HR OLYMPICS SPECIAL
Afterthe
on the map: Vancouver hosted the Winter Olympics. As visitors heard about the street vendors selling spicy Japanese hotdogs, queues began to form, up to 100 people at a time. With public attention came media interest – and the rest is history. Two years later, Jappadogs has 30 staff, five stores and has
I
just opened in New York. That’s what you call legacy. After the Vancouver Games, the then Canadian minister
for the Vancouver Olympics, Colin Hansen, said: “There were lots of cynics in the planning stages – but [the Olympics] brought huge economic benefits and infrastructure.”
26 HR March 2012
n 2005, a Japanese couple moved to Vancouver, Canada with the dream to run a hotdog stand. They didn’t speak English, they didn’t have a marketing budget and certainly didn’t have the funds to recruit employees, but in 2006 they opened their first ‘Jappadogs’stand. The firm’s popularity began to grow organically – proving popular with students and tourists.
One event in 2010 changed everything and put Jappadogs
gold rush
Will UK plc come down with a bump after extinction of the Olympic flame? Opinion is divided, says DAVID WOODS, but the legacy could give us more than a sporting chance if we get engaged
He had advice for the next Olympic venue: “Think about
the partners and investors to meet when global business comes to London,” he urged. The Canadian Government estimates 61% of businesses in Vancouver are still benefiting today from its foray into the Olympics. Legacy was a sizeable part of London’s Olympics bid,
promising to rejuvenate the six Olympic boroughs of Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Newham, Greenwich and Barking & Dagenham and to get more young people involved in sport. But as the excitement of London winning the Olympic bid in 2005 has subsided into an every- day realism and as we prepare for the forthcoming games, has the term ‘legacy’ become nothing more than a buzzword? Employers are divided. According to the CBI and KPMG,
43% of employers say not enough is being done to ensure the long-term legacy from the games and BT’s Race to the Line report, published in January, found only 28% of UK organisations believe they will continue to enjoy benefits from London 2012 a year or more after it has finished.
hrmagazine.co.uk
Simon Brader
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