College Hosts Successful Diversity in Hospitality Event at Sighthill Campus
The College’s Training and Development team hosted a fantastic interactive Employer Engagement event yesterday at our Sighthill campus.
A dozen of local Hospitality businesses participated in a round-table discussion to explore some of the key challenges they face, and learned how the College can support them to make progress through skills development.
A range of speakers gave presentations on the day, summaries of which can be found below.
Avril Cameron from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), who has been working on Diverse Community and Ethnic Minorities Support, highlighted that candidates from BAME background require approx. 70% more applications to get the same success rate in employment opportunities as people than those from other ethnic groups. Avril suggested language and cultural awareness training should be carried out in support of non-native English speakers at work, and this has also been proved to be an efficient way for workplace retention.
Charlene Crighton from Signature Pubs shared their Trial and Error story where offering trial shifts proved to be unsuccessful. This led to the organisation introducing a skills-based assessment method involving “coffee chats” and a probational period assessment followed by training routine. Signature recognises language barriers can cause difficulties in the workplace, and so offer multi-lingual training platform, English language courses, and having an internal interpreter present at meetings when necessary.
Kai Hirlinger from Wagamama stressed the importance of being able to express yourself freely and how important languages is to do so.
Edinburgh College Lecturers in Modern Languages, ESOL and Hospitality Caroline Cordier, Sarah Donno and Sarah MacLeod-Bonnar highlighted the great value a bespoke language course embedding SVQ hospitality units can bring to your business. They have also listed some successful work the College has done for some of the most renowned hotel and retail businesses in Edinburgh.
If you would like to speak with our teams for Languages or Workforce Development support, please contact us on 0131 297 9000 or enterprise@edinburghcollege.ac.uk
