The Caterer People Summit
The Caterer ’s 2022 People Summit saw a return to a live in-person event that will centered around ‘changing it up’ and spoke to the experts in the industry who have adapted the way they support and engage with their staff.
On the day, we asked our experts what new skills are essential in the ‘new world’ and how teams have responded to acquiring these skills as well as discussed the importance of role models and mentors, and how storytelling can help inspire and enthuse.
We also asked operators impacted by the pandemic how they have retained their staff, and how they have changed their processes to ensure their teams are making time for themselves and practising self-care to avoid burn out, stress and mental health issues.
To watch this must-attend event, perfect for hospitality HR professionals and any leader who wants to harness the power of their people, plese purchase the recording below.
Topics covered included:
- Embracing change and developing the future
- New management skills: are empathy and listening skills top of the agenda?
- Inspiring role models and individualising career pathways
- Who is retaining and attracting their people?
- How to embrace and harness the power of apprentices
- Using the right language (verbally and visually) to inspire confidence
- Making time for yourself in a busy industry
- How to use technology to support your business and teams
Speakers:
Agenda:
Welcome from Lisa Jenkins, managing editor, The Caterer
Laura Christie and Selin Kiazim will talk to the People Summit audience about the culture behind their London restaurant, Oklava and about how they find the balance between ensuring excellence in the food, drinks and service, while also providing a livelihood for their team.
The business partners will discuss initiatives such as incorporating service charge into their menu prices, a free external employee assistance programme, and offering staff advice on everything from their work and home life to legal and money issues. The pair have initiated a ‘get home safe’ policy for staff, where guests leave by 11.45pm and staff can ‘down tools’ so they catch last trains and buses, as well as a bike loan.
Speakers:
Laura Christie, co-owner , Oklava, London
Selin Kaizim, co-owner , Oklava, London
Chair: James Stagg, editor, The Caterer
Keeping on top of the latest management skills, essential to recruiting and retaining the top talent in hospitality, is crucial to success. This People Summit session will examine the softer skills being employed to attract and develop individuals and enthuse teams. People and culture consultant Sean Wheeler will be joined by Anita Bower, people and culture director at Iconic Hotels, Tim Foster, head of being awesome, Yummy Pubs Co and Karen Baybutt, managing director at Gilpin Hotel and Lake House, to identify and share this useful advice.
Speakers:
Anita Bower, people and culture director, Iconic Hotels
Karen Baybutt, managing director, Gilpin Hotel & Lake House
Tim Foster, head of being awesome, Yummy Pubs Co
Chair: Sean Wheeler, people and culture consultant, Sean Wheeler Consulting LTD
Lanre Sulola is a coach who is passionate about building inclusive cultures to enable teams and individuals to thrive. His expertise in the inclusion and diversity field has helped organisations drive business performance and employee engagement. The founder of Inner Ambitions also runs programmes to build diverse representation across all levels and break unconscious bias. He leads programmes to support under-represented groups to have greater visibility in business and bring their ‘true self’ to work. He is also a poet and powerful communicator who helps individuals engage and communicate. A presentation designed to inspire.
Speaker:
Lanre Sulola, leadership coach, Inner Ambitions
Attracting and retaining staff is at the top of every employer’s agenda. This session at The Caterer’s People Summit will bring together some of the best operators succeeding in this area. Greg Hegarty, deputy chief executive officer and chief operating officer of PPHE Hotel Group, Katie Forrest, head of engagement, learning and development, Dakota Hotels, and KK Prabakan, hotel operations manager at Dukes London, will share their thoughts on best practice and discuss strategies for creating a pipeline of future talent.
Speakers:
Greg Hegarty, deputy CEO & COO, PPHE Hotel Group
KK Prabakaran, hotel operations manager, Dukes Hotel
Katie Forrest, head of engagement, learning and development, Dakota Hotels
Chair: Emma Lake, assistant editor, The Caterer
Employee experience is now at the forefront of operators' minds. Whilst everyone was thinking about hiring and labour shortages over the last 6-9 months; the focus must now be retention. The industry has taken a massive hit and one of the biggest priorities is to improve employees' work-life; giving them the right technology to elevate their employee experience and help them achieve the career they aspire to. Luke Fryer, CEO and founder of Harri will be giving some invaluable insights from a recent Harri survey as to what employees are asking for now and for the future.
Speaker:
Luke Fryer, chief executive officer, Harri
With 400,000 vacancies, the largest number of people wanting to leave any industry in the UK, a finite amount of people in the job market to choose from and only 1 in 5 people would consider working in hospitality, we have a real battle on our hands to keep our venues open, trade every day that we would like to and change the negative perceptions embedded in people's minds about what a job or career in hospitality looks like. Kate Nicholls OBE explains why UKH are spearheading and putting their full support this important initiative, what it means for you and how you can get involved.
Speaker:
Kate Nicholls OBE, chief executive officer, UKHospitality
Making time for yourself and your team and discovering ways of promoting self-care and avoiding burnout are paramount, and acknowledging mental health concerns and identifying stress triggers is essential. This session will look at what potential employees are looking for in terms of health and wellness benefits; how operators such as Darjeeling Express are putting their people-first strategies in place, and how staff on the front line can be cushioned from catastrophes.
Speakers:
Craig Prentice, hospitality talent partner, mum
Asma Khan, chef & restaurateur, Darjeeling Express
Deborah Homshaw, managing director education and healthcare, CH&Co
Philip Addison, personal coach & mental health first aid instructor, Learn Resilience
Chair: Caroline Baldwin, features and special projects editor, The Caterer
Understanding the legislation, levies and benefits of apprenticeships as a talent feed may just provide you with the solution to your recruitment struggles. This session at The Caterer’s People Summit will see operators explain how they make apprenticeships work and relate how to embrace and harness the power of apprentices in your business. Our panellists Steve Rockey, people director at Lime Wood Group and Home Grown Hotels, and Dan Power director at Umbrella Training, will explain how to find and nurture talent.
