Hospitality industry needs to adapt to overcome skills shortage
Signature Sales Support & Representation
As we frequently hear, the UK hospitality industry is massively affected by high staff turnover and skills shortage, with nearly a quarter of the hospitality and tourism workforce being made up of overseas workers, both from the EU and beyond, Brexit will likely mean that this figure will come down due to the fear of restrictions.
So, what can be done to prepare for the challenges ahead?
The hospitality industry will need to be creative and innovate to overcome these issues:
Ensuring hospitality is seen as a worthwhile and viable profession in order to recruit, there needs to be a vast improvement in attitudes towards the service industry as a profession.
Focus on the many positives, the vast diversity of jobs in the industry, the exciting opportunities to travel and the uniqueness of the profession.
Creating a brand that you can be proud of will ensure others want to be part of the team and the journey.
Be different, think outside of the box.
Get involved with industry association, government and local initiatives targeting this issue to aid recruitment.
Raising the bar of our service standards at this time of crisis instead of lowering it is essential!
Your workforce needs to feel proud of who they work for and the reputation.
Employees need to see career progression and opportunities with continual development and reward to ensure retention, partner a hospitality academy to ensure quality training, qualifications and learning.
Build succession planning into your HR plan to ensure talent is retained and ready to step into new roles.
Engagement is key for millennials, they want to feel empowered and engaged and feel to make a positive difference so ensure you get to know your team and use their strengths for maximum impact.
Renumeration is always important, perhaps supply and demand will now play a part in pushing up salaries in this typically poorly paid industry.
Last but not least, look at untraditional solutions such as outsourcing.
Signature’ Sales Support & Representation is a Midland based hotel, venue and destination representation service for businesses who are serious about increasing their exposure and drive enquiries/revenue from the corporate travel and meeting, incentive, conference and event (MICE) sector, through pro-active sales activity, creating awareness and generating new business enquiries from travel and event buyers.
The benefits include a professional, established team with experience and a proven pro-active sales and marketing strategy to drive sales, a cost sharing therefore cost-effective solution making it an affordable option, working with in house sales and marketing teams or as the sole sales and marketing team for a venue the service offers consistency when recruitment and retention are widespread issues.
Outsourcing is common place these days and a growing service in all sectors as its time and cost effectiveness providing a high performance ROI. Kathryn Clarke & Jan Denning Directors Signature Sales Support & Representation www.signaturesales.co.uk info@signaturesales.co.uk T: 01789 336116