Star Pubs
drives profit through faster onboarding with Attensi
50%Time to Onboard Staff
6%EBITDA Increase
95%Average Pub Auditing ScoreFor Star Pubs (Part of Heinkeken UK Ltd), training a time-poor workforce across pubs was a critical challenge. Their traditional training methods were described by the team as "passive," "long-winded," and "death by PowerPoint". It caused operational disruption in day-to-day roles, didn’t promote knowledge retention and wasn’t scalable to fit future growth plans.
By partnering with Attensi, Star Pubs replaced their static online and face-to-face courses with a gamified, mobile-first solution that fits their fast-paced hospitality environment and helps staff master product knowledge whilst gaining confidence in delivering consistently great guest experiences.
The shift transformed training from a chore into a competitive habit, cutting onboarding compliance time by half, increasing both audit and food standards scores, and improving the guest experience which directly resulted in higher profits across the pubs.
“The pubs where the staff are really engaged with the content and have done the training, their sales are better by 4% than the ones that have less engagement. And their profit is better by 6% than the ones that have less engagement."Tracy BickerdikeHead of Licensee Development & Training | STAR PUBS
Bringing out the best of the great British pub
Part of the iconic Heineken UK Ltd, Star Pubs is on a mission to bring out the best of the great British pub - and they believe it's their people that create the community and next-level service that Star Pubs are known for.
Attracting and training the best operators and licensees continues to be a key part of the organisation’s strategy, as well as supporting those licensees to attract and retain the best employees for their pubs.
In the hospitality industry, where staff turnover is over 50%, investing in world-class onboarding and training that’s fast, cost-effective and creates real results is vital for future growth.
“Comprehensive age verification for gaming machines training can now be done in five minutes, rather than the 30 minutes required with e-learning, whilst increasing pass rates in unannounced age testing visits by 36%.”Kevin RobertsonHealth, Safety, and Compliance Manager | STAR PUBS
“We could never get to the point of refresher training on the old platform because it was so long-winded, whereas now they engage with it all the time. You can see they go on and redo modules they've already done. They see it as a useful tool, and it's part of what they do within the pub to get that knowledge.”Tracy BickerdikeHead of Licensee Development & Training | STAR PUBS
"We now can do [onboarding and compliance training] via the training applications, which means we've got consistency, and we also can see that knowledge transfer. So we're confident that that new person has got that knowledge, and they've also got somewhere to go back to in case they forget something."Kevin RobertsonHealth, Safety, and Compliance Manager | STAR PUBS
The results
The time taken to create training content has reduced from a week to less than a day
Audit scores have improved from 87% to 95%
Onboarding training time has been cut by 50%
Pubs with the most engaged staff have sales 4% higher and profit 6% higher
“Gamification modules take a fraction of the time of traditional training and maximise ongoing staff performance and productivity. For example, they cut six hours off completion of induction and compliance training for new starters.”Tracy BickerdikeHead of Licensee Development & Training | STAR PUBS
Creating more effective training content faster
In hospitality, things change quickly. With Attensi Creator, the power to rapidly build new games and learning modules is helping Star Pubs to add and update their training quickly and effectively, whenever they need it.
The built-in AI supports Star Pub’s L&D team to create new training or to add existing PDF training materials and turn them into engaging gamified learning modules. This has allowed the team to create new training content up to 75% faster.
“Attensi Creator is fabulous because it enables us to create our own content super easy. And I love that we can drop a PDF in there, then it'll create our course that would normally take us three to four days - we can do it in less than a day.”Tracy BickerdikeHead of Licensee Development & Training | STAR PUBS
The bright future of Star Pubs
The impact of the new training platform has already been significant for Star Pubs - and it’s not stopping there.
As the team continues expansion of the learning content onto the platform and refining how they use it, the partnership between Star Pubs and Attensi is set to keep creating positive results for the future of the business and their people.
“We're continually evolving how we use it. So it's not going to stop there either.”Tracy BickerdikeHead of Licensee Development & Training | STAR PUBS
“It's knowing that we are safe, legal and compliant, and knowing that I've given the team the basis of skills that they need to do their job before they start.”Tim SkinnerDevonshire Arms Publican | STAR PUBS
"In the previous online stuff we used, there was no engagement. There was no repetition. You can literally go through the course, guess the answers because the answers were quite obvious if there's multiple choice. But has that really sunk in?"Kevin RobertsonHealth, Safety, and Compliance Manager | STAR PUBS
“In hospitality, you're used to rushing about, doing things, moving all the time - sitting down is not what we do. So to sit down and get someone to watch something for 30, 45 minutes, it's just too much. And they lose engagement, they find it boring and basically tick the box, but it hasn't gone in, that's the important thing.”Kevin RobertsonHealth, Safety, and Compliance Manager | STAR PUBS
"We've eliminated the low. We've got no zeros or ones anymore... 90% of the pubs are now five star rating. So you can see that in the [Environmental Health Officers] going in and verifying that the training is working."Kevin RobertsonHealth, Safety, and Compliance Manager | STAR PUBS