Speakers:
Steve Rockey, people director, Lime Wood Group Limited & Home Grown Hotels
Dan Power, director, Umbrella Training
Livvy Wharam, learning & development manager, PPHE
Chair: Lisa Jenkins, managing editor, The Caterer
As a business leader with the power to determine strategy, you get to decide how your organisation is going to “win” in today’s market. However, you cannot deliver victory alone - you have to bring people with you. In this talk, Rob Liddiard, Co-Founder CEO at Yapster, will share communications activity and influence data from Bartlett Mitchell, Brewhouse & Kitchen, Buzzworks Holdings, Nobu Hotel Portman Square and many more to illustrate how forward-thinking industry leaders are increasingly fighting wars for wallet and talent with their smartphones.
Speaker:
Rob Liddiard, co-founder CEO, Yapster
The millennial generation may well be the most researched, misunderstood and discussed generation yet. This session will explore ways of understanding Gen Z (now aged 10 to 26 years) which is critical for any employer. Whilst, in general, there are some shared characteristics with millennials, Gen Zers are distinctive in their wants and needs, especially when it comes to communication.
Speakers:
Giorgia Ferrara, human resource coordinator, Sea Containers London
Jon Dawson, group director of people, Lore Group
Chair: Jane Sunley, founder and chief executive officer, Purple Cubed
Speakers:
Camilla Woods, services director , Hospitality Action
James Clarke, ambassador, Hospitality Action
Henal Chotai, ambassador , Hospitality Action
Speakers:
Jo Harley, managing director, Purple Cubed
Dan Power, director, Umbrella Training
Sponsor:
Based in Glasgow, London and Manchester, we have grown to become a recognised UK specialist in designing and implementing employee benefits packages mainly, but not exclusively to the hospitality industry.
Our client-centric approach allows us to work with some of the biggest names in hospitality, with over 17 years’ experience building employee rewards programmes that recruit and retain some of the best teams in the industry. While employee rewards are our business, people are our priority, and our knowledge, drive and passion means we have become a name that employers can trust. If employees are the future of any business, then we take care of your tomorrow.
Harri is dedicated to revolutionising the world of Workforce Management in Hospitality, Retail and Healthcare. For employers, that means providing an end to end Total Talent Solution, completing the HR strategy from posting to payroll and beyond.
Harri's next-generation Workforce Operating System provides hospitality businesses with the management tools and strategic insights necessary to make real-time impact on talent attraction, recruitment and retention, revenue growth, profit margin, risk mitigation, engagement and productivity of employees.
Multi-site teams can source, hire and manage top talent using media-rich profiles and streamlined tools, all while reducing costs, saving time and enabling long-term success of teams with a world-class cloud-based employee experience platform.
Yapster enables customers to create ‘cultures of performance’ in the workplace through its fully integrated mobile communications platform. The Yapster platform includes a ground-breaking KPI Gamification feature, which turns customer commercial data into live games between sites, encouraging social interaction and friendly competition.
With two-way communication up and down the business, teams can send 1 to 1 and group messages, initiate flash polls, and post to a social newsfeed from their mobile phones. Yapster gives its customers full control of the platform to create a secure, closed environment. It also integrates with existing HR and operations systems, which makes administration effortless.
Many of the UK’s best-known retail, hospitality and leisure brands are already using Yapster to drive sales, improve job satisfaction and lower staff turnover.
Creating a great place to work is now recognised as one of the top opportunities for leaders around the world to transform business performance and brand differentiation. As experts in employee engagement, Purple Cubed are delighted to partner with The Caterer on the Best Places to Work in Hospitality awards for the eighth year running.
In what has become the industry benchmark for employer excellence, the awards recognise and promote the best employers across the hospitality industry. Purple Cubed provides proven and pragmatic consultancy across the employee experience, supports leadership team dynamics and provides award-winning software to enable businesses to attract, engage, develop and retain great people. This, in turn, improves, productivity, increases attraction and retention and helps people-centric organisations authentically improve their reputations as the greatest places to work.
In response to the global wellbeing crisis, we’ve also developed Wellbee to help individuals self-assess their wellbeing and receive the right tailored support, so organisations know where to target their improvement activity. Companies who enter the award for Best Employer can also gain access to Purple Cubed’s renowned expertise in helping organisations improve their performance/bottom line by putting people at the heart of everything they do. Find out more about how we help at here.
Umbrella Training is a leading nationwide training and apprenticeship provider for the hospitality and corporate sectors. By working closely with progressive businesses, the company develops bespoke and elite training programmes which create meaningful impacts.
As industry-leading experts, Umbrella Training understands how important it is for employers to maximise return on investment, while implementing new, sustainable, and highly sought-after training and apprenticeship programmes.
Founded in 2012 by Adele Oxberry, the company works with hotels, restaurants and foodservice businesses across the UK, as well as banks, financial institutions and other corporate organisations. Since its inception, Umbrella Training has supported the recruitment, development and progression of more than 2,000 apprentices. It was the only apprenticeship provider to be presented with the prestigious Princess Royal Training Award in 2020, and is recognised as a GOOD provider by Ofsted (with nine out of 10 learners achieving lifelong learning and sustainable employment). Through its dedicated teams, the company ensures that both employees and employers grow and succeed.