Hotel Cateys 2023: People Team of the Year – The Belfry Hotel & Resort

Sponsored by Stretch Recruitment

With a workforce of around 800 people, the People Team of the Year winner has quite the task looking after the workforce of the award-winning, 319-bedroom Belfry Hotel & Resort in the heart of North Warwickshire.

This year's winning team provides direct support to the hotel's employees, deploying an open-door policy where it is able to handle on-the-spot requests.

The Belfry's six-strong people team is headed up by head of people and culture Kirsten Price, who is responsible for all 800 staff members, including an executive team of 14, 25 heads of department, 80 middle managers and a mix of both contracted and casual team members across all departments.

Initiatives developed by the team include the hotel's quarterly forum, where the resort director, hotel manager and head of people sit down with department representatives to listen to the teams' challenges, allowing a two-way conversation to ensure all voices are sensitively heard across the hotel.

Employees' hard work is rewarded, with last year's award ceremony celebrating 44 employees, including two who reached their 25th anniversary. They also enjoy quiz and curry nights and a monthly team appreciation day in the form of treats such as an ice-cream van, a sweets stand, free waffles and a tombola.

The Belfry has made significant strides in prioritising employee wellbeing with a focus on mental health, including establishing critical partnerships with the Burnt Chef Project and deploying the Thrive Mental Wellbeing app, which provides employees around the clock access to a wide range of tools and information, offering help with mental health conditions. There is also the provision of fully funded, uncapped access to therapy for all employees. In fact, in a recent employee engagement survey the hotel reported a 10% year-on-year rise in employees believing the hotel supports their health and wellbeing, while other findings included a rise of 18% in those who agreed the senior leadership team are approachable and employees felt heard.

Learning and development is also prioritised, with training programmes with industry experts leading to impressive feedback, while a vast array of digital learning resources provided by an online platform with 3,500 users a month and 3,000 online training courses have been completed over the last year.

Judges praised the team's impact in a short space of time across such a complex business. In fact, their hard work has also resulted in an incredible drop in employee turnover, from 70% to 44%, while absence rates fell from the industry average of 9% to 4%.

An impressive 87% of employees say they are proud to be part of the Belfry which, when workers spend the most days with their hospitality family, is the best result an HR team could hope for and a testament to its incredible work.

What the judges said

"The team shows an impressive contribution to their property. It's impressive to see such breadth of impact." James Goulding

"An all-round solid and creative submission including targeted learning and development – it's all here! A deserving win for this hard working and dedicated team." Liz McGivern

The shortlist

• The Belfry Hotel & Resort
• Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons
• Luxury Family Hotels
• Mollie's Motels
• Rosewood London