Mitchells & Butlers
- Client: Mitchells & Butlers
Running such a broad portfolio of managed pubs and restaurants requires considerable operational expertise.
To address these challenges M&B recently approached Birmingham City University’s Business School to design a bespoke programme aimed at providing its Retail Business Managers (RBMs) with the extra knowledge, skills and behaviours required to drive the performance of such a wide range of brands.
As Chris Edger, former HR Director at M&B, put it: “There’s been no qualification for Area Managers operating in a multi-unit context in the retail service and hospitality sectors in the UK.
“There is a need to elevate hard skills such as operational and process effectiveness with softer skills such as the ability to lead effectively with a wide span of control within the multi-unit constraints of time, space and distance.”
Challenges which led Chris to start thinking about how to combine the ‘art and science’ behind improving multi-unit leadership.
The Client
Midlands-based Mitchells & Butlers is the UK’s leading restaurant and pub company, with 13 brands encompassing 1,600 businesses and 36,000 employees.
Its highly recognisable and popular formats include Harvester Restaurants, Toby Carveries, Crown Carveries, All Bar One, Browns, Sizzling Pub Company, Ember Pub and Dining, Vintage Inns, Premium Country Dining Group and Nicholsons.
With 112 years of operational experience M&B’s annual sales are close to £2 billion, serving 125 million meals with some 400 million drinks.
This course puts us, at M&B, in a league of our own – there’s nobody doing this and getting the results we’re achieving. It allows us to keep people through recognition and development. We want our Area Managers to think, ‘if I really want to develop my career I should be with M&B’.
"M&B are the best operators of managed pubs in my opinion. You may have brilliant accountants, a fantastic supply chain and super HR, but when it comes down to it, it’s all about the relationship between the pub manager and the multi-unit manager. And if that’s not right, we’re never going to get it right."
Peter Thomas, former MD of M&B’s franchised division
Results
Birmingham City University Client Directors Stephen Willson and Clinton Bantock, as well as academics at Birmingham City Business School, worked with Chris Edger to develop a Postgraduate Diploma and Certificate in Management Studies, leading to a Master's degree in Multi-Unit Leadership, developed specifically for M&B’s area managers.
“Our aim was to accelerate their area managers’ capabilities and performance through targeted in-work learning,” says Stephen Willson. “We wanted to become a leading practice-based business school, known for going out into industry and really understanding the specific challenges faced by each business.
“To develop the course we spent time shadowing relevant people in M&B, getting to know the organisation, evaluating roles and looking at the responsibilities and challenges facing their area managers.
“In response to M&B’s challenges we created a flexible Master’s programme, complete with four core modules and a final in-company project.”
Launched in October 2009, the course, which took 15 months to complete, had an initial cohort of 23 RBMs. Since this time M&B has enrolled a further 31 middle managers on this course and over 72 general managers on an entry-level certificate qualification in multi-unit leadership.
Examined topics include:
- Strategy and Branding, which examines brand-cycle theory, looking at brand innovation and how to develop practical approaches to ensure continuous innovation.
- P&L and segment economics – how to understand the service, pricing and investment economics behind different branded segments.
- Service leadership - how to drive service leadership in a national cultural environment where hospitality has a typically had a poor status.
- Operational Improvement and Innovation, which examines how operations personnel can improve the rhythm of the business through service cycle process efficiencies.
In recognition of its impact at M&B, this course was a runner-up in Personnel Today’s ‘Best HRM Initiative’ award category in November 2010.
Postgraduate Diploma Multi-Unit Leadership Birmingham City Business School
- The programme cost £10,000 to develop.
- 23 M&B Area Managers joined the course in October 2009. Thirty-one further candidates have started in the second programme in June 2010 or are about to begin in the third cohort in October 2011. Each candidate must have two years’ experience as an Area Manager.
- Candidates take 13 days out of the business to attends classes at Birmingham City University.
- The course is made up of four modules – each takes three days and involves a case study.
Benefits
- ROI of 538 per cent*
- RBM confidence levels up 21per cent
- RBM capability levels up 18 per cent
- 100 per cent retention
- 96 per cent of candidate line managers would recommend the programme
(*All company derived data: comparison against internal control group)
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