BrewDog Update December 2021

Completing the independent review, launching our Workplace Code, and new initiatives to make us the best employer we can be.

As we approach the end of the year, I wanted to provide an update on our continued efforts to build the best company and culture that we can. I am also very pleased to announce the launch of our Workplace Code which provides the framework for how we will look to build a fantastic culture that provides everyone with a great, safe, fulfilling place to work.

As my connections on LinkedIn are already aware, I have been transparent with sharing our progress, firstly with my initial response here and then with a further update here

Both these updates have seen lots of feedback and I would like to thank everyone for their thoughts and comments. As I’ve often said, like every other company, we make mistakes and when we do, we try to be very honest about them.

Following the open letter from former employees, we announced a series of measures designed to make an immediate difference for our fantastic people. These included: a structure review to identify resourcing gaps; a company-wide salary review which resulted in a 3% pay increase across the board; the creation of new Employee Representative Groups to give our people a direct say in the direction of the company; the launch of an independently managed Ethics Hotline; and considerable investment into our L&D and Career Development programme.

We also announced an extensive independent review into culture, with a commitment to complete the process and announce the findings before the end of the year.

I am pleased to say that review is now complete. This has been an exhaustive, but hugely valuable exercise, overseen by the Board and led by our Deputy Chair Blythe Jack. As CEO, I have not been part of the review, beyond being presented with the findings – our partner for this exercise Wiser have done a great job in conducting such a huge exercise in a relatively short space of time. Our Chairman Allan Leighton and our Deputy Chair Blythe Jack wrote a letter to our team today outlining the process and findings, that letter and the findings from the review itself can be found here: Letter & Review.

The review highlighted that the vast majority of our people really enjoy working at BrewDog and that we have moved on a long way in terms of how we look after our people through our eras of extremely high growth.

However, we also recognise we did not always get things right. The review highlights the need for us to do more to support our people, to provide them with a proper career path and give them the right learning and development opportunities. We need to train the leaders of tomorrow, giving them the skills they need to manage people, and we need to ensure we have the right level of resource in place across the organisation.

I fully accept the findings of the review and that in these areas we have not met our crew members’ expectations. I take personal responsibility for this as CEO. I have often said how I am still learning in this role – when we set BrewDog up we could never have imagined how quickly we would grow and before BrewDog I was working on a fishing boat. I accept I haven’t always looked after our people as well as I should have done. It’s been the most important lesson I have learned in my career thus far.

So, the obvious question is, having identified the areas we need to improve, what are we going to do about it? This morning we sent an internal note to our crew members where we set out the following new initiatives to address these areas, including but certainly not limited to:

·??????the appointment of our new Head of Learning and Development and the introduction of leadership and management development training across the business;

·??????an upsizing of our HR resource under the leadership of our Group People Director to ensure that we have a team that is able to support the size of our business today, including the aforementioned Head of L&D and a new Head of HR Operations for the retail estate;

·??????considerable investment in mental health provision, including the appointment of Mental Health Ambassadors (we now have 52 Mental Health First Aiders in place across the business), mental health newsletter, among numerous other initiatives;

·??????enhanced quarterly career development reviews which will also focus on wellbeing, combined with new career framework guidelines to make it easier to progress and build experience in different teams; and

·??????a considerable increase in resource across the business. We have added hundreds of new roles to ease those resource bottlenecks globally.?

We have also launched our maiden Workplace Code for all crew members. This is the first time we will have a clear set of standards which provides guidance to our crew on the standards that we expect across the business – ensuring our people know that what they are doing is in line with our Mission, Charter and Dogmas.

Finally, in the spirit of openness, I am not blind to some critical feedback on my own leadership. I know I can be a better CEO - I am learning and with the support of my mentor Allan Leighton, our new Chairman, as well as the broader leadership team, I can assure everyone I am working hard to be the best leader I can be.

This has been a tough year and with the latest variant, it’s still very difficult. But despite all these challenges, I am proud to say we’ve managed to navigate the pandemic and grown the business considerably. We will achieve topline growth of around 25% year on year in 2021, we’ve opened 16 new fantastic hospitality venues, with many more planned next year, not least our flagship venues in Las Vegas and Waterloo, and we’ve attracted 600 great new talented people to join us around the world, helping to fully resource the business for future growth. Our awesome teams have brewed and packed over 1 million hectolitres (the equivalent of 300 million cans) of beer in 2021. These are remarkable achievements and I would like to thank everyone at BrewDog for the passion, commitment and hard work.

The open letter was tough to read, but it was the catalyst for a period of reflection, individually and as a business. The steps we have already taken and the further measures announced today will not only make a real difference to the experience of our hard working people and on their career development, they will also make BrewDog a stronger business, better prepared to capitalise on the huge opportunities we see ahead of us in 2022 and beyond. I’ve never been prouder, nor more excited, to have the privilege of leading BrewDog.

Thank you again for all your support and have a fantastic Christmas.

Hold Fast,

james