Mind the (ongoing and widening) skills gap

The continuing struggle operators face in attracting good people into their businesses and then keeping hold of them is as old as the market itself, so much so that it can be safely added to the list of life’s other certainties, death and taxes. For each step forward ambitious, expanding businesses such as Carluccio’s or Giraffe take, the chronic lack of skilled chefs and front-of-house staff able to deliver the consistency and warmth required for national success, means it often feels like another two are taken back. Systems and procedures will get you so far but ultimately you need good, motivated staff to deliver your grand vision. The bad news however is that the annual and comprehensive State of the Nation report by sector skills council People 1st suggests that the “skills crisis” is deepening within the sector rather than being successfully tackled. People 1st’s research found 26% of businesses within hospitality employ staff they view as not fully proficient in their jobs – equivalent to 180,000 people. This compares with 19%, or 140,000 people working within the sector, two years ago, and shows things are clearly moving in the wrong direction. If it pertained to the NHS that sort of shortfall would make national headlines, suggesting all sorts of safety issues, but such is the enduring problem within the sector it’s part of the executive summary in the report rather than its lead item. It seems, and this is no criticism of People 1st, that as an industry we are getting dangerously close to accepting that getting and keeping hold of good staff isn’t worth the effort as it’s par for the course within the sector. Certainly a recent chat with the managing director of an expanding restaurant chain revealed just how accepted this state of affairs has become. The senior executive in question effectively head hunted a new manager for one of his restaurants after receiving excellent service from them when dining out. It's the oldest recruitment tack of all, and still the most common although one suspects that when Andy Harrison takes over the running of Whitbread this autumn from Alan Parker he won’t have time to adopt such a personal approach to recruit chefs, bar staff and managers for the company’s “green” Premier Inn and Beefeater opening in Burgess Hill, West Sussex. Given that the smart money is on flat volume growth for the sector for 18 months, with foodservice analysts Horizons predicting the eating out sector will grow in value by around £850m during the period to a new value of £42.8bn, keeping competition for custom intense, having a skills gap in your business and the inefficiencies it confers is costly. Perhaps unsurprisingly given a UK leading staff turnover rate of 31% last year, customer service skills remain the most common skills gap across the sector, and damage to reputation is perhaps the most costly thing of all. Overall 65% of businesses who reported skills gaps in their workforce stated that their staff lacked the required customer service skills, an increase from 57% in 2007. Other skill shortage areas included management, leadership, IT and chef skills. With the hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism sector already one of the UK’s largest employers with two million people (1,887,700) on the payroll, representing 7% of all UK jobs, it would suggest that company’s such as Carluccio’s, which has ambitions to have 120 UK restaurants, will find the skills crisis an increasingly business critical issue in the coming years. It’s not all bad, as the industry is now investing in training, a traditional weak point, with hospitality spending £2,575 per employee on training a year, compared to the average across all industries of the economy of £1,725. But it’s early days and there’s quite an image problem to overcome, and for every Whitbread degree or Nando’s Best Places to Work triumph, there are PR disasters such as the tips controversy or beer-tie circus, giving ample ammunition to those that care to use it, that a role in hospitality is a job taken while you study for your proper career. This remains the nub of the skills crisis and its life energy. To that end it is perhaps the gap between the often negative perception that parents hold of a job within the industry, and in reality the opportunities on offer to any of their hardworking offspring to make their mark and progress quickly that is the most critical gap of all if serious strides in tackling the problem are ever to be made. Chris Druce is content editor of Big Hospitality