Engaged employees are more important to hospitality businesses than ever before

Engaged employees are more important to hospitality businesses than ever before which is why Pier to Peer Sessions looks to other industries for tips, advice and successful strategies which can be implemented to benefit the hospitality sector workforce and in turn employers and their businesses.

Taking place on June 5 from 1pm at Hotel Du Vin Brighton, this is the only hospitality focused employee engagement event and it is ideal for General Managers, Departmental Managers and Business Owners. Pier to Peer Sessions will help you set your staffing strategy with confidence.

There will be three sessions in total with opportunity for round table discussions, a q&a and drinks and networking to close the day.

The agenda:

SESSION ONE - Leadership & Employee Engagement with Paul Szumilewicz

Paul is chief customer officer at private banking company, C.Hoare & Co, he previously spent 12 years with HSBC his last role there was Retail Transformation Director for Continental Europe. An expert in driving strategic change and accelerating growth, Paul will share his insights into how to recruit and retain staff. Bringing his 20 years’ leadership experience from the financial services sector to hospitality.

SESSION TWO - Soft Skills for Effective Staff Management with Amy White

Amy is Head of Training & Wellbeing at Loch Associates Group, experts in developing solutions to help organisations manage and look after their people. An Employment Partner at a regional law firm, Amy manages an outsourced HR consultancy. During this session case studies will be reviewed to demonstrate how to get it right (or very wrong) and how you can implement these skills when you’re back in your workplace.

SESSION THREE - Sustainability in staffing hosted by Cara Houchen, editor of The Staff Canteen

An interactive session discussing sustainability but focusing on staffing. We will be hearing from industry experts and taking questions from the audience.

Panel includes:

Kris Hall is the founder of The Burnt Chef Project, a non-profit business tackling mental health issues in the hospitality industry.

Olivia Reid is Group Food Director for Sessions Markets and has over 20 years working in the restaurant sector. She is Group Food Director for Sessions focusing on developing and expanding the Food Brands portfolio as part of the greater Sessions business alongside the food offering in their food halls, including Shelter Hall in Brighton.

Talking more about the event, Olivia told The Staff Canteen: "I'm really, really looking forward to it. It will be really nice to mingle with some of the hospitality crew and benefit from levels of conversations. I think hearing from everybody what they've had to do when we've gone through some of the darkest times in staff recruitment, it's forced everybody to learn how to manage people better, in hospitality and offer more, especially to the new generations that are coming in."

Olivia added: "Having these kinds of events give people the opportunity to go and open their eyes to other opportunities that they haven't actually witnessed themselves. Staffing is a hot topic at the moment and the opportunity to recruit is becoming much more competitive, getting in with your peers and finding out what they're doing is going to put you in a far better position to recruit in a better style. I think listening to what's happening around you will will make you a better employer, so I think people should take the opportunity to do that."

Simon Maguire is the Leadership Director at West Peake, he has extensive knowledge of the hospitality industry having spent three years as Managing Director of Luxury Family Hotels and three years as Group Head of Operations and People at Harbour Hotel Group.

Speaking to The Staff Canteen ahead of the event, Simon said: "I'm really excited about coming to Brighton. I used to live and work in Brighton, and it's an exciting city, especially when it comes to hospitality. I think we've seen the subject we're going to be really drilling down on is about employee engagement, and how leaders can really kind of get the best out of their people, and to do that they need to have engaged teams."

Simon added: "I work in the in the leadership space, and there are a lot of tools and techniques out there, particularly in my background and line of work that we help a lot of businesses with, and that's what I'm really going to hope to bring to the table so that people attending the event can can take away some real tangible tips and tricks on how to work on engagement in their organisation."

Dan Wade, WPA Healthcare and Co-Founder of Table Talk Foundation.

Explaining what guests can expect from the event, Dan said: "I think the concept of the event is to really make hospiality a better place to work and upskill senior managers within hospitality. The theme for the day is sustainability around staffing in hospitality, and we've managed to pull in experts from different fields, from within hospitality as well as external, to show what good businesses do outside of hospitality." 

Dan added: "We all know the difficult times hospitality is having but also the bounce back in the sector could be mega within the sector, which everyone is really excited for. The concept for the day is to really get everyone together who are in the same position to share ideas, to share best practice, it's going to be very interactive with lots of discussion based learning. We really want hospitality to be the best place to work, and if we can all learn from others and share experiences, that can only be a good thing." 

Book for you or your team members now, limited places available