Virgin Trains Welcomes North West Businesses for Wellbeing Day

LONDON, January 25, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- On Friday 28 January Virgin Trains is holding a rather unusual business event in Crewe for businesses in Cheshire and the North West.

The iconic train operator will welcome businesses from the North West to its unique Training Academy in Crewe for a participative 'Personal and Corporate Wellbeing' event involving regional business as both visitors, speakers and exhibitors.

As you might expect from Virgin Trains the event is a little different from the norm in its intent, its style and not least in its setting and it is designed to be fun as well as informative.

The event is free to business visitors. Virgin Trains and its partners are providing complimentary refreshments during the day.

"We started out with the idea of offering to share with other companies our expertise in training, recruitment, development, coaching and all the other fantastic people skills we are recognised for at Virgin Trains," said Virgin Trains Learning and Development manager, Karen Broad.

"But we wanted to make it more interesting and give it a contemporary twist, so we settled on a well being theme and invited local businesses to come and show off their skills and expertise alongside our own. Twenty of them enthusiastically agreed straight away and we're still adding to that number."

The result is an eclectic day of personal and corporate wellbeing activities that businesses are using to support and develop their employees, including:

    
    - healing and massage                 - corporate catering
    - smoking cessation                   - performance coaching
    - nutrition advice and body fat       - hypnotherapy and mind coaching
      testing
    - image consultancy                   - MBTI testing
    - Zumba dance                         - Confidence building

There will be keynote speeches during the day including 'look good, feel great, win business' and 'top 3 tips for dealing with stress'

"The setting is a little unusual too," said Karen. "Our Training Academy has a style and feel all of its own with furnishings and decor and theming you won't find in training rooms or hotel corporate suites - but you'll have to come and see that for yourself. The Academy and its fantastic facilities are all available for business events from small meetings to big indoor and outdoor training events.

"And we have a train in the car park. A real full-size Virgin Trains Pendolino for safety training and less orthodox meetings."

"We want visitors to our event to experience for themselves some of the exciting and innovative work people mangers and developers in the North West are doing to develop and engage their workforces. So we invited a carefully selected range of service providers and practitioners to join us at the Virgin Trains Talent Academy for the day to strut their stuff and inspire their fellow business leaders," said Karen.

The open day is 7am to 7pm on Friday 28 January at the Virgin Trains Training Academy, Crewe Business Park, Westmere Drive, Crewe CW1 6ZD. The programme of speakers and events runs from 9.30 am to 4pm.

Notes to Editors:

Images of Virgin Trains and the company's operations are available in the Image Library on our online Media Room website http://www.virgintrains.co.uk/about/media-room/

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Virgin Trains is the brand name of Virgin Rail Group. We have operated the West Coast passenger train franchise since 1997; the current franchise runs to March 2012.

Virgin Rail Group is owned 51 percent by Virgin Group and 49 percent by Stagecoach

Virgin Trains has been recognised in numerous industry awards. In 2010 the company has been named Best Rail Operator of the Year at the Travel Globe Awards (voted for by readers of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Evening Standard), and Best Rail Operator in the Group Leisure Awards (which we also won in 2009). In 2009 we were also voted Best UK Domestic Train Service by Business Traveller magazine for the second year running. Virgin Trains first achieved Investors In People accreditation in 2007, this was renewed in 2010 and the IIP Gold Standard awarded in January 2011.

Anyone wanting details of the open day can call +44(0)1270-500099, email training.academy@virgintrains.co.uk or search for Virgin Trains Training Academy on Facebook.