Before the war on the pandemic, there was the war for talent. The hotel sector was severely lacking in staff on all sides - front of house, back of house, right at the top and the most invisible of night staff. This was not a new phenomena. The sector, with its inconvenient hours and position in the service sector, did not make it a target for careerists.
This was not true for all countries. Italy and France, for example, have a respect for service employees, possibly borne of the realisation that being in hotels and restaurants is what most people would rather be doing, so best it’s done well. Your daughter coming home with a bar tender is no bad thing at all.
But they are outliers. Hospitality work is commonly viewed as being for students and those happy to do the work that others won’t - as the UK is finding out in the wake of Brexit, this is largely the “unskilled” migrants the government is looking to push out.
In a study produced for the University of Surrey, Professor Chris Cowls MBE, CEO of Eproductive and Professor Andrew Lockwood, Emeritus Professor of Hospitality Management, reported that last year saw a decrease in the hours worked by EU staff and that hotels relied on EU employees for nearly one third of hours worked.
The pair said: “Replacing them will be difficult”. And that’s before you consider that there was a massive shortage in staffing even before the pound dropped and sending money home became less attractive for many EU employees. One hotelier told us that he had been looking as far afield as South Africa and Sri Lanka looking for staff, commenting: “There isn’t an imaginary pool of labour [in the UK] which says ‘great, I want to work in hospitality”.
But, as hotels made the move towards being an asset class, so came the need for a wider range of skills. With money to be made, those studying the sector at its highest level at the hotel schools aspired not towards being GM and then CEO, but started to get syphoned off into the PE houses, which was great for them but bad for hotel operations.
But for every investor green about the hotel sector came demand for people who knew what they were doing and there were hopeful signs that the market was becoming a credible career destination. The new PE overlords wanted spreadsheets and proof of what money was going where and what it meant, which was unprecedented in the sector. Questions were asked about everything from the flowers at reception to the cost of distribution and specialists were demanded.
In the UK, Brexit galvanised many organisations to address their lack of EU workers by offering more training and a career ladder. This was much needed; in January, UKHospitality noted that hospitality has had the highest proportionate number of vacancies for the past 18 years, at that point running at 4.0 vacancies per 100 jobs, compared to a figure of 2.6 for the wider economy.
But that was in January. Now the picture is looking different. Last month Whitbread announced that the pandemic was causing it to make “difficult decisions”, namely starting the process to make up to 6,000 employees redundant.
The group said that the cuts, which equated to 18% of the total workforce, would “create a more flexible labour model that can adapt with changes in the demand environment going forward”. Whitbread said that it was also close to completing a process that would result in a reduction of its head office headcount by 15% to 20%.
This is not to single out Whitbread, it is far from alone in the sector, but has the misfortune to be publicly listed so has to reveal all these moves in brilliant transparency. Whitbread also has a reputation for being at the forefront of the making-hotels-a-career drive. It has an apprenticeship programme, diversity and inclusion programmes and is seen as a decent place to work. Will this move to having “flexible” workers mean the same career progression? With the greatest hope in the world, flexible staff just don’t see the same career opportunities and support as full-time employees.
Or does it? Speaking to us this week, Chris Mumford, founder, Cervus Leadership Consulting, said that fewer staff meant more experience was needed at a local level, with staff having to take on more on property and a chance that this meant more empowerment and, can it be, better service? More local engagement?
As repeatedly noted, the pandemic has seen an acceleration of trends in the sector. Mostly to the good, but in this case a rapid reversal which could undo the rest.