Last year we saw BM return to pre-Covid business levels, which was an exciting and important milestone for us. Now we can look forward to continual business growth as we go into 2024, providing more and more opportunities for the amazing team members in our #bmFamily💜💚.
Flexibility is Key
The condensed working week has become more normal, and workplaces are requiring more hospitality services in a shortened timeframe. Not only are the Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday office days significantly busier, but we have seen evening events and the need for hospitality experiences really increase too. We also expect to see a continued increase in office-based working but at a slower rate of increase than in 2023. Flexibility will continue to be key as from time to time the normal patterns shift with occasional spikes in demand on the normally quieter bookend days of the week.
Challenges have Eased
Thankfully, some of the challenges of the past couple of years such as labour shortages and extreme food inflation have eased a little, but that doesn’t mean that they have gone away. Food prices are still going up, albeit at a slower rate than the past couple of years and with the continuation of the Ukraine/Russia conflict and now of course conflict in the Middle East there will still be global economic factors that will continue to influence food prices. Our focus will be on working with our suppliers and on menu development, food waste management and using seasonal ingredients that will help to mitigate some of the impact.
Career of Choice
Attracting and retaining great people will be a big focus for the year ahead. We are aiming to be ambassadors for the Hospitality sector and to make it increasingly a career of choice and to be a first choice for employment to help attract, retain, develop, and engage the best team members. Another key goal for 2024 will be to not only retain our sector leading gender pay gap but to target a further reduction in the gap.
Environmental, Social and Governance
We expect to see more integration into our client ESG strategies. We have seen how this has evolved over the last year and expect it to ramp up in 2024. As a business, we’ve already taken huge strides in this area – offering every single member of our team sustainability training through our ‘Knowledge Labs’ approach. It ensures each team member is aware of the company’s overarching strategy and helps equip them for the challenges ahead as we work through all the pillars of ESG including sustainability, ED&I, social inclusion, and equity as well as the drive towards net zero.
2024 is going to be an exciting year!
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