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Think Again special issue


How big is hospitality’s


skills shortage? The Caterer’s Think Again campaign, highlighting the fantastic opportunities in hospitality and encouraging employers to inspire young people, has returned. David Harris asks: is the skills shortage worse now than ever before?


G


etting good staff has always been a challenge for British hotels and restau- rants. There are plenty of well trained, highly motivated people out there; it’s just that there aren’t enough of them. In one sense this is a positive thing: the industry is thriving so much that it needs more trained staff all the time. The skills gap is a classic case of demand outstripping supply. Yet neither the skills problem nor the solu-


tions to it have changed a great deal in more than a century. A hundred years ago Lon- don was already importing foreign waiters and chefs (back then, it was often Germans) because not enough locals could do the job well enough (see panel). Any analysis of the skills gap in hotels and restaurants needs to recognise that the gap has always existed; the business has never not had a skills shortage. Efforts at keeping staff have been around for


many years as well. More than 20 years ago, in 1994, The Caterer was able to report that staff turnover had more than halved since 1984, from 60% in 1980 to 27% in 1992. The figures came from a report by the Hotel & Catering Training Company. But it was still one of the highest staff turnover rates com- pared with other industries.


Attraction and retention Today, the scale of recruitment needed remains statistically staggering. People 1st, the sector’s skills and workforce development charity, estimates that 1.3 million employees will have to be recruited by 2024, of whom 975,000 will be replacements for staff that have left. The difference between the two


4 | The Caterer


figures, roughly 325,000, represents the expected growth in business between now and then. This growth is a good thing, but the size of staff turnover is not. Martin-Christian Kent, executive director for research, policy and operations at Peo- ple 1st, points out that staff retention saves employers a lot of money, but he is realistic about the nature of the business. Some come into the industry, find it too hard, and opt out. Others – including some chefs – burn brightly for a while and then burn out. But Kent remains optimistic because he thinks that employers are getting better at retaining staff. Quite rightly, most businesses now concen- trate their human resources efforts both on getting good staff in the first place and then keeping them once they have them. For Moira Laird, human resources director at Best Employer Award Catey winner Valor Hospitality, which runs 20 hotels all over the UK, retention is vital. “We are obsessed by employee engagement, which is all about retention,” she says. “Each hotel carries out employee engagement surveys and we really do act on those. We even like to get employees fully involved in our annual company forums.” In those surveys, Valor tries to ask open- ended questions such as “what would make you happier?” and “what’s on your mind right now?” in an effort to encourage thoughtful responses rather than automatic answers. Laird says that the company also tries to be helpful when its employees need it most, by providing time off during periods of bereavement or divorce, for example.


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