The hotel chain, in partnership with Fundaci?n Tomillo and the financial support of Barclays Foundation, is set to recruit a number of young Spanish people to work at its hotels in Munich and Vienna
? The Sprint programme, which falls within NH Hoteles? ?Up! For Opportunities? social initiative, will be gradually extended to other Central European countries in the years to come
NH Hoteles, Fundaci?n Tomillo and Barclays Foundation have signed a cooperation agreement whereby the parties have undertaken to offer, through the Sprint programme, real job opportunities in the hotel trade for young Spanish people at risk of exclusion. As part of the company?s ?Up! For Opportunities? social action initiative, an international programme providing training and work experience at the group?s establishments for young people facing exclusion, NH Hoteles will offer a one-year employment contract for kitchen and front-of-house staff at a number of its hotels in Germany and Austria to five young people selected by Fundaci?n Tomillo.
This new initiative stems partly from NH Hoteles? need to cover job positions with qualified staff at its Austrian and German hotels, but is also intended to tackle spiralling unemployment among young people in Spain. It represents a socially-responsible alliance between NH Hoteles, Fundaci?n Tomillo and Barclays Foundation in which each party is contributing its resources: employment, training and financing, respectively, with a view to improving the employability of these especially vulnerable young people and helping to balance employment supply and demand via the transnational redistribution of job opportunities.
Fundaci?n Tomillo has selected from among its catering course students, the best-trained and experienced young people currently out of work who have received over 180 hours of theoretical and practical culinary training in Germany so as to improve their technical and language skills, thus guaranteeing their successful integration into their future job positions.
In turn, Barclays Foundation, as part of its commitment to enhancing employability, has supported the project which includes German classes, economic support for all the logistics abroad and a basic financial course.
The young aspirants, whose ages range from 18 to 30, will travel to Munich and Vienna this coming 15th of October to embark on a new professional challenge: working in the kitchen and front of house at a number of NH hotels in the two cities. At their destination city, they will find support from both Barclays volunteers, who will help them settle in on arrival, and also NH volunteers at their hotel, who will act as mentors. Excitement and a strong desire to start work will be the starting point of this Sprint programme, in which participants will face this future professional challenge.
?Unemployment among young people in Spain currently stands at 50% and the situation becomes all the more complicated in the case of groups at risk of exclusion. At NH Hoteles, as a responsible company, we strive to offer young people new career paths within the tourism sector and we believe that this job recruitment scheme in Central Europe is an excellent opportunity to gain employment alongside our employees and expand horizons?, explains Marta Mart?n, Head of Corporate Responsibility at NH Hoteles.
NH Hoteles, Fundaci?n Tomillo and Barclays Foundation, who have rolled out this joint programme with Austria and Germany as the initial host countries, are already exploring the possibility, depending on job openings, of extending its scope to other Northern European countries in which the Spanish hotel chain operates.
NH Hoteles, a responsible company within the tourism sector
Against the backdrop of its corporate responsibility policy, NH Hoteles has effectively implemented a global social action strategy aiming to boost the engagement of employees, pinpoint opportunities and promote a wealth of responsible projects.
NH Hoteles? Social Action Plan envisages three lines of action under the motto Up! For the People: Up for Opportunities, an international programme providing training and work experience for young disabled people and those at risk of exclusion at the company?s hotels. Within the framework of this programme are the Up! for Volunteering corporate volunteering initiative, and the Up! for Hospitality initiative, promoting special rates and donations of products and services for NGOs and foundations.
This is not the first collaboration of its kind, as NH Hoteles has been working for years with Fundaci?n Juan XXIII, offering a hugely successful internship programme within the catering and hotel trade for young disabled people, and also with the NGO Casal dels Infants, providing kitchen and hotel maintenance internships at Barcelona hotels for young people at risk of exclusion.
Source: NH Hotels