Beefeater learns the drill
Pub and restaurant giant Beefeater is big on statistics. It claims to have reduced staff turnover among its 11,000 employees by a fifth in the past year. It has also hugely reduced customer complaints - only one in 7,000 customers complains. And, perhaps more importantly, the number of customer compliments has gone up by 428%.
How? The management says it is down to an increasingly large investment in quality training, which results directly in increased profits. Happy staff mean happy customers, believes the service-driven company. And happy customers will come back again and again.
The link is well proven by the statistics. Beefeater outlets that have achieved the company's highest customer service award, its gold award, are found to achieve double the number of covers compared with Beefeater outlets that have not.
Managing director Simon Wood says: "Despite the drive for profits, our training budget has gone up year after year, a clear indication of our investment in people."
At the end of last year, Beefeater confirmed its commitment to training by opening a national training centre in Hockley Heath, Solihull. The £500,000 centre topped a training spend of £3.5m over three years - its training programme began with a £500,000 budget in 1991.
About a fifth of staff will visit the new centre every year, attending two- or three-day courses. The centre is primarily for supervisory and management staff. National Vocational Qualification level three is being introduced for managers, but so far NVQs at lower levels are not yet relevant enough for the operation to take them on board.
"Previously, training was handled locally but a national centre has many benefits, including the intangible ones such as the informal discussions and information swapping between staff from different parts of the country," says Wood.
One restaurant thought of taking instamatic photographs of parties and offering them to the guests; now the idea is spreading to other restaurants. "Only half the benefit is what you teach staff in courses, the other half is what they talk about over dinner," agrees human resources director Pat McKeon.
Other ideas introduced by teams as a result of their training include special birthday cocktails, decisions to ban smoking, and the introduction of better selling techniques on certain products. "Staff learn to be themselves and also to fit in with their local community - not all Beefeaters have the same customers," says regional training officer Brian McGeown.
Back in the regions, staff at Beefeater outlets work in teams to achieve silver and gold customer service awards, based on levels of customer complaints, and training achieved. The award has to be maintained through good performance - it can be taken away if customer complaints rise significantly.
So far, about three-quarters of Beefeater's 280 restaurants and pubs have team gold awards, and the company is aiming for 90% by this spring. There were 189 gold houses by autumn 1994, compared with less than half that number the year before.
Staff also work individually to achieve personal silver and gold service awards as part of the Beefeater Service Quality programme, devised in conjunction with the Hotel and Catering Training Company. The gold award was only introduced in the summer of 1993. The basis of these awards are training sessions on product knowledge and other skills, followed by written and verbal tests about their jobs.
"These awards are set to rigorous standards directly to do with their jobs," says McKeon. "What we don't do is tell staff how to smile and be nice to the customer. We set up standard minimums for different jobs; the rest is up to the staff. We hire staff because they are intelligent, bubbly people. We would not insult their intelligence by getting them to say ‘have a nice day'."
The contentedness of staff is increasing, according to staff surveys. Last year the survey showed the best results ever.
"The staff have confidence about what their job involves, and this causes them to smile, because they really know what they are doing and can talk to customers positively. Staff have relished the fact they have learned something," says McKeon.
Consequently, staff turnover among general workers is down 20% year on year. For four years the company has concentrated on developing its support managers - that is, the supervisory staff, which it identified as having particularly important training needs. Within this group, staff turnover has reduced over that period from 80% to 35%.
Once an outlet has won its gold award, the company spends about £700 on a party. This is an opportunity for staff to meet each other as shift work means they might not otherwise. Beefeater's bigger outlets have 80 staff and six managers.
Wood expresses the unseen advantages of comprehensive training. "There are magic moments when staff get individual awards. You cannot put a value on the pride they feel."
