Why points-based Immigration isn't the real threat to a Hospitality labour shortage
“Points-based immigration and its impact on the hospitality sector....let the discussion begin!!”
That was how the introduction to my ‘Thought Thursday’ video blog post read last week (http://ow.ly/6pwZ50ywr1q). I knew fine well I was just scratching the surface of the topic and that it would need a much longer-form format to share my thoughts, but discussion has to start somewhere right? As for a longer-form format – here goes…..
First up, this isn’t going to be the place where I clap back at the Government for its lumping of all hospitality work onto the ‘unskilled workers’ shelf – that reply is coming though, just not this week. This is the place I want to highlight my thoughts on the years of lost opportunity that the sector I love has let slip through its fingers. Lost opportunity that has led us to the door that we find ourselves standing in front of, a door that we simply can’t blame entirely on the Government’s new policy when it comes to our workforce shortage.
Take a look at the infographic below put together by UK Hospitality as part of their ‘Menu for Change’
campaign that was launched prior to last year’s General Election (http://ow.ly/35n650ywr3i):
No one to blame but ourselves?
As a sector we’re BIG,
so much bigger than perhaps those outside the sector give us credit for, yet
those numbers have blinded too many within the industry for too long with
short-term strategy. For years experts and thought leaders have bemoaned the
shortage of labour within the hospitality sector. For those operational within
the industry we’ve cried about the difficulties of finding chef talent. The
doom-and-gloom articles for the years leading up to Brexit pre-warned us about our
over reliance on European workers labour. I mention all this to say that the
topic of an ever-shrinking labour talent pool isn’t new, and as a sector it is
so easy to cast blame onto a Points-Based Immigration policy for our impending labour
shortage predicament when the truth is that we’ve simply not been good enough
in the whole to get our own houses in order a long time ago.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that across the country different people will have a slightly different reliance on European workers depending on your geographical location. In fact, there will be those out there who can’t understand the furore of their peers over the past few days since the Government’s announcement. Depending where you sit on that scale I’m sure we all agree that hospitality is at its best when we’re a melting pot of cultures and diversity bringing together skills and experiences from around the globe. The threat of that being diluted due to the ‘unskilled workers’ tag, now that is something we must engage with the Government over, but again, a blog and discussion for another day.
Today I want to
challenge those within the sector and ask “when do we start looking at
ourselves” and realising that as a whole the threat of losing European workers
to help prop up a steadily declining talent pool of UK workers has been something
we’ve had the power to effect for years and simply haven’t done so?
We’ve fallen into the ‘trap’
of valuing the bottom line at the expense of attracting the best candidates
into the sector through offering a decent salary and investing in training,
developing and mentoring so that said talent knew they had found a trade that
valued them and could offer a pathway to a career. We ‘welcomed’ zero-hours
contracts that gave our Teams no security and sent the message that we had
little-to-no care for their financial wellbeing above our own. We turned a ‘blind-eye’
to the challenging working conditions of long-shifts, split-shifts, constant
shift working under duress almost as an out-dated way of evaluating who had-it-in-them
to stand the test of time and deserve a seat at the exalted high-table of
hospitality warriors. We lost talent to other industries. Horror-stories
circulated and acted as a deterrent to potential super-stars from trying their
hand behind a bar, waiting tables or working in a kitchen, and still, on the
whole, we did nothing of any note.
Now this is generalist I know, and I use the royal ‘we’ as we all must accept collective responsibility for not being good enough as a sector. There are some superb owners and operators that have built thriving hospitality companies led by a culture of ‘Team-First’. They have well-supported recruitment and induction processes backed by reward and recognition programmes. Training and development programmes identifying talent and nurturing that talent helping to give businesses higher stability and lower worker turnover. These will be the same companies with mental-health First Aiders on hand to support times of duress and who are encourage their Managers to empathise with their Teams when they sit down each week to schedule their rotas. This isn’t a pipe-dream people, it’s happening right now, and it’s these forward-thinking organisations that will feel the pinch far less when/if the available pool of talent shrinks further.
