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Top Tips from hospitality leaders to overcome recruitment challenges and how to engage wider talent pools

We spoke directly to hospitality employers to capture their thoughts on how hospitality businesses can overcome recruitment challenges; covering everything from keeping teams motivated, to reviewing benefits packages, training and development.

Title tile with Top Tips for recruitment challenges

Core challenges in the industry

Industries in the UK are experiencing massive talent shortages, in addition to the hiring challenges faced by the hospitality sector, which have been further worsened by the impact of Brexit and the pandemic, and for some resulted in the closure of their hospitality business.

Retaining employees can be a challenge at the best of times, and as Meg Martin, Recruitment Manager at Tao Group shared with us, ‘…retaining talent within your company can be a difficult task but, is necessary for future growth. The industry is constantly changing, so it is important that we adapt our focusses to those changes to ensure success is maintained despite the level of competition.

Creating a comfortable and idyllic work environment can boost that retention aspect for your business as it reiterates the value of looking after your employees and focussing on their needs. Implementing surveys and other sources to engage employees can help develop a strong relationship, offering feedback from staff that can be used to drive progression.

Speed and efficiency are key

We should be focussing our efforts in exploring a variety of ways to make the application process quicker, efficient, and more reliable to engage wider talent pools.

Increasing the efficiency and pace when applying for a role should strengthen the level of competition for applicants and allow greater development for businesses.

Creating innovative ideas to manage applicant expectations and offer a new method to hiring talent, boosts that engagement aspect for candidates and companies. An effective idea from Gemma Aylard, that Peach Pubs had introduced an application tracking system to help streamline the recruitment process.

Challenging the sector perception

Although it’s easy to assume the industry is flawed, when it comes to the working environment; long hours, stress, unsociable hours are often the headline that is highlighted, but this is only a fragment of what’s involved in the hospitality sector.

Finding the core root of the issues candidates or employees have, and then implementing ways in attempt to change that perspective can evidently shift the barriers the industry faces. As Gemma Aylard, Recruitment Manager at Peach Pubs advocated, “…being transparent in relation to the communication you have with employees and candidates is essential.”

Emulating the passion you have for your company, highlights the enjoyment and excitement of working in hospitality. Encouraging this heavily will inevitably change the typical view of the industry and then therefore will attract new talent.

Internal programmes to drive progression

Encouraging individuality and originality within your team should be a core focus for your business therefore, we should be exploring ways to engage and motivate employees to challenge themselves and look for future career opportunities within your organisation.

Prioritising career progression and focussing efforts on implementing internal management and accelerator programmes can help relaunch/ develop employee’s careers. We should be authentic, sharing and creating goals and ambitions for your teams and with candidates to highlight the value your company offers.

Maintaining diversity and inclusion

Diversifying the search for hospitality talent is becoming essential in hiring approaches. Interacting with candidates from varied backgrounds, ethnicities, genders, and races etc helps to promote a more diverse and inclusive workforce.

We support the idea of exploring and engaging diverse talent pools as well as adopting more DE&I initiatives to showcase the inclusivity of our brand and business. Build a working environment incorporated with traditions, cultural events and other special days that show an understanding the diverse cultures in your company.

Top Tips for recruitment and retention

Showcase company culture and values

Being passionate and embracing your company’s culture and values will emulate the benefits and perks that make your business incomparable to others.

Deliver on your promises

Be transparent and coherent with what your company is promising to develop strong and honest relationships with your employees and candidates.

Value your employees

Acknowledging the impact your employees make in your company and developing effective communication between staff is an indispensable factor in creating an ideal work environment.

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