#040 - Hospitality Meets Simon Lewis - The Energetic Training Guru

In the 2nd of our delves into the world of training & development, we chat to Simon Lewis, Operations Manager at HIT Training (www.hittraining.co.uk).We talk about Training, the future, getting out, The media, Hospitality options, transformer pyjamas, special biscuit tins, crashing tractors, evolution, golf, 19 crimes wine, networking, masks and so much more as well as Simon's wonderful and hilarious journey.Simon talks with such energy, it's clear he's doing what he's supposed to be doing. Also look out for some hilarious anecdotes from his life story so far.Thanks SimonEnjoyShow TranscriptionSUMMARY KEYWORDSpeople, hospitality, absolutely, organisation, programmes, industry, work, training, person, job, chef, learning, part, point, support, literally, remember, daySPEAKERSSimon Lewis, Phil StreetPhil Street 00:01Welcome to hospitality meets with me Phil street where we take a light hearted look into the stories and individuals that make up the wonderful world of hospitality. Today's guest is Simon Lewis, Operations Manager for HIT training in the UK. Coming up on today's show... Simon conjures up some warm and fuzzy moments from his childhood,Simon Lewis 00:22This little boys skipping along with his with his basket collecting the eggs in the morning.Phil Street 00:27We all wonder how we ended up talking about this... And in the meantime, you can still have the odd day of working from home in your Bumblebee pyjamas And Simon wins the award for the most original sentence on the show so far...Simon Lewis 00:39Within about 15 minutes I had an... well I say 15 minutes, after the sheep were put back inPhil Street 00:44All that and so much more as Simon talks us through his story and journey to date along with some hilarious anecdotes from his life so far. Don't forget to give us a like and share across your favourite social channels. Enjoy. Hello and welcome to the next edition of hospitality meets with me Phil Street. Today I'm joined by someone from the world of training and development, a fellow and committee member at the Institute of hospitality London, an advisory board member at Springboard, UK Operations Manager at HIT training, which is what he does for a day job pro... I can't even say this prolific pantomime performer, and all around nice guy Simon Lewis, welcome to the show.Simon Lewis 01:23Oh, thank you my love prolific pantomime performer. That was a lot of p's all in one sentence.Phil Street 01:30Yeah, I didn't realise that as I wrote that.Simon Lewis 01:33(Laughs)Phil Street 01:34Saying it was going to be the greatest challenge of my day.Simon Lewis 01:37How are you? You alright?Phil Street 01:39Yeah, great. How are you doing?Simon Lewis 01:41feeling alright now? I mean, it's a bit dreary outside. And I'm just getting used to the fact of all my different zoom meetings that you end up doing. And anybody who hasn't been through the stage yet where you've spent the day in your pyjamas, and you're Homer Simpson slippers, then you're lying because we know you know, you know that everybody's actually done it. Or when someone turns around and they say, Oh, yeah, my, my camera's not working again, and you're like really that means you're not you're not dressed are you, you just got up and ironically before it was even me for coming on here with you. So that's all I get. Make sure do my hair and I'm not Simon, what do you doing? What What? What? What? Why are you trying to smarten yourself up? No one can see ya. Isn't it weird?Phil Street 02:26No, absolutely. Why the I went very early on into using this platform that I use, which is not video orientated because obviously it's not a video content that I'm churning out.Simon Lewis 02:40What you're saying you saying I've got a face radio?Phil Street 02:42I say that about myself?Simon Lewis 02:43(Laughs)Phil Street 02:45Yes. And we're in good company.Simon Lewis 02:49Good, good. Good shout.Phil Street 02:51Yeah. So yeah, well, maybe you could kick things off by by giving us a rough overview of who you are and what you do.Simon Lewis 02:58So I don't know if I can beat that lovely introduction that you just gave me. But yeah, Hello, my name is My name is ... Do you know what this this feels like? I feel like I'm on a dating site. I like this. Really, my name is Simon, I am 40 years old.Phil Street 03:14You didn't have to say that actually?Simon Lewis 03:16Well, I thought I'd throw it in there. I work out regularly now. And also for a day job. I have Yeah. So I work as the Operations Manager for one of the operations managers for training. And I'm responsible for overseeing the company's business operations. Hence, in terms of within the title, I work really closely in partnership with our head of quality and head of curriculum. And my job role is pretty much is making sure that what we do is consistent across the country, for our learner journey, in line with what our business partners need from us and looking at different sort of ideas and different concepts of what we can do in terms of to support the industries that we work with. So if you look at that for most recently is things like for so where we've been working, I've been working on some projects around preparing apprentices for the post pandemic, and the future of hospitality. Yeah, so looking at different things that people can do. So principles of infection control, awareness for first aid, customer service in the New World, managing change, building resilience. So looking at ways the as an organisation that we can adapt our learning, I'd love to take all the credit for doing this, but we've got a lot of people in the background that actually do a lot of the work as well. However, I don't mind saying it. But it's about about preparing people and their business for our post COVID future really, and starting to look at sort of sort of projects like that. So that's that's just just a short glimpse in terms of the last couple of weeks, basically.Phil Street 04:55So not only are you a trainer of people, you You know, a futurist, because you've kind of you've had to come up with training ideas based around a concept that none of us really know what the other side looks like.Simon Lewis 05:11Absolutely. And I think that we're quite lucky with the organisation that we work with, because we've got a sister company called connect to care, who've always worked in terms of with mental health and working across the care industry. So working in partnership with those guys is brilliant. So that because in terms of it, hospitality has always had infection control, but then taking it to a whole new level. And really understanding that drawing in on on other people within the business is just great. And you notice expect to learn new things.Phil Street 05:42Yep, absolutely. So give us a kind of a rough guide as to the sorts of things that you that you train and also your what you generally are doing at the moment as a company.Simon Lewis 05:55So our main delivery is around apprenticeship programmes and being able to support and develop people through the industry. So anything from somebody who wants to start out as a chef, we run a number of chef academies, when we get back to doing them for face to face, right here, right now, we are delivering the same quality product online. So we've got a number of masterclasses that we've been delivering, do interactive online workshops. I only looked today, and in one day alone, there was about 19 different workshops that were just being ran today across the sector's so including things like for customer service, management and leadership, understanding shellfish coffee off the top of my head, what were they they were, but there's bear game. So huge array in terms of for different things that are available on that there, we've also been looking at our new employment support programme for hospitality, retail. And that and that's basically is because, unfortunately, with with what's happened in the background, we know that there's a number of workers who've recently been made redundant, understanding how difficult it is, and it's it can be quite stressful at these these sort of times. So what we did was we put together a redundancy support programme, right for re entering the world of work again, post COVID-19, helping to boost CVS preparing for online interviews, as part of the programme then also, again, looking at customer service, most importantly, just about the prevention and control of infection, managing change and actually building resilience. And so that yes, so that that's sort of that sort of encompasses just some some of the stuff that we've been looking at, we're looking at a number in terms of for different job boards of looking at, for people for coming back, for people who want to join the industry in the future. So