The Coaching Inn Group – proud to work responsibly
CORPORATE GOVERNANCE
The Board’s primary focus is to ensure the protection and enhancement of long term value taking into account the interests of stakeholders for the performance of the company. The board is accountable to stakeholders for the performance of the company. It directs and monitors the business and affairs of the company on behalf of these stakeholders and is responsible for the company’s overall corporate governance.
Operational performance is closely monitored in a way that is compliant to all historic and recent legislation, across all our hotels.
The company’s operational elements of performance are monitored in such a way that, wherever possible, the same practices should be seen across all business units. This should link to the relevant policies and documentation across the business units in an aligned way.
The Coaching Inn Group will sample, record, and report on the Key performance indicators in the same way and audit using the same standards across the company. This will outline a way of producing governance KPI’s with methods of measurement to ensure compliance across the group businesses.
ENVIRONMENT
We care passionately about the environment and strive to limit the impact of our activities in the following ways:
• We are committed to achieving, and in certain cases exceeding, current legislation and regulations, working to reduce our impact on the world around us. This includes: maximising recycling of bins, oil and glass, and influencing team behaviour with the aim of reducing our carbon footprint and making our workplace a safe one
• Our hotels are often historic and despite listed status issues, we still look to reduce our energy consumption by purchasing the most fuel effective appliances and systems; investing in LED lighting; efficient heating; and energy efficient induction kitchen equipment. We aspire to keep reducing our emission of greenhouse gases from our hotels and within our supply chain
• We are a people centred business but we try and use conference calls wherever possible as part of our policy to reduce the mileage consumed for meetings and positively encourage car sharing wherever possible.
Wherever possible we deliver parcels and equipment from our Head Office as part of a planned visit by one of the team, again to limit our carbon footprint.
• Our policy is to reuse technical equipment and furniture in different ways to reduce landfill and we also utilise free recycling opportunities locally if items are to be discarded.
We have completely removed plastic straws from our hotels, using totally biodegradable alternatives in their place. We are looking to replace plastic water bottles with ethical alternatives.
We have external recycling solutions for cardboard; plastics until the alternatives are in place; and glass collected from all our hotels; ensuring we do not add our waste to the millions of tonnes processed each day in the UK
• We promote our actions across the group and encourage all employees to reduce waste, reuse supplies, and recycle in the most ecological way, including laundering and reusing returned uniforms wherever possible.
We have won awards for sympathetic, sensitive restoration and regeneration of our historic Coaching Inns, including positive feedback from English Heritage.
• We aim at all times to be good neighbours and, at every hotel, to be active in the local communities in their Market Town Locations.
We are also a strong supporter of our ‘Treesleep’ scheme, which involves financing baby tree planting within the Lincolnshire Woodland Trust, to reduce our carbon footprint and give something back locally.
OUR PEOPLE
Employee Benefits and Rewards
Our Teams mean the world to us
• We always aim to provide a level of pay that is above the minimum wage rate and more aligned to the living wage. This will always represent a competitive level of pay to the work undertaken and the local area pressures. We continually review this.
We offer a package of benefits relative to the role, including Performance Bonus; enhanced holiday entitlement; private health care; Life Insurance; Company Pension Scheme; Healthy body/ Healthy Mind Grant; plus, substantial food and accommodation discounts at our hotels.
• Diversity within the workplace is really important and we absolutely value our full time and part time staff. If possible we happily agree to flexible working practices that offer that all important work/life and family balance. We are still very much a family business in approach and this is a fact we never lose sight of.
• We recognise great service, loyalty and integrity, both through monthly and annual Hero of the Month Awards at every hotel. Also recruitment and long service awards, with formal presentations at our Annual Awards Dinner, and voucher schemes.
• We are proudly fully committed to equal rights and opportunity in employment
• As a successful national hospitality company we strongly value direct face to face people contact, yet, wherever possible we use technology to break down the barriers of travel, sharing of workspaces, video conference calls, Webinars and online tools
• When travelling we promote the use of car sharing, and offer a flexible company car scheme which includes the use of low emission cars together with electric hybrid vehicles available as a company car option.
• We support charitable initiatives and offer schemes such as ‘match funding’ of charitable donations.
EMPLOYEE WELLBEING
Team/Work Life Balance is really important to us
• We strive to provide a safe working environment at all our hotels with a quality maintenance and refurbishment programme which benefits both the teams and guests.
We have also had specialist health and safety professionals review and produce safe ways of working, risk assessments, and governance. This is professionally audited to ensure we are keeping to these standards and to guide us on the correct path
• We ensure that our Kitchens and work spaces attain the highest cleanliness standards. Facilities and equipment provided are of the highest quality and serviced and maintained to the highest order to benefit all employees.
As part of our package for all team members we subscribe to the Hospitality Action Charity, who provide free, confidential advice, guidance and counselling on a range of subjects from Drug and Alcohol Abuse, to financial worries and loneliness. They can be contacted free, 24 hours per day.
Employee wellbeing is so crucial within the Company that the HR Director role is centred on the welfare of the teams within the group, including health, and maternity/paternity within the Company.
