Community

apetito is acutely aware that, as a business, it does not operate in isolation. Everyone who works at apetito is part of their personal family unit and part of their wider community, through organisations such as schools, faith groups or sports clubs.

The apetito Staff Foundation enables colleagues and their families to nominate community projects they are involved in for apetito grants. To date, we have donated £76,000 to around 210 projects. The project means that we help and support around 1 in 12 colleagues as they get involved in community activities.  In 2007, this contribution was recognised by the Food and Drink federation with a Community Partnership Award.

Our '”Success Through Teamwork” Awards' reward staff for exceptional performance and offers a £1,000 donation to charities of the winning team’s choice. 'Sustainability, Health and Safety and Business Risk' is one of the assessed categories within these annual awards.

Volunteering time within the community in which we work is a great way of maintaining staff morale, encouraging team working and giving something back. We are busy setting up arrangements with Community Foundation organisations across the country to allow staff to work on volunteering projects with local charities. This will give each member of staff the opportunity to spend 1 day a year volunteering.

The Community Foundation will broker potential projects, such as organising a trip to an adventure park for young people in social need, repainting a client room within a day centre, or gardening on a community farm.

We work closely with Wiltshire College helping them provide many students, including students with disabilities, with work experience at apetito. For many years, we have employed a number of staff with learning difficulties, who have become vital and valued members of Team apetito.

To assist staff in their roles and develop their full potential, our training programmes cover job-specific tasks such as technical training, IT, people management, health, safety and environment, sustainability and a leadership and development programme featuring input from leading experts. On average, each employee receives 2.5 days' training plus an induction programme lasting one to six weeks. Our corporate training budget for 2009 rose 40% from 2008 to £217,600. Individual divisions also have their own training budgets totalling over £206,000.

The training and development of our staff contributes to all three pillars of sustainability:

- Socially, it enables our people to protect themselves, for example through health and safety training, and to better their future prospects through recognised and accredited training courses.
- Economically, well trained staff are going to be more of an asset to the business than untrained or poorly trained staff.
- Environmentally we use training to encourage our people to be aware of the challenges facing us.

Zoë Witheridge
Learning & Development Manager