In its new report The ‘Untapping Potential: the role of pubs in levelling up skills, jobs and communities’, the group outlined its commitment to recruit and train jobseekers from any background to build careers at local pubs.
It will provide opportunities across its pub estate, taking on 5,000 apprentices, and recruiting 300 prison leavers by 2025 through its first training kitchen within a prison at HMP Thameside.
In will provide also offer 100 new internships to those with Special Educational Needs (SEN) and an Education and Health Care Plan (EHCP) and is launching the Chef Academy Programme to train aspiring chefs and support the Prince’s Trust to help jobseekers.
The report found that 48% of young people believe hospitality only provides short-term opportunities, with three in five young people believing there are not enough good job opportunities in their local area.
Greene King says its social mobility initiatives have supported more than15,000 apprentices since 2011, 100 prison leavers through the Releasing Potential Programme, and more than 40 individuals with SEN and EHCP.
“Pubs have always been about people, and I’ve witnessed the way a job in a pub can completely change a person’s life and become a lifelong, successful career,” says Nick Mackenzie, Greene King CEO.
“That’s why I’m proud that Greene King is making these commitments to provide people from all backgrounds access meaningful, rewarding careers in their local communities. Pubs have so much to offer both for those looking for careers and those in the local community.
Green King has also called on the government to help promote careers in hospitality through more advertising opportunities and giving hospitality equal prominence to other sectors and for a reform of the apprenticeship policy to ease barriers restricting the recruitment and training of apprentices, such as the apprenticeship levy.
“If we are to fully capitalise on this potential, government and wider industry must pull together to promote careers in hospitality and empower businesses to offer even more training and development opportunities,” adds Mackenzie.