There’s a discernible shift in the focus of many leading pub, bar and restaurants groups. It’s no longer all about the customer; now it’s definitely all about the team.

That’s not to say that providing a compelling customer experience is not the ultimate objective, but as the great hospitality leadership guru Jim Sullivan has been saying for years: “Look after your people, and they’ll look after the guests.”

Of course, this is not only about doing the right thing by your teams – self-interest is a major driver here too. Not that self-interest is bad. There’s a people crisis, so finding, recruiting and retaining is concentrating corporate minds right across the industry.

Getting the right people on the bus, in the right seats and keeping them there – to borrow another Sullivan maxim – has never been so vital.

And what’s apparent is that some companies are doing a much better job of this than others. I won’t mention names, as not to inflict further pain on those suffering, but there are operators boasting of negligible vacancies (or at least back to pre-pandemic levels) and staff turnover down towards 80%. Someone’s doing something right.

Pay is the starting point, and data from CGA by NielsenIQ suggests levels have already risen 11% on average over the past year. Not surprisingly it’s the main factor in whether candidates will accept a job – although not the only one.

It’s not just the level of pay, but what staff are actually paid for. Increasingly, enlightened operators are now paying for every hour that employees work, which may be a surprise for those outside the industry that this is not always the case.

So no longer are staff expected to turn up early for a shift to prep and stay on after to cash up, for example, unpaid. Paid overtime is becoming the norm in more and more companies, even for salaried staff including GMs.

People simply want to be treated fairly – or in a way that they, rather than their bosses, perceive to be fair.

When frontline teams are asked about the factors they believe are leading to current staff shortages, pay actually comes in third. Bigger reasons are unsociable hours, mentioned by over half of all staff in a recent survey, as well as the fact that shortages are leading to increased workloads for those remaining, which in turn is making them consider quitting. It’s creating a dangerous downward spiral.

Guaranteed maximum 48-hour weeks and guaranteed one-in-four weekends off are among the changes to conditions that are becoming more common.

Ineffective communication is another big employee moan, with a third of staff mentioning it in the same CGA research. It still amazes me how many operators still don’t make pre-shift and post-shift meetings mandatory – not only to create energy at the start of the working day and reward a great performance at the end, but to get immediate feedback, good or bad, both ways. These often short, sharp meetings work, and are the backbone of the Sullivan playbook.

From employee board directors to GM forums, the best operators are taking other steps too to ingrain better internal comms into the fabric of their businesses.

But a lasting solution to the people shortage in hospitality will not be delivered overnight – there’s no silver bullet.

The pan-industry Hospitality Rising initiative is set to launch its media campaign this autumn to promote the positives of a career in hospitality to a wider public audience. It will undoubtedly make an impact, but the promise needs to match the reality, and that means more companies raising their game – adopting the practices of the best employers in the sector, and that includes on pay and conditions.

There’s more too. If vacancies are to be filled and if the market is to continue to grow, the reservoir of potential talent needs to grow as well, we can’t keep recruiting from each other. With supposed full employment in the UK, that means a loosening of post-Brexit immigration restrictions for hospitality workers.

There is a sense that the new Liz Truss administration is open to this as it pushes its ambitious, if not controversial, growth agenda – and it’s a cause that even many pro-Brexit hospitality leaders would champion. Yes, I mean Wetherspoon’s Tim Martin. That’s the political campaign that needs to underpin all these other measures.

Across the industry, the best companies are without doubt renewing their focus on people and team building – witnessed by the businesses that sent teams to the recent Jim Sullivan UK Masterclass in London, with Sullivan’s own emphasis now more than ever on creating strong cultures and team cohesion.

Hand-in-hand with this is an openness among those organisations that they may be leading the way, but they have much more to do.