Interview: Culture Changer

 
It's Britain's second oldest public company and was once synonymous with beer brewing and pubs, but Whitbread has radically shifted its focus to companyowned casual dining brands, the international Costa coffee bar business, and budget hotels, exploiting significant siting and marketing synergies across all three. CEO Alan Parker has been closely involved in rethinking the company's direction and in areas such as the outsourcing of non-core overheads, corporate responsibility and energy reduction. Interview by Bruce Whitehall.
 
Since you took over as Whitbread CEO in 2005, following 12 years heading up the hotels division, you have instituted some important new strategies. What has been the prime objective?
 

Alan Parker: A key area has been to focus on joint restaurant and hotel sites. The majority of our pub-restaurants - 328 out of a total of 372 - now have a Premier Inn budget hotel alongside. The core market, at least two-thirds of weekly foodservice custom, is individual people living in the local catchment area. But business from people staying overnight at the Premier Inn is a significant revenue stream. Premier Inn aims to win business from 3 and 4-star operators. Our Business Account holders get various benefits such as a £20 food and beverage package.
 
What do you see as the fundamentals of managing a diversified multi-brand hospitality business like Whitbread?
 
Parker: You must have an alignment of objectives between three different groups of stakeholders: investors, customers and team members. For example, we operate something called a WIN card (‘Whitbread in Numbers'). It acts as score-card and sets targets against every unit in terms of the three different stakeholder groups. Targets aside, you have to really take notice of what your employees think. We have an annual survey called Your Say whereby all employees have the opportunity to comment on issues within their individual workplace and within the company as a whole. That leads to action plans for which every line manager is responsible. They have a face-to-face meeting with the employees for whom they are responsible and go through the action plan with them. We then monitor the results of their plan over a six month period. We had some great feedback but one question on the Your Say survey needed looking at in particular: do you believe the company will action the results of this survey? Response to that has made me absolutely determined to show we are actioning things and to prove to everybody that we do listen to them and have a genuine desire to improve the working environment wherever we can.
 

 
 

Has the recession made it easier to recruit staff?
 
Parker: It's had some effect, but we still see the reduction of labour turnover - or, put another way, staff retention - as a key objective. Everyone in the company has a bonus related to reducing turnover, including me. In other words, there are set targets to reduce labour turnover, at every single unit of the business. We have also pioneered an apprenticeship scheme where we are creating 3,000 new apprenticeships this year. It's open to new and existing employees and it offers them a nationally recognised NVQ qualification in subjects such as food processing and cooking, food and drink service, front office, customer service and housekeeping. We anticipate that 20% of our workforce will have one by 2010. It's structured so that it relates directly to on-the-job activity, combined with our own induction programme. That makes it possible to gain the qualification in half the time and opens the scheme to a much wider range of participants.
 
Read the whole interview!

 

 
| 3 November 2009 |