Crafting Brewery Culture: A Human Resources Guide for Small Breweries

Brewery operations are defined by their most valuable assets: their employees. The importance of recruiting, developing, and supporting staff members cannot be overstated—how you support and empower your employees makes a significant difference in the long-term success of the company. This book will walk you through candidate selection and best practices for training new team members. It delves into professional development practices and how to build teams and fill in skill gaps. It shows how an operation driven by positive reinforcement, teamwork, and accountability can help employees learn from mistakes and grow in responsibility. It explains the difference between leadership and management and how to use each effectively to achieve a sustainable and growth-centered culture. A positive and resilient brewery culture will foster a resilient staff, one that will withstand changes and shocks to the business, while being flexible enough to sustain periods of growth and daily operational challenges. This book lays out the structural components behind such a cultural framework, strategies for breathing life into this framework, and a roadmap for implementing and maintaining it. Finally, the book's appendixes offer working templates for everything from interviews to training plans, and performance assessments to goal setting. Whether your brewery is looking at safety, quality, or financial targets, success doesn't come from what you measure. Success is about what your team does every single day. Build a culture, build a team, and build a successful future.