The apprentice and the MD

"I arrived at Rivermead Office (Uxbridge) at 08:00am on Monday 23rd February 2009. I was met by Jane Leeming from Learning and Development, and taken on a tour of the offices. The four Compass sectors - Restaurant Associates; Sports, Leisure and Hospitality; Specialist Markets and Business and Industry, are based here, along with HR, Learning and Development, IT, Keith Prowse Brokerage and many others. We proceeded upstairs to meet Elmo, I was nervous but excited about what I was going to learn throughout the day. My first task was to attend the weekly growth and results meeting. There were representatives from each Compass sector, and we discussed the new Chartwells Eat, Learn and Live Campaign. Compass Group is aiming to win new bids to provide the contract catering for schools, independents, colleges and universities around the UK. This was really interesting for me to see how the company works from the top. Being based in a unit, we don't get to see all the work that goes into achieving a new contract when it is up for re-tender. Whilst Elmo was in a series of confidential meetings, I was given the challenge of introducing myself to everybody in the building, and discovering one interesting fact about one person from each department. Given it was first thing on a Monday morning and nobody knew who I was, this was surprisingly effortless. I gathered many interesting facts - learning that one employee was a beekeeper and another sang in a folk band wearing a fake beard! We then met Megan Caulkett, another apprentice from the Compass Academy. She was to be presenting at the TUC conference the next day, and had come to meet Elmo and run through her speech with Jane and myself. After lunch with Elmo, Jane, and Vicky Williams, Megan and I sat in on Elmo's 2pm call. The sector representatives again attended this along with Jason Leek (Managing Director of Restaurant Associates) on the telephone. Elmo then informed me that he would be participating in a telephone interview with the Daily Mail regarding National Apprenticeship Week, and that he would like me to take part in this too. Whilst we waited for the journalist to call in, Elmo and Amy Smith discussed creating a new support team for some of the units in our business. I contributed a few times during this meeting, drawing on knowledge I had learnt at my base unit regarding standard operating procedures. We then received the call from Linda Whitney at the Daily Mail. She interviewed Elmo and then spoke with Megan and myself. We had Chris King from PR on hand and afterwards he said I required no media training at all! We spoke about our experiences as an apprentice, what we felt we had learnt so far, and how we thought apprenticeships could benefit a business. We were told this interview would appear in the Daily Mail the following Thursday. A photographer then took a variety of shots of myself, Elmo and Megan to send to the newspaper for when the story went to print. During the afternoon, we completed the Compass Foundations online training. This was really worthwhile as it gave many details about each sector of Compass, along with the work we do with young people to encourage them to enter into the catering trade. I was then asked to write a quote about the Compass E-Learning to be used in an application for a technology award. I stated how I felt the online training was an extremely useful, fun and flexible way to learn. The One Compass Welcome video is extremely inspirational and makes you realise what a massive company we work for, and how many opportunities there are for us in the future. I really enjoyed my day with Elmo and was so glad that I was selected to meet him. He was a lot more laid back than I expected, which made it so much less nerve-wracking to meet and shadow him. I am now really determined to work my way up through this business, and to achieve as much as I can. The Academy is a perfect way for me to guarantee my route to success as I a