HR lunch with Baxters Food Group

Baxters Food Group, Edinburgh – Wednesday 14^th of November 2018

The latest in the series of FWB Park Brown’s HR lunches was hosted by Baxters Food Group, in their magnificent new offices at 12 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh.

The lunch, attended by 15 senior HR professionals and hosted by Grace Baxter, Head of HR for Europe and not a family member(!), was a great opportunity to exchange views and compare notes.  Grace opened proceedings with an extremely interesting talk on the history of Baxters, highlighting how the business has changed, grown and diversified over the years. Baxters has become a large and successful global business, while remaining extremely loyal and connected to its family roots, based for generations in the village of Fochabers, by the River Spey. Grace’s words felt extremely poignant and relevant, as Baxters celebrates its 150^th Anniversary this year.

The theme of the lunch, and subsequent round table discussion, was Living the Brand.  Grace spoke about the challenges Baxters face in ensuring the philosophy of ‘be different, be better’ permeates successfully through employee branding, engagement, communication and behaviours across the Group globally.

Guests were treated to an incredible lunch thanks to the brilliance of Baxters in-house Innovation Chef, Darren Sivewright. Darren, a BBC Masterchef semi-finalist in 2015, has worked for Baxters since 2010. Our guests, a selection of senior HR figures from a wide range of businesses across the central belt, were fortunate enough to enjoy a delicious lunch and exclusive tasting of a new flavour addition to the Baxters soup range, yet to be released.

The event was a great success.  The combination of the surroundings of Baxters Edinburgh office, the stimulating nature of the discussions and the excellence of Darren’s culinary creativity meant we all left feeling inspired and full of ideas to take away and think how we might incorporate into our own organisations.

For more information on this event, or any others in our HR Brands Lunch Series, please contact Graham Burns on graham@fwbparkbrown.com.