Every year we offer substantially discounted hotel rates to all team members as a thank you for all their hard work and effort and this allows them to stay at any of the hotels in the group.
• We measure our internal employee turnover and use this as an indicator of pay, conditions and benchmarking across our hotels.
• We maintain a non-smoking policy in all our buildings and company vehicles but provide designated areas at all our hotels for smokers
We actively promote health and wellbeing and for Managers, Head Office and Support Staff, each year we offer a free Healthy Body, Healthy Mind Grant to encourage physical and mental wellbeing.
Where possible we limit working hours and have improved holiday entitlement to maximise a positive work/life balance.
TEAM COMMUNICATION
Keeping everybody up to date and valuing and encouraging their feedback and input
• We are always looking to improve our internal communications to ensure that Company and individual hotel news reaches all teams wherever they are based.
This includes a range of approaches from traditional notice boards to email and company magazines. We encourage shift briefings every day and full team briefings every week to ensure continual learning and to update teams of various work related issues and developments.
Twice yearly full independent Health and Safety audits are completed at every Hotel to provide information and guidance and advice re any actions necessary. When accidents happen we review our processes to ensure we can, if possible, mitigate the risk in the future.
We always try to give our Teams an overview of our challenges, successes, initiatives and opportunities. Teams are always encouraged to provide feedback and we encourage an open two- way dialogue at all levels and welcome and reward their ideas.
• Quarterly Senior team meetings to unlock potential, and to discuss opportunities within the business from an operational, sales/marketing, finance, property, people, perspective .
We also hold Monthly General Managers meetings and Head Chef meetings to share best practice, impart learning and provide information on various developments within the company. Two-way discussion is actively encouraged.
EMPLOYEE TRAINING
Developing our teams, to achieve their potential is central to everything we do
• We provide a flexible range of user friendly methods to encourage employee training and development for all. From mandatory, safe and legal Online learning prior to commencement for our Kitchen and Front of house colleagues. There are also a range of voluntary courses available to all team members at every hotel and beyond.
• Our Unlocking Potential, Management Development Programmes, for all levels of management. From Duty Management (for which we were finalists for a National Training Innovation Award), Assistant, Deputy, and Designate General Manager, which aims to identify talent then provide tailor-made training through which we encourage and develop tomorrow’s future stars.
Focus is also on our Kitchen Teams and we are investing heavily in our brand new Chef Academy at our hotel in Market Harborough where, eventually, all culinary training will take place from Apprentice to Head Chef.
Our first internal Company Kitchen apprenticeship scheme has commenced, in conjunction with a Nationally renowned training provider in our industry, to help develop our future stars
We are all passionate about our food and all managers and Head Office and Support teams attend appropriate culinary preparation and appreciation training sessions.
• We also enable our financial function to flourish with funding and study leave for ACCA and CIMA chartered qualifications.
MODERN SLAVERY
We are committed to working towards preventing slavery and human trafficking in our business activities. Steps have been put in place with the aim of ensuring that there is no slavery or human trafficking in our own business and supply chains.
We all have a duty to be alert to risks however small. Staff are expected to report their concerns and management to act upon them.
As part of the supply chain we undertake due diligence to ensure we are not entering into a contract or services that could be misconstrued and demand of our suppliers the highest credentials. This also includes any agencies that supply our companies with temporary labour. We undertake company checks and satisfy ourselves of the viability of the company we do business with
We brief all General Managers to provide awareness regarding potential Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking. The organisation operates the following policies that describe its approach to the identification of modern slavery risks and steps to be taken to prevent slavery and human trafficking in its operations:
• Whistleblowing policy – The organisation encourages all its team members to report any concerns related to the direct activities, or the supply chains of, the organisation. This includes any circumstances that may give rise to an enhanced risk of slavery or human trafficking. The organisation’s whistleblowing procedure is designed to make it easy for team members to make disclosures, without fear of retaliation. Employees, customers, or others who have concerns can contact HR on a confidential basis.
• Supplier/Procurement – The Coaching Inn Group is committed to ensuring that its suppliers adhere to the highest standards of ethics. Suppliers are required to be able to demonstrate that they provide safe working conditions where necessary, treat workers with dignity and respect, and act ethically and within the law in their use of labour. We work with suppliers to ensure that they meet the standards of the code and improve their worker’s working conditions. Serious violations of the standards expected will lead to the termination of the business relationship
• Recruitment Standards – The Company only use specified, reputable employment agencies to source candidates and always verifies the practices of any new agency it is using before accepting workers from that agency.
All Board members of the group, and Senior Management, are committed to ensure that there isn’t any modern slavery or human trafficking in our supply chains, through our internal procurement and
HR departments, assisting to drive out all aspects of human trafficking and slavery from our supply chains. Education is key to the understanding and we ask all our management and teams to raise concern if they believe any aspect of our supply chain is compromised by human trafficking or slavery.
The Board of Directors absolutely believe that with driving the correct internal and supplier behaviours, slavery in any form will be removed from day to day life. It is a basic prerequisite that we attempt to remove any instance across our supply chain. The above statements are made at this time and will be reviewed annually or indeed when a change of legislation means it is relevant and proper to do so.
