about the people who work at Whitbread. We listen to our people, because they are best placed to understand what it is that our customers want. We want our people to flourish and it is important that we provide them with development opportunities so that they can reach their potential.
A culture of leadership
In 2009 we made significant steps to define our culture more clearly, with a revitalised core purpose and set of values - the Whitbread Way Forward. This was defined using a series of workshops and interviews with a wide cross-section of Whitbread people. At the same time we refreshed the corporate identity to more appropriately represent Whitbread.
A new Leadership Framework, which describes the skills expected from our leaders, was developed during the year. It has already become an important tool in supporting the process of leadership engagement behind our goal of customer focus. It has reinvigorated the leadership development agenda to engage our leaders in how we will lead the Whitbread Way Forward, and achieve stretching personal and team development.
YOUR SAY
In 2009, Whitbread relaunched its engagement survey, YOUR SAY into the business. It accurately measures engagement, in a way that is meaningful to every person in the organisation and enables timely action.
The 2009 survey measured engagement through 18 questions, and provided a promising start. The results can be seen in the table below. All parts of the business outperformed the benchmark UK norm group. Following the publication of the results, action plans were developed and implemented.
2009/10 team engagement scores
| Whitbread overall | 60% |
| Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants | 60% |
| Costa | 61% |
| UK norm group | 54% |
In 2010 the survey has been expanded to help us understand how our teams view our new corporate responsibility strategy, Good Together, and their experience of customer focus in Whitbread.
In the future, employee engagement will be reported as part of the WINcard, demonstrating our genuine commitment to driving engagement.
Learning & Development
This year we launched our groundbreaking apprenticeship programme, which uniquely gives all of our team members within Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants the opportunity to gain a nationally recognised qualifcation in the workplace. The programme is a real demonstration of our strategic approach and commitment to having the best skilled team in the industry.
Alongside the suite of vocational qualifications we also launched our Skills for Life programme, providing tutoring and support in the vital life areas of literacy and numeracy. To date we are proud to announce that over 1,400 qualifications have been awarded to our team members.
The Government inspectorate, Ofsted, has graded the hospitality and catering provision that is offered to our team members as "Outstanding". Meanwhile the Skills for Life programme has been awarded the Business in the Community "Big Tick".
We have successfully launched into the business a full suite of management development programmes called Shooting Stars. The objective of these programmes is to assist all our operational managers to develop to the next suitable role in their career with us. The programmes help us to develop people all the way from Hotels and Restaurants team member to Regional Operations Manager.
Over the past 18 months, over 600 of our people have been, or currently are being, developed through these programmes. Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants appoint over 75% of General Managers internally.
In Costa we have relaunched our in-store induction and training processes. As coffee is at the heart of Costa's business, we have developed the Barista Maestro workshop on coffee-making skills. Workshops are held at a number of Costa training academies around the world.
Costa has also developed the Shooting Stars programme. It has been operational within the Costa business since 2007 and comprises core skills development and training on management behaviours over a six-month period.
In 2009 the next stage of development to enable Costa's assistant managers to become store managers was launched. The Rising Stars programme follows a similar format to Shooting Stars and so far over 50% of attendees have been placed into a store manager role.
