Compass Partnership Seeks to Support Unemployed Back to Work

Compass Group UK & Ireland, the UK’s largest food and support services provider has partnered with industry charity Springboard, One Housing Group and Your Story to host a UKHospitality and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Hospitality Works event to provide support for unemployed people in London. The event, saw nearly 40 people who are currently seeking work attend, not only to learn more about how a career in hospitality could work for them, but to be provided with support in skills development workshops, gain access to industry experts and have discussions around current vacancies that exist within Compass.

The DWP Hospitality Works 2019 campaign, #JobsWithASmile, was launched earlier this year in a continued bid to attract more workers into the sector and raise aspirations. The successful initiative has created over 8,500 placements across the industry since its creation in 2015. The London event was part of a wider three-week Hospitality Works programme.

Jonathan Foot, Head of Apprenticeships & Early Careers, Compass Group UK & Ireland approached Springboard last year to see how Compass could get involved in the campaign: “Compass is a people powered business. We work at over 10,000 sites in the UK, covering a wide range of sectors including healthcare, defence, education, sports and leisure to name a few, providing many different opportunities for a role within our business. We recognise the need to invest and train our people and have 16 different apprenticeships available to help people learn on the job and develop a career with Compass. It was great to have the opportunity to work with Springboard, Your Story and One Housing to support people back into work.”

Anne Pierce, CEO, Springboard says: "I am delighted to see our partnership with Compass continue to go from strength to strength. Compass has a dedicated team focused on developing talent within their business, and together with our joint commitment to creating opportunities that enable people to achieve their potential and nurture unemployed people of any age into work means we can provide a broad range of exciting and relevant programmes which help people develop and progress their careers. Our partnership demonstrates the benefits of investing in the future workforce and diversifying recruitment pathways to the Hospitality sector."

Andy Woodcock from DWP was delighted with the event: “We’ve built on the success of the Hospitality Works programme year-on-year and this has been the best one yet. We hope that as a result of these events, we’ll see many of the candidates find work within hospitality and get the opportunity to climb up the ladder.”