Can Hospitality fix its own staffing crisis?

Is there any way that hospitality can make itself an attractive workplace once more? Or will we forever be stuck with the impressions of low paid, hard graft with little reward.

Before I start, if you haven’t read my previous article explaining how hospitality came to be in a staffing crisis, please go and read this first. It will help a lot in understanding where I come from in this article.

Let’s face it. There is no overnight fix that will have people queuing up to start their hospitality career. The damage is done. And it’s systemic. It’s a world that seems dystopian: Corporations where having ‘the right fit for the lowest possible cost’, is more important than the right skills. Where nepotism and ‘who you know’ are ever more influential. Mixed with small businesses desperately clinging on in an industry that relies on ever-shrinking profit margins.

Many think recovering the staffing crisis will involve recruitment drives, employment schemes and wage increases or even signing a petition to ease immigration. But are these only minor factors that just shove a plaster over the bleeding core of our industry? The years of systematic manipulation, mistreatment and high demands made of staff have damaged the trade. So what solutions are being suggested? And more importantly, will they work?

What about higher wages?

This is a deep and very complex issue that spans every nation and it would need a PhD paper to explore in any real depth. But let’s just say that people fear that higher wages could ultimately lead to price rises; which businesses fear will send customers scurrying away from them like rats leaving a sinking ship. Or it will result in lower staffing levels as corporate offices strive to retain already wafer-thin payroll percentages.

I regularly hear examples of McDonald’s having higher paid staff in Scandinavia than the US with marginal difference in the menu price for customers. But that is a high-volume fast-food supplier with the ability to reduce costs through high volume purchases. Saying that a 50-seater restaurant on Brighton seafront can pay staff an extra £1 an hour with no impact to prices is therefore not the same.

But it is not impossible. And therein is the point.

Minimum wage has become a standard of what to pay. It was not designed as this; it was a minimum to prevent cheap labour abuse. But it has become the standard wage to pay for people starting out in hospitality. This needs to be broken as a stereotype – especially in a culture where we still deem it acceptable to be paying someone less because of their age, using the excuse that it’s the minimum wage. If a 40 year-old and 17 year-old do the same job at the same level, they should get the same pay. Just because the law says you can pay someone less, it doesn’t make it ethical to do so.

Let us also not forget that the pay issue extends to salaries and overtime. Having an inherent culture that doesn’t pay for overtime for salaried staff, or doesn’t provide adequate time in lieu, are also major factors for people leaving.

So the real question here is if throwing more money at the situation will fix it? Which would be unlikely until the underlying issues of work-life balance and employer expectations are fixed.

Maybe if we relaxed immigration?

I have no issue with immigration at all. Never have. I have friends from across the world and many from Europe. I do however question why we have industry leaders fighting to import workers rather than making the industry more inviting to those looking for careers in schools and colleges here?

Apologies for this next bit but... I forgot all my corporate teachings for a second! Maybe it’s because foreign labour is seen as cheap and employers cling on to this idea that local labour is lazy, demanding and too difficult to manage; seen as less committed and less likely to drop everything to be last minute cover. And also less likely to obey every instruction without question because “They need the hours” or “They are more committed” – Phrases I have actually regularly heard in my career in great demonstrations of abuse of power: pick up the shift to be seen as committed, deny it and we won’t offer overtime to you again.

I feel I have to say this because few want to seemingly face up to the reality of the culture created in the industry. One of using cheap imported labour for the jobs that we think people from our own countries won’t have a desire to do. A culture so embedded that it has become common practice without question.

Nurture home-grown talent, treat people decently and then perhaps, just maybe, you will find that they are not demanding, just standing up for what is actually ethical.

Harrumph, rant done and toys thrown out of the pram.

Employment and training schemes

Okay, I agree with these. Yet schemes already exist that assist employment; government schemes in various forms and charitable organisations too numerous to mention. These clearly are not working as people expect. And there are more self inflicted reasons for this.

I have seen these schemes used for nothing more than cheap labour; using an apprentice because it’s cheaper than paying a 25-year old. If budgets are the motivations for using these schemes then something is clearly wrong.

They are ways to get people skilled in the industry and get them to experience the trade. People drop out when they see your staff doing long hours, being pulled in fifty directions at once and slowly sinking under business pressure to increase profits at the expense of all else. Yet people still wonder why apprentices quit? I am not smashing these schemes, as they are extremely valuable; I just think so many people fail to realise that dropping a 16-year-old in to an environment such as a full service kitchen is something that they need to work on helping them adapt to and understand. Sadly, this is the part often forgotten and going unsupported.

So what do we do?

It’s so multi-faceted an issue, it is hard to say where to start. It is a chicken or egg scenario.

It needs to be a multi-disciplinary approach; create stable work environments with training, support and a work-life balance. End reliance on zero-hour contracts and make workplaces where a contracted 40-hour week is just that, 40 hours. Stop the expectation of six-day weeks, double shifts and paltry pay in return. And start this with existing teams. They are your biggest assets right now – you wouldn’t run a classic car in to the ground without maintaining it and expect the value to go up – so don’t do the same with your staff!

Yes, we have businesses to recover. Yes there are costs. Yes money is tight. But hospitality is an environment where everyone pulls in together to get the job done. Reliance on good will and fear of job loss has become too commonplace as part of this process.

Now is the time for hospitality to reimagine itself for employees in the same way it is reinventing guest experiences. That is the way forward to creating sustainable businesses with loyal teams who care.