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Short case studies and research papers that demonstrate best practice in HR
Mitchells & Butlers is the leading operator of restaurants and pubs in the UK, operating 13 key brands across 1,600 businesses and employing 40,000 people. In 2010 the company had annual revenues of £1,980 million.
It was recognized in March 2011 by the CBI People Awards for successfully devising and implementing a change program across the organization. This was achieved through planning, communicating and implementing a strategy to develop the company into the UK's preferred choice for eating out.
Mitchells & Butlers operates in a market place facing significant challenges shaped by economic and legislative changes, such as the smoking ban, supermarket pricing and tax and duty on alcohol. As a result of these changes, the drinking-out market has continued to shrink year-on-year, declining by over 24 percent in the last four decades. The company's strategy to develop its food-led brands in the growing eating-out market has therefore significantly accelerated.
In March 2010, the business challenge faced by the company was to achieve the following:
Re-shape the business.
Increase sales.
Increase productivity.
Develop a management culture to increase shareholder value.
The associated issues for the HR team included:
The need to be more strategic.
Relatively low corporate staff turnover and high retail staff turnover at 120 percent.
Paper based recruitment processes.
Training policy devised at brand level with high level of face-to-face training.
Limited cross brand movement of people.
Reliance on recruitment agencies and in house training with no visibility of costs and return.
Insufficient food skills in face of significant food growth strategy.
Slow and ineffective company level employee communication.
Investing in HR
The board agreed to the appointment of a dedicated HR director to the executive committee as it was identified that employees were central to the company's strategic objectives. The priority was to develop a greater understanding of the issues by talking to key stakeholders and obtaining factual Information relating to recruitment, retention and training numbers and costs.
A project brief was agreed and a business case developed to invest in technology as an enabler to develop online recruitment, training and...