How to Tackle the Chef Skills Shortage in Hospitality
- By Harri Insider Team | August 9, 2021
Finding it difficult to hire chefs isn’t a new phenomenon. In fact, our industry has struggled for the last twenty years with increasing difficulty.
But then, add in Brexit, plus COVID-19 AND an entire population making up for lost time rushing to our venues of late… and we’re facing a recipe for disaster. The BBC reported that one in five workers left hospitality during the pandemic as well as sharing our new complexity – the “pingdemic,” where we’re seeing our teams being told to mass isolate by the NHS app.
Yet, despite the shortage in staff, vacancies are at an all-time high; 102,000 from April to June 2021, a rise of 12.1% compared with the 91,000 figures for the same period in 2019. It’s tough out there.
However, fret not – there are some things you can consider doing, to position yourself as an employer of choice when looking to attract and recruit Chefs to your business.
Get Creative With Working Hours
Ask any chef who has left the industry their “why” – it’s likely attributed to working hours. Sadly, there still exists a culture of excessively long shifts, no weekends off and inflexibility across much of the industry. Even worse? When it’s a given that 60-80 hour working weeks are delivered for employees on a salaried 40-hour contract. Working for free? No thanks…
So, what can we do? We’re seeing some incredible offers across the industry right now, including “4 on, 4 off” shifts, offers for chefs to state the hours they want to work, as well as offering hourly-rate pay for all kitchen team members. We know it’s not easy to make the shift to this approach – it definitely takes more flexibility and a different approach when it comes to rotating staff, however, with a solution like Harri – we take the pain away from this process for you with our labour scheduling, meaning the talent attraction benefits far outweigh the added admin.
Use the Kickstart Scheme
18–25-year-olds have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic when it comes to employment. With a widening pool of available talent within this demographic, the government launched their Kickstart scheme to help them back to work. Sign up Kickstarters to your business and you’ll get 25 hours of their wages each week paid for, as well as receiving a £1,500 grant to cover the cost of training, uniform and travel for your new employee. Sound too good to be true? Well, it’s not. Especially when it comes to bringing in new talent to your kitchens!
You’ll have to ensure they are recruited in addition to any current headcount in the kitchen, but there is no limit to how many you can recruit, meaning, you’ll have an extra pair of hands (or four!) that you can train to support (and relieve some of the pressure) for your existing team. Want to find out how to apply for the Kickstart scheme? Contact us here.
Use Retention Bonuses
Now, we’re not saying that our industry as a whole isn’t prime for an overhaul when it comes to pay. However, what we’re currently seeing (that’s far less positive), is an unrealistic bidding war for chefs where employers are all losing. Chefs are leaving for a few ££ more every few months and demanding a higher salary each time; leaving us with a real issue on our hands when it comes to inflated salaries and pressures on our kitchen payroll.
To tackle this, we recommend hiring with a market rate salary with retention bonuses, either quarterly or yearly – as a means to incentivise your talent to stay with you. If we all took this approach, it could help stabilise the volatile chef talent market that currently exists. Harri’s career story pages are a fantastic opportunity to stand out from the crowd and showcase the benefits which you offer to chefs, including the bonus and any other benefits you build as part of your chef retention and attraction strategy.
For your chefs to get real time payroll info, Harri’s payroll will not only give them this but also advance payments if they need it. Payroll is fully automated, so it integrates and issues automatic payouts for bonuses (or employee referrals) so managers don’t have to keep track, saving them time.
Used our advice and now armed with the “why” chefs should join you and want to take your roles to market? Get in touch with us today where we can work together to bring your offer to life in this candidate market.
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