Solving the puzzle

Regent Inns is tackling the problem of retaining staff with the Step Forward scheme, which uses jigsaws to measure training. By Phil Mellows

Antipodean barstaff. Here one minute, gone the next. Can't live with them, can't live without them. They come, they go, they do a good job while they're here and the customers like them. They seem to enjoy the work for some reason. They're always smiling at any rate. But you never know how long they'll stay. A month? A week? A shift? Then they're off again. Backpacking in Greenland or somewhere. Maybe they'll send you a postcard.

But imagine for a moment that you could get them to stay in one place, to stick with it and - don't laugh - take the job seriously. Maybe even consider working in a pub as a career.

That's wild stuff, yet it's a challenge that Regent Inns is taking up with its new training programme.

Marlene Collins (pictured below)​, the consultant behind the Step Forward scheme, is acutely aware of the scale of that challenge.

"You've got to do something good to make them stay in Wigan or Doncaster," she said. But Regent is under uncommon pressure to break that vicious circle in which you don't train someone because they're not going to stay, and they don't stay because you don't train them.

"We have big, growing brands - there are 10 Walkabout openings in the next six months and Jongleurs is expanding just as fast - but we don't want to recruit from outside too much," explained Marlene. "We need people who live and breathe the brand in order to make it work.

"The trick is to catch the backpacker and get them to make a career with us. To do that we have to start at the front end, with the barstaff, and convince them that, with us, they can move from glass collector to manager within a year."

As far as Marlene is concerned, the first thing was to turn Regent away from dwelling on the depressing matter of staff turnover levels to focus on the positive side - what can it do to improve retention.

"The critical thing in this industry is people retention," she said. "We shouldn't be worrying about turnover, it's retention we have to measure. We need to know the number of people who stay past six months. The retention rate is what we're battling for."

The nature of the Regent estate, with its emphasis on big high street brands, makes staff development all the more important.

"Our management structure is huge," said Marlene.

"Because of the late licences and everything, the pubs have to be managed by a team and there is huge pressure on us to get people through the system into management positions."

That really starts before training - in recruiting the right people in the first place, and managers are trained in interviewing and selection. But you've still got to give those good people a reason to stay.

Marlene believes that the solution Regent has come up with is "unique". "They get more tangible things out of the training." By that, she means, in part at least, jigsaw puzzles.

That's right, jigsaw puzzles. As soon as they start, each member of Regent's pub workforce gets a jigsaw puzzle to complete. Marlene isn't talking entirely metaphorically when she criticises pub industry training for being "too sporadic" and saying that "the pieces of the jigsaw need to fit together".

The pieces represent each module of training, for instance in the induction phase health and safety is one, bar service is another and so on. Each time a member of staff completes a training module and is tested successfully they receive a different coloured jigsaw piece which they stick on their own personal jigsaw board. (See picture above)​.

The first six pieces make up the first "step" in the Step Forward programme and fill one section of the jigsaw, completing the next step fills a second section and so on.

You'll now find these jigsaws going up on walls back of house across the Regent Inns estate. It's a very visible - and tangible - statement of where someone has got to in their training and it can get quite competitive as people race to complete their puzzles.

"It's like a Tony Hart gallery," said Marlene. "When they finish, they get to keep the puzzle - although we give them a certificate, too, in case it doesn't fit into their rucksack.

"It's their work record and it's the most valuable thing anyone in our industry can have, it's a testament to what they've done."

As well as jigsaw pieces, trainees collect "aide memories" of each module as they go along, "something tangible to take with them to the frontline to remind them of everything they have learned - that's something that isn't usually done," Marlene points out.

Every six weeks they also get a half-hour performance review with their manager in which they identify key areas which they need to develop and spot new opportunities.

"If they are really good they have the chance to become an in-house trainer themselves, teaching the core modules," said Marlene. "But that's only if they are a natural and we are sure they will get the message across."

The big step in the programme is, however, the one that takes people to manager level. Candidates are thoroughly assessed before going onto the advanced modules and, if successful, for the next six months they can take part in what Marlene describes as "one of the most comprehensive training programmes I have seen".

It needs to be. "Our managers are often running multi-million pound businesses, not just pubs," she said. "Some of our units take £30,000 a day.

"Managers also need skills to protect the licence, they need to know every nook and cranny of what they are meant to be doing and on top of that they have to drive sales and increase their market share."

About 70 per cent of management training is done at Regent's new training centre in Nottingham and two days every other week trainee managers are taken out of their pub to attend courses, itself a massive operation that Marlene compares to "orchestrating the Battle of Britain".

Operations directors are under pressure to make sure trainees attend. "If they don't, we get behind with our succession planning. Everything is scheduled nine months in advance and it all goes wrong if they don't turn up."

Step Forward doesn't stop at pub manager level as most programmes do. Top managers can become area training co-ordinators responsible for staff development across four or five houses and that is already proving to be a logical stepping stone to becoming an area manager. Two people have so far made that move.

Now Marlene is designing modules for middle and senior management. It's clear that Step Forward is more than just a training course and part of a deeper cultural change at Regent that she got underway a year or two ago with the 3H people motivation initiative.

"It is one of the hardest things to do, changing people's habits," she concluded. "After all, by asking them to train what you are really doing is asking them to be busier. But we can't sustain the quality of our brands if we don't have that quality in our people.

"Some understand that straight away and they have given us a good hard core. Reality is dawning for the rest. We have had to get cross with them at times to get them moving, but now they are beginning to see the value of training - and they are starting to enjoy it."

Eight steps from glass collector to area manager​

• Core training in six modules: health and safety, food handling, bar and food service, till systems, service excellence.
• After four weeks each new joiner has a performance review. Outstanding performers are invited to become in-house trainers for step 1.
• Once they have completed the core modules, staff can opt for additional training from a menu of 12 intermediate modules including merch