Recruitment & Retention Q&A with  Meg Martin, Recruitment Manager at Tao Group

In 2022, our industry research demonstrated that retaining talent was one of the most substantial challenges across the hospitality sector, with a considerably high staff turnover rate – 5.7% of the entire hospitality workforce left the sector in June 2022.  If things are to improve then engaging and retaining your workforce has to be on top of your agenda, alongside a focus on attracting a wider talent pools of hospitality candidates.

In part two of our Q&A’s with hospitality leaders, we will be sharing their thoughts on how hospitality businesses can overcome these recruitment challenges and we will provide you with actionable tips to help you tackle them.

Meg Martin, Recruitment Manager at Tao Group provides us with some of her tools and tactics to help overcome these issues.

What are the biggest recruitment challenges in hospitality?

Businesses (especially hospitality) across the UK are experiencing talent shortages as well as hiring challenges that are becoming detrimental to company’s success. Meg explains the numerous issues she faced and the preventative measures she took to tackle this.

“As recruiters we are really suffering at the minute and it’s super difficult to attract top talent. For us it’s about strengthening our business but also emphasizing the prospects that make our company unique – showing off the benefits and perks we offer.”

“Being more proactive in how we approach potential candidates rather than waiting for people to come. We should be convincing them why joining us would be an enticing experience.”

 Why can retaining talent be a challenging task?

Employee retention has been a difficult challenge due to the various factors that hugely impacted people’s career and lives. “The most common issue we are facing is the ramifications of Brexit, as it had a huge impact on our retention. We have a large Chinese and Asian workforce that were equally just as affected by the pandemic, making the retention aspect again more difficult.”

Meg discussed this further by explaining the actions she took in order to reduce the impact on her workforce. “Keeping our employees happy is essential, so listening and engaging with them through surveys and other sources aids this process. From this we can collate ideas of the measures we can take as well as the feedback to create an idyllic working environment for our staff.”

What tools and tactics are most effective in attracting new talent?

There are a multitude of components to consider when actively searching for ideal candidates. These can be skills, mentality, experience, personality, etc. Because this can be a lengthy process, it can be valuable to simplify things.

 “For us, employer branding is the most potent tool we attain in our company right now, however using job sites like Caterer.com has been very beneficial in developing the process of hiring and engaging candidates in new talent pools.”

 “We also heavily rely of the support from our own account team in terms of new search techniques we can use or advance and other methods to proactively target people”

 How can we engage younger talent pools? 

 Meg supports the idea of exploring an age diverse talent pool and offers a guide to how Tao Group maintained this level of engagement. “Ensuring that the younger demographic know about our business and its prospects especially from a branding point of view is crucial, to enable young workers to engage with the cuisine and experience we offer.”

 “At Tao Group we have development schemes in place, but we centered our focus towards reviewing the overall structure of them to make sure we are attracting more people to the hospitality sector and encouraging it as a career rather than a stop gap or a chance to earn some extra cash.”

 “Another direction we are in the process of taking is outreaching to local schools, colleges and universities as a way to communicate the various career opportunities there are, as well as offering and educational alternative to learn more about the hospitality industry in an engaging manner.”

 How can we tackle the perception of the industry? 

 Meg kicks off the subject by explaining that as an industry we should unite in attempting to overcome such a view that is so ingrained in society. “Any individual who works in hospitality needs to make it their primary aim to challenge and attempt to change this poor perception.”

 “We often talk about the stress, the long and unsociable hours but, I’d argue that you can equally counter these factors by emphasising that yes, they may be unsociable hours however, what a remarkable environment to have experienced working in.”

 “At Tao Group it’s just finding the core root of the issues candidates have, and how we can achieve changing that perspective, whether that be asking do they want a cycle to work scheme? Do they want meals on shift? Do they want paid breaks? The premise of it is that we must understand how to improve the quality of their hospitality career and deliver those promises.”

 Meg’s Top Tips for recruitment and retention for 2022  

 Be passionate and committed to your brand 

Recognising and embracing your company’s culture and values helps to distinguish that competitive edge your business has compared to others. Your brand is the primary function of your company and the devotion you have for it will anchor that success and will drive progression within the business.

Utilize your Marketing workforce in hiring approaches

Marketing aids the process of recruiters being able to access and indicate top talent and the language to engage it. Marketers create the most enticing job posts whilst considering the ideal candidate, including relevant content accordingly. As businesses we should look to possess the fundamental marketing qualities in all aspects of recruitment.

Proactively explore various outreaches when recruiting talent

Effectively engaging with a candidate is the core focus of any hiring approach therefore, when executed successfully a connection with a much larger talent pool can be established. Considering a different outreach can allow you to communicate your prospects and values in a compelling way as well as developing a candidate focussed approach.

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