Your best people are going to want to learn more, become more proficient and seek out educational opportunities. And you have to let them.
There is an old cliché about how smart our parents get as we get older. Like all clichés, it is imbedded in an essential truth, and I have personally experienced it.
A previous boss/mentor of mine encouraged me to attend as many career-enhancing educational seminars as possible. I jumped at the suggestion, because I was in the early stages of my publishing career and wanted to learn as much as possible. As I began to feel my oats, I realized that these events were networking opportunities as well as learning experiences, and while I was happy in my job, like anyone I was also on the lookout for other opportunities.
After a while, as I got more competent in my profession, I would ask myself why my superiors would still encourage me to go. Weren’t they exposing me to other job opportunities—and with their significant investment in me, were they risking some other company making me a better offer?
Over the years, I’ve learned that this is one of the major perceived impediments to sending your best people to continuous learning events and venues, because of the fear of exposing them to the possibility of being “pirated away” by other companies or clubs.
But in my case, as my exposure to other companies increased, a funny thing happened. In conversations with my peers from other companies, I began to realize what a good job I had, and that I was fortunate to work for a company that believed in enriching my career and education through various learning opportunities.
It’s the same for your best people: They are going to want to learn more, become more proficient and seek out educational opportunities. And you have to let them.
One such educational opportunity is C&RB’s Chef to Chef Conference. Our 6th annual event will be held March 2-4, 2014 in San Antonio, Texas. When we launched the Conference in Las Vegas in 2009, 54 club chefs attended. Last March, we welcomed over 200 chefs in Denver.
The Conference is an exciting combination of research, management presentations, and live culinary demonstrations. In reviewing the post-Conference questionnaires, the satisfaction index from the chefs is overwhelmingly positive—and they keep coming back.
Over the last decade, club F&B has gone from the dining destination of convenience (or coercion, if you have a monthly minimum) to the dining destination of choice. This has come about because of the demands of the members and your chef’s ability to meet them.
The Chef to Chef Conference is one of the events that gives your chef the opportunity to enhance your dining experience. If he or she comes to you with a request to attend, let them go. It will only make your F&B activity better, and the chef will realize what a good place your club is to work.
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