A top South Lakeland hotel has been highlighted as a leading example of how employers can offer family friendly and flexible working practices.

The Castle Green Hotel in Kendal is one of 11 businesses and organisations praised by the NSPCC, which has published a booklet to help improve flexible working in response to new employment legislation.

The children's charity has teamed up with the Federation of Small Businesses and the British Chamber of Commerce to promote family friendly workplaces.

In the booklet, Getting it right improving work-life balance in your business, the NSPCC says the Castle Green Hotel has shown how adopting a more flexible approach with their employees has helped the business to become more successful and retain skilled and experienced staff.

Castle Green general manager Tim Rumney said recruitment and retention of staff were the most important drivers for introducing work-life balance practices at the hotel.

It was also clear individuals who were valued, appreciated and happy in their work created a productive working environment, he added.

"We are in a labour market that is very tough, with less than one per cent unemploy-ment in our area, and we have a business that is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In order to have good people working here and to hang on to those people, we needed to have more flexibility in our expectations of the hours people could work and organise our shift pattern accordingly," said Mr Rumney.

"We also have to offer benefits that are as good as if not better than the best employers in the area. In a nutshell, we were making these decisions for commercial reasons.

The results have been clear: staff turnover at the hotel, which employs 55 full-timers and 35 part-timers, is now around 40 per cent, having been around 64 per cent a few years ago. The figure compares favourably with the 100 per cent average for the hotel and catering industry, where unsociable hours and shift work make it a short-term job option for many people.

Personnel manager Julie Chapman said the hotel had made a conscious recruitment decision to employ a lot of people with families and both very young and older children.

Examples of this flexible approach include:

l In the housekeeping department, working hours can be fitted around school time, guaranteeing parents can take and pick up children from school.

l Special arrangements are made where a couple both work at the hotel. The second chef always does the 3pm to 11pm shift so his wife, who works in the housekeeping section three days a week, finishes at 3pm so she can take over looking after the children.

l In reception, where it was hard to recruit and keep staff due to rigid shift patterns, rotas are now planned five weeks in advance to give people quality time off.

Maternity pay is supple-mented to 80 per cent of average earnings for weeks 7-18 of the maternity pay period, while new fathers get two weeks paternity leave at full pay, following the arrival of their babies.

The Castle Green Hotel, which has 100 bedrooms and a £4 million annual turnover, earned national recognition for its flexible approach to work by achieving the Work-Life Balance Standard last year.

April 24, 2003 11:00