“It’s vital our healthcare clients are able to trust us when it comes to compliant venues”

Venue Sourcing Manager, Lucy Ager, explains how a recent visit to our UK headquarters helped ensure our venue sourcing experts are at the top of their compliance game.

We recently had a visit from Compliance Consultant, Simon Beard of Healthcare Venues; an independent consultancy supporting venues to understand and work more effectively with the healthcare sector. With two hotels joining him – Park Plaza Westminster and Park Plaza Victoria – the purpose of Simon’s visit was to expand our venue sourcing team’s knowledge and assess the practical implementation of healthcare compliance when sourcing venues. The purpose of bringing in not only an external consultant but venues themselves, was for us to see first-hand compliance from a venue’s perspective.

Here at Ashfield we pride ourselves on the continual training we receive and as we place significant emphasis on healthcare compliance. This was another great opportunity to ensure we’re learning from not only an external expert, but from suppliers who are invested in this complex environment.

Simon kick-started the session by giving our team the opportunity to review different marketing material from both Park Plaza properties. The task in hand was to establish what we deemed compliant or a potential risk, with the hotel representatives discussing their views and explanations to give us a full understanding and appreciation.

As a group, we then had an in-depth discussion about compliance; what it means to our clients and the healthcare sector as a whole. We used an interactive polling app on our smart phones to help broaden our knowledge and expertise. This session really helped us to differentiate the varying degrees of compliance, which will undoubtedly enable us to evaluate different hotels and venues with a keener eye and to interrogate properties with increased accuracy and with greater efficiency.

“It was an interesting and thought-provoking workshop,” said Lucie Angus from our team.

“It opened my eyes to a different way of looking at compliance and I came away knowing how I can apply this to my client accounts,” added Venue Sourcing Project Executive, Kirsten Sorensen.

Obviously within the ever-changing landscape of both the events industry and the regulations surrounding healthcare, it is so important that we keep up-to-date to stay ahead of the curve. It’s vital our clients are able to trust us when it comes to compliant venues and have confidence in our choices.

We have a reputation for outstanding compliant venue sourcing expertise and it’s sessions like this that ensure it remains that way for our clients who depend on us.