On the 11th of December 2025, HR professionals across Singapore’s F&B and retail industry gathered at Hopscotch, Gardens by the Bay, for the final StaffAny HR Happy Hour (HHH) of the year. The theme for this HHH touches on a key learning & development (L&D) topic: “HR vs Ops: Who Actually Owns Training?”
Today’s guest speaker was Mohammad Saiful, Senior Assistant Manager of People and Operations Excellence at Commonwealth Concepts. In a warm and candid fireside chat with StaffAny’s co-founder Janson Seah, Saiful peeled back the curtain on how his L&D team of six manages hundreds of staff across brands like PastaMania, Swissbake, and Baker & Cook.
Who Owns Onboarding? Everyone Does
On the topic of ‘who owns onboarding’ the consensus was that everyone is responsible for it: the F&B outlet, the training team, and the HR team.
While L&D gels the whole onboarding process and provides the structure and tools, other teams, like HR, are better equipped to answer employees’ questions about matters they are responsible for, such as pay and compensation. The outlet’s operations team will be brought in to focus on performance-related matters, and L&D will work with them to build the business and drive competency, capability, and the confidence of their team.
It also helps when the L&D team has an operations background, which helps in building practical training that can quickly earn leadership buy-in.
Measuring L&D: From Training Hours to Store Outcomes
One meaningful KPI to track L&D team performance is tracking the growth of employee capabilities over time.
This can be tracked through measures like the customer satisfaction index. If an outlet sees poor customer service scores, the L&D team will partner with the general manager with a structured system. Another point that was made was that SMEs can benefit from having smaller, bite-sized training that is developed closely with the operations team to achieve their outcomes.
A Leadership Symposium to Promote Mindset Shifts
Saiful also shared how his team pulled off a standout initiative for Singapore’s F&B scene: a Leadership Symposium that invited various Singapore-based thought leaders to share their best practices with one another along with curated leadership training. He mentioned:
“I think our objective here is to just make them have a mindset shift away from just a people focus to a strategy focus. To give them a fresh perspective out of work, and the feedback has been amazing. You know, they learn of all this knowledge from all these wonderful stakeholders, and they come back and do an action plan.”
Employee Engagement Starts With Listening
The key to good employee engagement is listening to people’s feedback on work, lives, likes, and dislikes.
For example, a badminton employee engagement event won’t get high participation if the staff aren’t interested in badminton. In contrast, learning about employees’ needs also results in successful initiatives too. In this case, the need for mental health wellness can result in a successful mental wellness month to equip leaders with mental health management skills.
External Resources Shouldn’t Be Neglected
Government grants and learning communities can be powerful tools for L&D teams. From SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit to Career Conversion Programs, L&D teams can tap into available support to offset training costs. They can also work with external partners like Grab Academy for masterclasses and additional training.
To promote intergenerational teamwork, F&B businesses can pair young and old staff together during coaching and mentoring courses, like the ones offered by the National Centre of Excellence for Workplace Learning (NACE) at Nanyang Polytechnic. In one example, a shy senior staff member was paired with a younger peer, gained confidence, passed a WSQ assessment, and became a program ambassador.
One Final Ask: Learning Journeys for All?
The session wrapped with a proposal. Inspired by Commonwealth’s Leadership Symposium, Janson floated the idea of inter-brand learning journeys across the HR Happy Hour community in 2026. There was interest, and we’ll keep you posted on our plans for this soon!
“Let’s build a culture where F&B leaders learn from each other. Because when one brand grows, the whole community wins.”
We’ll see you at the next HR Happy Hour.
