F&B Recruitment Challenges and Solutions

The hospitality industry has long faced challenges in attracting and retaining talent, but the situation has worsened significantly since the health crisis. Many individuals have shifted to other industries, prioritising work-life balance, leaving food and beverage departments struggling to maintain their teams. This shift in employee expectations and the broader range of career options available has forced hotels to reconsider how they manage, motivate, and develop their teams. Even now, we continue to witness experienced professionals departing the sector for more stable opportunities in other industries, highlighting the urgent need for the hospitality to evolve at a faster pace if it is to compete successfully to attract and retain quality talents.

The Current State of Play

Our hospitality industry has made great strides in its post-pandemic recovery, with tourism numbers rebounding across Europe and the UK. In 2023, the European Union recorded 2.92 billion nights spent in tourist accommodation, exceeding pre-pandemic levels. Hotels contributed 1.8 billion of these nights, underscoring the sector's ongoing significance. However, despite these positive developments, labour shortages remain a critical issue. The UK alone reports over one million unfilled jobs, with similar challenges seen across Europe. The hospitality workforce is still 10-20% smaller than before the pandemic, leaving many positions vacant and placing considerable operational strain on hotels, even as demand from guests and diners continues to rise.

"A well-trained F&B Director and Executive Chef will save you money; poorly developed & trained ones will lose you money."

Lack of Manager Development and Retention: A significant but often overlooked issue is the lack of development and retention among F&B managers. Many hotel and F&B managers are still not provided with sufficient leadership training given the pace of progression leading to high levels of frustration and disengagement. Poor management practices, inconsistent support, and limited mentorship often result in F&B managers leaving the industry or moving to more attractive roles in other sectors. Without investing in the development of F&B leadership teams, hotels will struggle to create a positive work environment that fosters long-term employee retention across all levels. This is particularly concerning, as strong leadership is essential for motivating teams and maintaining operational stability.

Other factors that contribute to the ongoing talent shortage in hospitality are:

Perceived Job Insecurity: The health crisis highlighted the volatility and lack of security in hospitality , making it less appealing for those seeking long-term career stability.

Competitive Job Market: Other Job sectors offer more attractive wages, flexible working conditions, more benefits, and better work-life balance and sadly hospitality still unfortunately lags behind in these areas.

Skills Shortages: There is a significant shortage of skilled hospitality professionals , particularly chefs and service staff, as the demand for high-quality F&B experiences continues to grow. While online training has become more available, the hospitality industry must still prioritise retaining on-the-job training and through in-person training and inductions to ensure staff are adequately prepared and supported. Hospitality is a guest facing industry.

Burnout and Long Hours: High turnover rates remain a challenge due to the demanding nature of hospitality roles, especially in kitchen and service positions, because many food and beverage operations continue to place excessive pressure on employees to cover shifts.

Some Solutions to consider

To address the challenges outlined in this article, the hospitality industry must undergo both cultural and structural transformation. This begins with reimagining work-life balance, prioritising mental health support and prevention, and offering more attractive career progression opportunities. Hotel groups need to offer career and personal growth not only within individual hotels but across the industry, and yes this does include competitor hotels, this way we can help ensure that talent remains within the hospitality sector.

Flexible Working Models: Introducing shorter shifts, better shift rotations, and capped work hours would help make the industry more sustainable and reduce burnout. Moreover, hybrid working roles, where feasible and makes sense, should be explored.

Mental Health Support: As the demands of hospitality work are intense, offering wellness programmes perhaps with collaborations with Gyms, Spas , Nutritionists, paid mental health days, and a having a culture of openness around mental health concerns will help to retain staff. Such initiatives also promote loyalty and improve overall employee morale.

Fair Compensation: Wages in hospitality must become competitive with those in other sectors such as IT and Retail. Offering benefit packages, including healthcare and pensions, Travel, access to further Education would make the hospitality industry even more attractive to new talent.

Career Development Pathways: To counter the perception that hospitality roles are dead-end jobs, hotels should offer clearly defined structured career development programmes. These should include training, certifications, apprenticeships, and mentorship to show employees that there are real opportunities for progression.

Internal Promotions: Encouraging internal promotions rather than constantly recruiting from outside the organisation fosters loyalty and motivates employees to stay. Prioritising long-term growth opportunities will also reduce turnover, keeping in mind that we should not put restraints on people splitting roles between two or three departments in hotels and allowing to transfer between hotels with ease. We need to let go of the old barriers of time served etc.

Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility : Both Millennials and Generation Z employees are drawn to companies that reflect their personal values and purpose. Hotels must continue to embrace sustainability, ethical sourcing, and work harder at community engagement as core principles, not just as marketing tools.

Technology Integration: As technology increasingly plays a role in hospitality, hotels can streamline operations through automation, freeing up employees to focus on higher-value interactions. Upskilling employees to use this technology must also be a priority especially with working with Ai, Robotics, Augmented Reality and automated administration support.

Tailoring Approaches for Different Demographics

Recruitment strategies must be sensitive to the differences between Generations including Gen Z and Millennials. Clumping Generational groups together when hiring should be avoided, target recruitment in the same way you would target customers.

• Generation Z: Born between 1997 and 2012, this generation is highly digitally savvy and socially aware. They are independent and entrepreneurial, often seeking roles that offer flexibility and align with their personal values.
• Millennials: Born between 1981 and 1996, Millennials value work-life balance, meaningful work, and career stability. They are also driven by social and environmental causes but are more likely to seek out roles that offer both flexibility and stability.

Hotels should therefore customise their recruitment and retention strategies, recognising the unique motivators for each group of generations.

The Secret to Developing Hotel F&B Teams

In summary the key to improving F&B team performance lies in creating a culture that supports autonomy, clear communication, and opportunities for growth. Empowering teams and individuals to make decisions fosters a sense of ownership and responsibility, which leads to better performance. Offering continuous, role-specific training and development ensures that staff feel valued and motivated to stay.

Recognition and rewards are also critical in keeping morale high. A strong leadership team that provides mentorship

Finally, as I mentioned at the start of the video in my conversation with Mike, having worked for a company with the same product, the same number of delivery addresses, the same marketing materials, the same team, and the same location, I observed that when a store faced financial challenges, the issue was often either a lack of involvement from the franchisee or the General Manager not fully utilising the resources available to them. This included the development, recruitment, and retention of the team.

In case you missed the webinar.....

I want to thanks Michael Jones and Stephan M. Leuschner for arranging this webinar and for inviting me to be part of a panel and discuss ? https://lnkd.in/dSSYJJP6 with Ian Keating, Michelle Kilmey , Mohit Malhotra & Gisela Ciancio in this positive discussion about the hashtag#challenges of hashtag#staff hashtag#retention and how hashtag#Hotels can improve the situation. moderated by Stephan M. Leuschner & Michael Jones TrendTalk by RATIONAL is brought to you by RATIONAL AG .

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