A statement from Grill'd founder, Simon Crowe
The founder of the burger chain released a statement on July 23rd regarding their workplace agreements with employees.
The statement is as follows:
Our people are our greatest asset. As a decentralised, people-led, experiential business our people in our restaurants ARE our business and bring the “Grill’d Experience” to life.
Our people generally love Grill’d. You only have to walk into a restaurant to know this. The energy, the friendliness, and the positivity of our stores speaks for itself. Our culture is represented in these many teams day in, day out, and we are very proud of them.
Grill’d was founded 11 years ago and for all of the journey we have used our values of passion, leadership, ownership and trust as a barometer for what’s right and what’s wrong.
This week Grill’d has been scrutinised over certain workplace agreements that were independently certified and approved by the Australian Industrial Relations Commission in 2005. Many of the claims publicised have been factually incorrect. To be clear, no one is questioning the legality of our agreements and our agreements are assessed annually to ensure ongoing legal compliance.
However, the issues raised have challenged us in that we never want our teams to question our values, our integrity, nor to question our brand and its purpose. We are about “Making Burgers Good” and that translates directly to being an employer of choice, and meeting the career and life ambitions of our people.
We have listened. As such, we are announcing our intent to renegotiate our workplace agreement with our employees, effective immediately. This change was already in our plans this financial year and as such we are now bringing this announcement forward. We want to ensure that the people that work at Grill’d today have their voices heard, rather than those that have gone before them. We want to discuss and agree all terms & conditions to ensure that our people continue to love Grill’d and are proud to be part of the Grill’d family.
If our people are happy, I’m happy. We get great feedback from the amazing job that our teams do at our restaurants around the country and we want them to continue to deliver that Grill’d Experience with pride.
We know Grill’d is a great place to work. We offer a collegial and connected environment, including the Grill’d Training Program, the development of teamwork and leadership skills, flexibility, and a fun engaging environment.
Grill’d also believes in training. With many restaurants in our family it is imperative that we have consistency around many of the skills necessary to operate a high quality, healthy burger business. Given that we hand-make all burgers and we prepare all the ingredients in store without the use of centralised processes we need to deliver a consistent Grill’d Way in our restaurants. Without this our burgers and service levels would be variable and of lesser quality. Further, training provides our people the necessary tools for a successful career path, both inside and outside of Grill’d.
We would like to thank our loyal customers for their continued support, and would like to thank our amazing team across our restaurants who continue to deliver the Grill’d Experience in every local community in which we operate.
Simon Crowe
