Hospitality industry attracts new staff with higher salaries and better schedules
The staff shortage in the hospitality industry is enormous. How will they attract new people? Koninklijke Horeca Nederland (KHN) is launching a campaign to tell everyone how enjoyable working in hospitality can be.
Instead of the annual Hospitality Day, KHN has an entire week this year to put the hospitality industry in the spotlight, and that week is this week, starting Monday, 20 September. The competition for the Best Hospitality Team in the Netherlands is one of the activities they are using to draw attention to working in hospitality. Grand prize: 1,000 euros, so ka-ching, you’ll have that in your pocket in no time as a top team.
Door closed
The shortage of staff in the hospitality industry is currently the biggest problem, alongside all the hassle surrounding the coronavirus measures. Some restaurants have to keep their doors closed for a day or even several days a week because they cannot fill all the positions, which is a shame when they want to make up for some of the revenue they missed over the past year and a half during a beautiful late summer.
Clocking forty hours
Many temporary hospitality workers looked elsewhere during the closure of restaurants and cafés, for example as parcel couriers or meal delivery drivers. Moreover, workweeks in which you have already clocked your forty hours by Wednesday no longer seem entirely of this time. Young people certainly are not eager for that, nor for a career in which advancement is actually impossible, or for working hours that are impossible to combine with, for example, a family or caregiving responsibilities. These are all reasons why few young people are signing up for hospitality vocational training, and why outflow is greater than inflow.
Passion and love
Cafés and restaurants need to make the work more attractive, for example by creating better schedules and increasing salaries, say KHN and the trade unions. Edwin Vlek, an FNV director, also sees that the hospitality industry has a poor image because of the low pay and high workload. “But that is not justified,” he says. “Many people enjoy working in hospitality and find it positive and fun. But ultimately, you cannot pay bills with passion and love.”
Party, party
Earlier, KHN already tried to attract more people to the hospitality industry with the slogan ‘Working in hospitality, a party every day’, but it has not yielded much yet. KHN statistics show that at least 100,000 people have turned their backs on the hospitality industry in recent times.
Also read:
- Think about it: why is it so difficult to find hospitality staff?
- 8 biggest blunders by hospitality staff
- Staff meals: it can be done this way too
Source: Misset Horeca
