Natalie: An interview with Robert

In this edition of our newsletter, former supported internship learner and Mencap Co trainer, Natalie Duo speaks with Robert Cooke from Greene King about our amazing work together.

This month I interviewed Robert Cooke who works for pub company and brewer, Greene King as a talent development manager. We spoke about Greene King’s relationship with Mencap and how they came to work with us.

Can you tell us a bit about the company you work for, your role, and how you work with Mencap?

I work for Greene King which is one of the largest hospitality companies in the UK. We can trace our history and our brewing heritage in Bury St Edmunds back to 1799, so, we've been going for quite a while!

Over many years, the business has grown - through acquisitions and organically - to the point where we now employ around 39,000 people across lots of different sites. These include about 2,700 pubs across the UK.

In terms of our relationship with Mencap, we started working together a couple of years ago on supported internships. We work with Mencap, as well as with another organisation called Landmarks Specialist College on a cohort model, taking on a new in-take of young people each year in September. And we offer placements in areas where Mencap runs programmes. We do lots of work with the team in Northampton, as well as a little bit of work sometimes around the West Midlands and in some London boroughs. Mencap do a lot of the groundwork to start with in terms of understanding if the work experience we can offer will be a good fit for the young person.

Young people that Mencap have identified as potentially being suitable for placements then go for an interview with the general manager at the pub they’d be working at, and then they start a work experience placement in the pub for the duration of their supported internship programme, so 8-9 months. They might do just one shift a week, or it can be multiple shifts, depending on the capability and the need of the learner, and shifts may increase over time. If all goes well and everybody feels that the learner is confident and competent, then at the end of the supported internship, we will endeavor to recruit that candidate into paid employment.

How many people have you supported at your company, across the UK, through working with Mencap and what kind of work are people with learning disabilities doing at your company?

We have had over 90 supported internship learners complete work experience placements with us. Currently, around 75% of learners who do work experience with us have ended up being offered paid employment.

Around 70% of learners that we take on work in front of house roles. This means they work at the front of the pub, serving customers, clearing tables, taking out food. Depending on leaners’ capability and confidence they may take on a wide array of front of house jobs. Some people who perhaps have mild autism or mild ADHD may have very wide capability, for example. Some other learners may experience more limitations in terms of the range of tasks they can do, so they may do specific things. It might be that they come into the pub, and they just clear glasses and refill shelves, and they do that for three hours a week. That might be their role and we're just developing their ability to do that role consistently and confidently. But what we try to do is to slowly add additional tasks, or to expand the task.

We also have some learners that have gone into the kitchen and again, and depending on their capability and confidence, they do a variety of different roles there. Some of it might be more to do with cleaning and washing dishes, whereas others do some food prep and cooking as well. So again, it's all done around capability and confidence – that's kind of our mantra - the young person must be capable and sure of what they’re doing, that's really important.

Is it difficult work?

The work is very fast paced. For some young people this is too much for them and that's why we sometimes lose learners and Mencap has to find them different work experience. Some people may like the idea of working in a pub when they start on the supported internship programme, but then they find they experience sensory overload because there's so much happening and so much noise and there are lots of people with lots of requests.

Even for people who don’t have a learning disability or difficulty, it can be an overwhelming experience, particularly when it’s very busy. And some of our sites get really busy. We've got a pub in Manchester called the Matchstick Man, for example, that's right next to Manchester United's football ground. When United are playing, the pub is packed with what we call five deep at the bar and it's constant all afternoon and evening. You've got to have some pace and resilience to be able to keep up with that all day.

That’s why it’s so important beforehand to make sure that the learner is going to cope in that environment, because even if a pub is quieter, there's still a lot of things going on, and a all at the same time and it's making sure that they can manage and cope with that.

Have you met many learners and seen them at work?

Absolutely. I recently met Lance, for example, who we’d had doing work experience at The North London Tavern. But we needed to move him to another of our pubs, The Railway in West Hampstead. I went and met Lance when he was still at the North London Tavern and we talked him through the process of moving to another pub because again, for some learners, moving to another pub is quite a traumatic experience. It’s a big change and they have to get used to a whole new environment where everything's laid out differently and there’s a different team of people to work with. But Lance is very resilient, and he's taken it in his stride and is doing really well at The Railway.

I also get to go out often to our pubs and visit different learners and meet with their Mencap skill coaches. One of the perks of my job is I get to travel a lot, so I've met quite a lot of supported internship learners.

We'll be starting a new cohort soon, so I will also hopefully get to meet some more young people who will potentially do placements with us. We're looking forward to that and hopefully, we’ll get the chance to work with some different pubs as well. We're always looking to try and expand our work with Mencap and supported internship learners because we've got so many pubs, and therefore its good if we can find people from different geographical areas so we can work with more of our pubs across the country.

How does Mencap support Greene King to make work experience placements a success?

All the young people that go into our pubs are supported every day by a skills coach from Mencap. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, it means that there is someone with the learner in the workplace who they have already got to know and can relate to and easily ask for help. And secondly, it means that the pub isn't under as much pressure, particularly at the beginning where staff may not have the knowledge or experience yet to fully understand learners’ needs.

The skills coach acts as a mentor to the learner, but also as a bridge to the general manager and the wider team at the pub where the learner is doing their work experience placement. If there's ever any problem or challenge, we find a solution by working with the skills coach, while our teams also benefit from training that Mencap provides when they start working with them and with learners.

The skills coaches will first work to understand what tasks the pub needs the learner to do. Then they’ll learn how to do the task themselves so they can work out a way to teach it to the individual learner they are supporting. For example, a learner may need to load and set the dishwasher and the only way to make sure they can do this properly is to create some photographic cards for them that break down the process. Over time, we can reduce the level of support provided by skills coaches.

Another type of support offered by the skills coaches is travel training, ensuring learners know how to get to the pub on their own because obviously if they get a paid job, they're going to have to get to work on their own every day and they're going to have to do that at different times of the day for different shifts. Here, we might also make some reasonable adjustments. We look at what the learner can cope with and plan shifts accordingly. We have a couple of learners that only work in the day because they aren't able to cope with getting home at night in the dark during winter.

Some people will always need transport support, and Mencap can also support us in these instances as well. They can go to local councils and get travel funding and additional support to enable learners to become employed.

What are you most proud of about working with Mencap and supporting people with a learning disability?

I think work changes somebody's life and gives them all sorts of benefits. As well as enabling people to earn some money, which can give somebody financial independence, it also gives them confidence. It provides an opportunity to go and be social and be with different people. There are benefits for their carer, partner and family as well. It gives them an opportunity to not always be responsible for supporting that individual.

For me, it's about giving people an opportunity. Only around 4% of people with a learning disability are in paid employment, so the fact that 75% of our candidates have got a job, I think is very impressive.

It’s amazing to see somebody who’s been given an opportunity succeed,grow and become confident. Our customers like to see this as well. People really recognise and appreciate it when a company gives people a chance.

I really hope we can do more of this work. We’re doing some other work besides our engagement with the supported internship programme, with our employee-led inclusion groups. We have a fantastic group called Ability and that's made-up of people who either have some type of disability (whether that is visible or non-visible - like a learning disability), or who are empathetic, perhaps because they have a child or family member with a disability. This group comes together regularly and offers ideas regarding how we can make life easier for people with disabilities when working in our organisation. I was very lucky to go and attend one of their meetings the other day and tell them about the great work we do with Mencap and hopefully we can continue to grow this work.

If you would like to learn more about our supported internship programme, please visit our website.