Step-Up TL/ Duty Manager Review

by Whitbread

Best Apprenticeship Employer

Rating

8/10

1. Please give an overview of your role and what this involves on a day-to-day basis:

Hosting guests to tables, serving guests at tables, or at the bar. Bar work. Running food, cleaning the restaurant and setting up for the next day. Opening the restaurant ready for breakfast service, setting up tills, and safe counting. Closing the restaurant, counting tills, banking money, checking kitchen cleanliness, locking up.

8/10

2. Have you learnt any new skills or developed existing skills?

I’ve learned how to do all of the money/safe/banking logs etc, how to open and close a restaurant, do quality checks often.

8/10

3. To what extent do you enjoy your programme?

I neither like nor dislike the programme. Specifically like it for the extra knowledge, question it for the extra work put into my job when I could easily learn the same things from 1 to 1 meetings with my managers

7/10

4. How well organised/structured is your programme?

Everything is online, and I have meetings with my tutors each month, to go through new topics and cover most work. I don’t like the structure and think it could be taught more as oppose to self-studied. The deadlines are guidance and not set in stone, which is good as I work my job full time still and a lot of the time forget about the deadlines themselves. Some of the questions and pages don’t add up and need reviewing as some of them don’t make sense. Or even link to the topic itself (feels very cut and paste) the apprenticeship could be individually designed for each company and not so generic to all of hospitality.

6/10

5. How much support do you receive from your employer?

I have all the support from my employer, if I have any questions or issues, I can raise them and get a response and the help I need,

10/10

6. How much support do you receive from your training provider when working towards your qualifications?

I get the help I need when I ask. However much of the apprenticeship is self-taught and doesn’t always feel site specific or relate to my role, and my training provider makes it more specific to my site and helps me understand the apprenticeship to my needs specifically.

10/10

7. How well do you feel that your qualification (through your training provider) helps you to perform better in your role?

The qualification doesn’t help me currently. If I was starting my job role now and learning all the basics of hospitality, the apprenticeship would be so helpful to really get a head start on how to do my job well. However I have learnt so much of this prior to the apprenticeship it feels a little backwards. My training provider does however understand this and goes through the programme with me to make sure I understand how I work at work and use the correct terminology from the programme to specifically hone in my knowledge, and understand exactly what I am doing and give examples and help as to where I can differ by learning and implan]meeting new techniques.

10/10

8. Are there extra-curricular activities to get involved in at your work? (For example, any social activities, sports teams, or even professional networking events.)

5/10

9a. Would you recommend Whitbread to a friend?

Yes

9b. Why?

It’s a great company to work with, with great opportunities to work towards

10. What tips or advice would you give to others applying to Whitbread?

Commit. Make a good rapport and commit to the work. You can maintain a healthy social job while also working towards new opportunities in the company. Working in hospitality sounds like you have to be available to work any type of shift, however it also works in reverse as you can arrange with your employer to work the shifts around your life..