The Brookwood Partnership Ltd
The Brookwood Partnership is completely and genuinely committed to be an employer of choice. As a smaller contract caterer Brookwood works harder with employees to make the whole employment experience a good one.
Right from our incorporation, in 1996, Brookwood modelled employment on the John Lewis Partnership by offering a profit share bonus to qualifying employees. It was important to us that the people who created our success felt they had a share in it. Every year, due to our success, this has been awarded at between 3 and 5% of salary. On top of this we have been very pro-active in employee recognition including such initiatives as Employee of the Month, Managers of Excellence Dinners, an on-the spot award for contribution to company image. Our highest accolade, the Colin Giblenn Memorial Award, in memory of one of our Head Chefs who sadly passed away 2 years ago is awarded to the team who put most genuine enthusiasm in to feeding children.
We are fully committed to supporting the development of our people at all levels. All new employees participate in ‘Let's Brookwoodise' when they learn about Brookwood, our Philosophy and what we stand for. They go on to receive site based training such as our specially devised programmes; B Smart, B Safe, B Healthy and all employees have a twice yearly formal review using the web-based Talent Toolbox programme. We have recently developed our own NVQ accreditation centre and, having trained our own assessors we now have 8 trainees taking NVQ Food Preparation Level 2.
Most of our contracts are providing catering services to schools. By its nature this means many of our employees, at all levels, can work on ‘term-time only' contracts. This means that many parents can work regular day-time hours, Monday to Friday, term-time only and gain the full benefit of potential development whilst retaining a full family life. Our extremely busy hospitality service means that those who wish to supplement their income and develop their skills by exposure to a fine dining service we can offer this as well. Our service trainers and chefs have worked with, and experienced, the best that our industry has to offer. From several hundred at a summer ball, a small elegant dinner or a canapé party we aim to provide a ‘food standard that can't be bettered'. This often means not taking the easiest routes but great fun and good team spirit that comes from working well together and having fun.
People are encouraged to improve their own and other employee's performance and we use coaching as an integral way of providing support, passing on knowledge and developing skills throughout Brookwood. We have made a commitment that Operations Managers manage no more than 10 sites to ensure this commitment is able to be delivered. Furthermore, we ensure our Managing Partners make regular visits to our sites to enhance recognition, communication and generally celebrating our success.
We work hard at the involvement of our managers and gaining feedback from all employees. We take this very seriously and have, for example, recently taken initiatives to increase our level of employee communication and taken a ‘step up' in management training. However the figures speak for themselves. On the last employee review when everyone was asked to rate how happy they were in their jobs, from 1 to 10, 73% rated themselves between 8 and 10.
Though our contracts are mainly with schools, this is not school meals as you know them. We have made fresh food, stylishly prepared part of Brookwood's lifeblood. Brookwood has been a trailblazer with its food quality, providing a standard of which our teams are proud.
Until last year we held a Christmas party to which every employee was invited. As this was beginning to be more difficult for all employees we reviewed it this year. Instead, this year, every employee will receive a Christmas hamper personally delivered by a member of the executive team.
Our development of people has remained in line with our aims and objectives. The Training Plan and the Business Plan are now included in the same document, which is reviewed and revised every six months. This Business Plan, including goals and development needs for employees, is converted in to Business Plans for all company level departments and then for every site. The managers concerned participate in the preparation of the individual business plans to maximise commitment for their achievement. One of the best indicators of Brookwood's development is the significant number of home grown managers we have in place and the internal promotions that are achieved.
We are well on the way to launching further site-based initiatives in 2006 which will require more training of all employees to keep us ahead in our marketplace. We are piloting some management training initiatives to help with the development at all junior, middle and senior management levels.
Everyone benefits from the investment we make in our people. We have doubled the number of sites operated by Brookwood in just under 3 years. This growth has been achieved whilst retaining existing sites. Home grown managers have played a critical role in helping to achieve this growth with eight members of staff being promoted into management positions and five managers receiving promotion to other sites.
We are very proud of what we have achieved in the past 9 years. We are proud of the work everyone has done to contribute to Brookwood's success, proud of our teams and what our clients say about them. If there is one thing we are not very good at it is blowing our own trumpet as much as we should. But we are genuinely one of the best places to work.
