By Vanessa Cavasinni, editor Australian Hotelier
In a move to encourage staff to never settle and to continue to learn new skills, Merivale have established the ‘Unbottle Your Dreams’ staff competition, in conjunction with Hahn Super Dry.
Staff members of the month from each venue receive a $100 Merivale gift card and a case of Hahn Super Dry.
Those staff members of the month then take part in a ‘beer storm session’ with industry leaders, where they can express their career ambitions, as well as hear from senior staff members about their career paths. Participants in the beer storm sessions can then submit a response on their career objectives and how they can achieve those goals. From those submissions, a winner is selected every quarter for a bespoke $10,000 experience to help them with their aims.
The latest winner was Linda Charge, a chef at The Newport, who has worked in various Merivale venues for the last nine years. Charge wanted to reinvigorate her cooking creativity and expressed a keen interest in learning more about Asian cuisine. To help Charge expand her knowledge and skill set, she will be flying to Hong Kong to learn from ex-Merivale Chef Jowett Hu in his Chinese-fusion restaurant Ho Lee Fook – and will no doubt bring back some new inspiration to help her on her career path.
This excerpt is part of a larger feature on training programs in the June issue of Australian Hotelier. You can read about other training initiatives here.