Training & Recruitment: Fuller confidence

What makes a winning pub operator? It's clear from the pubcos and licensees who make it through to the finals of the Publican Awards that training and recruitment plays a large part - it is supposed to be a 'people' industry after all - and Fuller, Smith & Turner, which was named Regional Brewer of the Year for the second year running at last month's awards ceremony, is no exception.

Like other family companies, Fuller's benefits from maintaining a close relationship with its employees and pub tenants, but over the last few years in particular it has taken an innovative approach when it comes to developing them.

A review in 2000 exposed a gap in training for senior managers, a gap that has now been filled by sending everyone from board directors to operations managers in the field on a nine-day residential course in leadership and performance management.

Three groups of 20 people have so far completed the programme, with a fourth group, consisting of newcomers plus those who came across with the takeover of George Gale, taking it this year.

Astonishingly, training the first three groups has already cost the company £450,000, the price of a decent pub, but for Fuller's group development manager Val Doyle it's been a worthwhile exercise.

"The main aim was to get everyone in the company working in the same direction," she explains. "Some of our senior managers had been with the company a long time and had terrific expertise, but without really developing their people skills and without sharing the same motivation to develop their own people.

"We wanted to make sure they were all engaged with their people to the same level."

Fuller's fished around some training colleges and eventually turned to the Ashridge Business School which, says Val, was willing to let the brewer tailor a course to its own needs. "The other advantage to the Ashridge training is that delegates work on real projects and bring what they learn in the classroom back into the business."

This has included research on e-commerce, pub ownership models that are neither managed nor leased, budgeting processes, communications, the company culture and the impact of the smoking ban.

The latter has already had an impact on business strategy, says Val, as has the communications project, which changed the ways the company communicates with its people.

"There have been real gains for us. The biggest, perhaps, is that we couldn't have handled the merger with Gales as well as we did if our managers hadn't learned to work together across the pubs and the brewing side of the business.

"The Ashridge experience helped them understand better how the two knit together, and they also learned a lot about themselves, how their behaviour influences and impacts on other people.

"There were some amazing results from the business games played at Ashridge in which people discovered how it feels to be the boss - and how it feels to be bossed."

Now Val plans to take the training forward by introducing courses focusing on performance management and influencing skills.

Fuller's open days add a 'healthy instalment' to talent bank

Fuller's has held the second of its open days aiming to attract fresh talent to the London-based company.

Held at the brewery, in the Hock Cellar visitors' centre, it attracted around 80 people and resulted, says recruitment manager Sarah Temple, in a healthy instalment into the company's talent bank.

"We found about 15 potential general managers for our pubs, plus trainees. People liked coming to the brewery to see how it all works and like the idea that when you work for Fuller's you are a name, not a number.

"We were able to get across that our pub managers can bring their own ideas into the business and put their own stamp on the pub."

- Fuller's has also recruited a full-time recruiter for the tenanted estate. Louise Lawler already works for the company installing EPoS systems and has also been a pub manager.