Hospitality sector struggling to recruit staff
Hospitality venues have, at long last, been able to open their doors. Yet bars and restaurants are struggling to recruit enough staff after thousands of workers left the sector over lockdown, meaning that some businesses may not be able to fully reopen again on 17 May.
Recent figures suggest that more than one in 10 workers left the industry last year. This is partly due to the uncertainty that Covid-19 restrictions caused. Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality, said that the government should “confirm the route map,” to ease concerns, to allow for the confirmation of staff hours and to remove the “element of uncertainty around choosing hospitality careers”.
Chains are already trying to coax workers back. Pizza Express is hiring for 1,000 new positions after cutting 2,400 roles last year. The company, which has already reopened 118 restaurants, has posted these roles in anticipation of a rush of customers when restrictions end in June.
Other industry experts suggest a perfect storm has brewed with both Brexit and the pandemic meaning furloughed hospitality workers have found work elsewhere and migrant workers have returned home.
Pre-Brexit, migrant workers made up 20 per cent of the UK hospitality industry’s workforce. When the pandemic left them out of work they returned home and their positions remain unfilled. A study by the UK’s Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence found that there has been an “unprecedented exodus” of migrants with as many as 1.3 million people born outside the UK leaving in the past 12 months.
And so, despite venues opening their doors, restaurateurs are among those struggling to find the staff. Chris Williams, owner of Spanish tapas restaurants Pintxo De Bath and Pintxo De Fowey, is experiencing this first hand. In Pintxo De Bath, while he had not found sourcing staff “too difficult,” he did find himself bringing “on a whole new crew,” after part of his team who were from Spain went home and decided not to return.
Yet at his Cornwall restaurant it is a very different picture. “As it is more rural it has been very difficult,” says Williams, who normally recruits most of the venue’s staff from Europe and has found they aren’t making, or rather can’t make, the journey over. Both venues are currently open for al fresco dining and have enough staff to operate under current restrictions, but Williams is “endlessly trying” to recruit more to gear up for their busy eight-week period during July and August.
Patrick Powell, head chef at London’s Allegra, has a similar tale to tell. “It’s been challenging. I have had people lined up for trials who have backed out at the last minute,” says Powell, who is trying to recruit staff in roles from front of house to junior chefs. He has also had staff quit, which he puts down to lifestyle reasons as the transition out of furlough proved more difficult than expected for some. “In the first lockdown, many staff left the city and are now hesitant to return as they want a better work/life balance”. When it comes to front of house, he explains that Spanish and Italian workers are the “backbone of the industry who bring such passion and energy to their work,” but there are now fewer available. Everyone he knows in the industry is facing the same problem.
Migrant workers must now secure a “suitable job” and earn at least £26,500 a year before entering the UK. Even if this is achieved, the move is “no longer an attractive prospect,” says Powell. “Ten to 15 years ago, it was really exciting to begin working as a chef in London, but this is not the case anymore”. Still, he is hopeful: “Such is London. Bad times come and go.”