College helps pub group staff prepare for reopening

Derby College Group is playing a key role in helping a pub restaurant group prepare its staff as the hospitality sector looks to fully reopen later this month.

Around 50 staff from Berkeley Inns have received training in areas such as food safety and customer service via Roundhouse Thinking, the college’s professional training and executive education provider.

Berkeley Inns now has five pub restaurants across rural Derbyshire and Staffordshire, which will fully reopen on 17 May.

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Erin Harris, Berkeley Inn’s HR manager, said the firm had established a good working relationship with the college over the past six months and was impressed with its training programme.

She said: “The team at Roundhouse Thinking are extremely efficient and make the whole process of arranging and delivering staff training so much easier.

“They also brought to our attention the various free and discounted funding streams open to us, such as the Adult Education Budget and the ESF High Level Skills Programme.

“The customer service qualification is online distance learning and conveniently fits in with employees’ home, work and learning commitments.

“Some of our people are at school, college or university so we don’t want to overload them with more study.

“For the food safety course, staff were able to train in person, at a social distance.

“We opened one of our pubs, the Cock Inn at Mugginton, and Derby College came out specially to deliver the training.

“Many of our staff already have diplomas and other hospitality industry qualifications but taking this additional training has been a useful refresher for them.

“It’s helped build their skills and confidence as they return to work after months on furlough.

“It’s been a difficult time for hospitality, but we’ve taken advantage of lockdown to develop our staff and plan to continue working with Roundhouse Thinking.”