Sector Analysis
Hospitality
Hospitality
Views from the market
BOTH AGENCY AND IN-HOUSE RECRUITERS FACE CHALLENGES IN THE HOSPITALITY SECTOR, WITH JOB GROWTH AND A NEED FOR TRAINING AND PARTNERING AMONG THE PRIORITIES In February, the news that coffee chain Costa received 1,701 applications for eight roles in a Nottinghamshire branch attracted national press attention — “highlighting Britain’s unemployment crisis”, the Daily Mirror ventured.
Craig Allen Sales director, Change Group
chief operations officer, tells Recruiter: “Currently, half of our UK restaurants are recruiting for hourly paid positions, but vacancies are filled incredibly quickly.” Quickly, but not without substantial groundwork from the company. “A persistent challenge when recruiting for our sector is that not everyone recognises the benefits a career in hospitality can bring,” Forte notes. McDonald’s is, in fact, keen to promote its learning opportunities, from apprenticeships to degrees – and the industry as a whole is keenly developing such schemes both to provide skills and an enticing employer brand. Employer brand has also been key for contract caterers Sodexo Prestige. Its ‘Be More Than a Spectator’ recruitment brand was designed for last summer’s Olympic Games and was key to senior HR manager Jo Morgan winning the In-House Recruiter of the Year category at this year’s Recruiter Awards for Excellence, sponsored by Eploy. And this brand concept has been maintained and is being re-used by the company for events throughout 2013. Staying in contact with staff hired in January for roles in the summer is vital in converting that proposition into feet on the shop — or restaurant — floor, HR director Sarah Perry tells Recruiter. There is a role here for agencies. With casual staff, “it is important to work with agencies that can give regular placements to their workers”, which ensures skill levels are maintained, Perry adds. Philip Atkins is the founder and managing director of events staffing, training and consultancy firm Off to Work, which worked with Sodexo during the Olympics. He suggests that post-Games, “investment in training has probably happened more… we have seen a willingness in people [ie. employers] to train and work in partnership”. Just when readers might have thought we had heard the last of the Olympic legacies, it seems that rising to the challenge of the Games has secured benefits for this industry.
The bigger story is job creation across hospitality: Costa’s owner Whitbread is looking at 12,000 roles by 2018, and this year also sees plans for 2,500 roles at McDonald’s, 1,600 at KFC (1,600), 1,500 at a new Center Parcs resort in Bedfordshire and 950 at TGI Fridays. Leisure & tourism and hospitality & catering have been among the strongest sectors in the Reed Job Index recently. But the REC/KPMG ‘Report on Jobs’, surveying demand for agency recruitment, found hotel & catering as the sector with the least growth in demand for permanent staff in June — and indeed every month bar February going back to September last year, and non-permanent demand has been far from overwhelming. The move towards in-house recruitment may account for some of this mismatch. “Companies are recruiting the easy positions themselves and only coming to agency for the hard-to-fill vacancies,” says Mike Gardner, operations manager at hospitality and catering recruiter Berkeley Scott. Gardner’s new business now comes from SMEs and start-ups, he says – and there are, as ever, too few cooks keeping the chef market busy. Overseas is a growth area for Craig Allen, sales director of Change Group, which recruits at the upper end of the hospitality market, particularly Singapore. “What’s going on there is crazy, like what happened in Dubai a little while ago,” he says. Back in the UK, Richard Forte, McDonald’s UK’s
COMPANIES ARE RECRUITING THE EASY POSITIONS THEMSELVES AND ONLY COMING TO AGENCY FOR THE HARD-TO-FILL VACANCIES
“Food has in the past five years I think become sexy. It’s on practically every TV channel every night in some form and a lot more people want to work in food.”
Philip Atkins Managing director, Off to Work “Scotland is going through a bit of a growth spurt at the moment — next year will be a big year in terms of the Commonwealth Games and the Ryder Cup.”
Tim Burrows Director of education and training, British Institute of Innkeeping “People will only regard pubs or bars as a safe home for their careers if the industry can offer continuous learning and progression through qualifications. Industry apprenticeships are one of the key first planks in delivering this.”
Richard Forte Chief operating officer, McDonald’s UK “We currently have vacancies for managers in all UK regions, but interestingly the South-East is receiving double the number of applications than the rest of the UK.”
SAM BURNE JAMES sam.burnejames@recruiter.co.uk
14
RECRUITER
In 2004, 4% of UK hotels and restaurants used zero hour contracts. By 2011 it had become the most frequent user of these contracts at 19%, ahead of health (13%) (From BIS’s Workplace Employment Relations Study)
JULY 2013
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COMPETITION FOR JOBS According to Totaljobs Barometer
CATERING & HOSPITALITY TRAVEL, LEISURE, TOURISM
30
APPLICANTS PER JOB
In June there were 15,390 jobs in hospitality and leisure available in the UK, 23% of these in London and a further 22% elsewhere in the South-East, at an average salary nationally of £21,145. Of these jobs 78% were full-time roles (From job ad search engine Adzuna)
25 20 15 10
Q3 2012
Q4 2012
Q1 2013
Q2 2013
TALENT RISKS? From the SHL Talent Report 2012 Travel & Leisure has poorer leaders today than most other sectors, ranking joint 15th out of 17 sectors. It ranks the poorest for possessing innovative talent, and the highest for possessing high levels of behavioural risk WWW.RECRUITER.CO.UK
11/07/2013 09:10