charity

We’ve chosen Only A Pavement Away as our new company charity, to support people facing or experiencing homelessness into work so they can find stability through employment.

Each year we invite our employees to nominate a charity to benefit from our company fundraising activities – and this year the team voted for Only A Pavement Away.

Katie Taylor, Group HR Manager said:

“Each year we ask our employees to vote for a charity they’d like to fundraise for and this year the team voted for the fantastic homeless charity, Only A Pavement Away. Not only is the team already committing to some of the great fundraising activities, our staff will be giving up their time to help fill a flask at their local shelter, as well as offering their expertise to support people back into work as part of the Hospitality Against Homelessness campaign.”

Our Hospitality Director Greg Maguire said:

“In a country with the fifth largest economy, homelessness is a scandal. The hospitality sector had 112,000 vacancies at the end of 2023 – Only A Pavement Away helps fill these vacancies with people facing or experiencing homelessness giving them long term, stable employment.
It’s a great idea, there are so many fantastic operators signed up to help and we’re all for making peoples’ lives easier, happier, and healthier.”

About Only A Pavement Away

Only A Pavement Away help anyone experiencing or facing homelessness find a new career in hospitality. They connect forward thinking employers with charities working with people facing or experiencing homelessness, prison leavers and veterans to help them into long term, stable employment.

Being ‘homeless’ can take many forms such as rough sleeping, people living in sheds, garages, sofa surfing, hostels and unsuitable temporary accommodation such as B&Bs. And there are so many reasons why people are forced into homelessness…

• A lack of affordable housing
• Losing job
• Mental health
• Leaving prison or the armed forces with no home to go to
• Escaping an abusive relationship

The charity connects their network of hospitality employers and charities on their Jobs Board. Once employed, candidates benefit from a 12 month support network put in place for them.

We’ve commissioned a research project with hospitality research consultancy, KAM to gain more insight into the state of employee engagement services in the hospitality sector and help identify a potential link with the continued rates of job vacancies.

149,000 vacancies in the hospitality sector at the end of 2022, that’s a lot – and businesses are not maximising every tool in their armoury to attract and retain staff, according to KAM. The study reveals that hospitality businesses are not effectively communicating what they already offer; 75% of employees couldn’t find information about employee benefits while researching their hospitality job. 20% said they only found out during their interview and 15% had to wait until after they’d started in the role.

Scott Read, our CEO of Employee Services says:

“We’ve been keen to understand the relationship between the awareness and usage of employee engagement services and the number of vacancies in the hospitality sector. The research has really highlighted a potential problem – businesses may have employee benefits in place but if they’re not easy to access or communicated effectively, they’re not having an impact – potentially adding to the problem rather than helping to resolve it.”

Katy Moses, MD at KAM said:

“Hospitality businesses are absolutely missing a trick when it comes to attracting new employees with very few effectively communicating the level of employee benefits. So many companies offer phenomenal employee engagement services but very few are using this to attract potential candidates. Even current employees say they’re not made aware of what is available to them despite the clear impact they can have on staff retention.”

Key findings from the research include: 

• 76% of people said employee engagement services meant they have stayed in a hospitality role longer

• 83% of people said the offer of a specific health and wellbeing benefit contributed to them deciding to switch jobs

• 95% of employees wanted to be made aware of any employee engagement services prior to making a decision to join a company

• 77% of employees would use employee engagement services more if they were all in one place e.g. an app

The study also looks at happiness levels among current employees and found that 88% of people currently working in hospitality are happy in their role, this decreases to 78% for those working specifically in pubs and bars and is even lower for those working back-of-house (73%.)

→Download the full report here

About Growth Partners: We’re on a mission to make employers’ and employees’ lives easier, happier and healthier. We provide an end-to-end service for payroll, pensions and employee engagement – giving your employees access to their pay, pension and employee benefits all in one place. We also take on the liability for compliance with all HMRC and Pensions Regulator requirements and provide you with your own dedicated employee engagement manager.

About KAM: Research and insight experts, providing the tools to understand your customer’s journeys. Using consumer and operator research and insights to help identify the ways in which your business can improve. Whether your customer is the end consumer, a hospitality operator or a wholesaler, understanding and influencing the customer journey is vital to any business. Our research and insight tools and services are designed to help you better understand why, where and how to create impactful and engaging customer journeys.

We’ve chosen The Trussell Trust as our new company charity, committing to raise vital funds for food banks providing emergency food and support to people across the country.

Each year we invite our employees to nominate a charity to benefit from our company fundraising activities – and this year Trussell Trust food bank was chosen as the nominated charity.

Katie Taylor, Executive Business and People Manager said:

“We feel it’s really important for our team to have their say in nominating and voting for the charity we focus on each year as it helps to drive engagement in the charity activities, as well as a chance to do something for a charity that means something to at least one of our team. 

Katie added: 

“As always, the team is taking our latest challenge very seriously… 16 of us have been keeping active throughout March, challenging ourselves to reach a daily 10,000 steps goal. Not only has this encouraged our employees to move more which is great for their wellbeing, but it has already raised enough funds to fill two shopping trolleys of food for donation.

We’ve donated 147kg of food to The Trussell Trust so far this year and are planning to donate much more with the range of fundraising activities we are working on.”

About The Trussell Trust

With a record 2.5 million emergency food parcels given to people in crisis in the past year alone, Trussell Trust is campaigning for change to end the need for food banks in the UK.  You can download their latest research into hunger and destitution here. For a list of food banks and how to donate find out more here.