Marston's case study

Marston’s, one of the UK’s top public house and brewing businesses, employs over 14,000 people across the UK.

Having invested in apprenticeships and made full use of its levy, it now has 500 apprentices across the group on 13 different standards ranging from Level 2 to Level 5.

Investing in skills

Apprenticeships are a key part of Marston’s people strategy, in order to help attract new talent to the company, improve staff retention, and increase stability.

Apprentices can now be found throughout the business: as trainee chefs, front-of-house staff, managers and even engineers. More than half of Marston’s pubs now employ at least one apprentice, with around 40 apprentices at the head office.

How it works

Marston’s apprentices enjoy considerable real-life responsibility in their roles as they progress through the apprenticeship, enabling them to gain confidence and experience in their role.

A range of different techniques are used to assess competency, including mystery customer visits, manager feedback, and referring to TripAdvisor reviews.

In addition to the on-the-job experience, apprentices have access to a range of training and learning methods, including online learning platforms.

Monitoring, assessment and feedback is undertaken via a mixture of group and one-to-one sessions, review meetings as well as in one-to-one tuition sessions.

Improving standards

Since investing in its apprenticeship programmes, Marston’s has seen a demonstrable difference in staff retention. Apprentice chefs in particular have a much better retention rate at 58% than the industry average.

Not only that: the lower staff turnover has saved a whopping £85,560 in recruitment costs!

Read our report on how to ensure a quality experience for apprentices and employers.

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