Hospitality Hiring Post-Pandemic: Insights from Talos360's Roundtable with Tim Clifford

We chat to Tim Clifford , Tech Evangelist at Talos360 , about the recent hospitality-leaders hiring roundtable Talos360 hosted at Revolución de Cuba Manchester last month.

1. You had a good turnout to the event, what were the main hospitality hiring challenges you observed?

Yes, it was a great turnout thank you... clearly the hospitality sector have a lot to say! The key challenges that came to light were mostly around retaining staff once they've joined, and we were finding new employees were leaving not long after starting the job due to expectations not being met. Onboarding is such a crucial part of recruitment, and the majority of the room agreed onboarding standards had slipped post-pandemic as there was such a rush to bring people into their organisation once the restrictions lifted.

2. How are hiring managers in hospitality tackling talent acquisition challenges in the sector?

Cross sector hiring is becoming more prevalent to fill a talent shortage, especially in FOH. The focus on personality and aptitude has always been there in the sector, but tools like candidate assessment are making it easier than ever before for hospitality businesses to hire right first time based on potential rather than prior experience. We’ve also seen a massive investment in automation and AI to try and screen/shortlist candidates quickly, so hiring managers can be left with a “pot of gold” in the form of a group of suitable candidates as quickly as possible to invest more time into interviews and the selection process. The use of “eliminator questions” and candidate assessments are helping find the needles in the haystack much faster.

3. Did you observe any trends in popular hospitality employee benefits?

Use of benefits overall has increased due to the cost of living crisis, we’ve seen in some instances up to 40% more employees enquiring about available company benefits to help them out. The main thing employees want is the ability to have some weekends off, or at least some flexibility with when they can get their hours in. Obviously cover is needed at the weekends but employees (especially younger ones) want their weekends free, which obviously in hospitality is rare, so flexibility is a big benefit to offer. Reduced gym memberships was also a popular benefit, as there has been a huge increase in mental health awareness and employers see exercise as a great way to improve employee’s mental and physical wellbeing.

4. Are there any candidate management challenges that received particular attention?

The main challenges were around sifting through applications and then poor communication from the candidates. In hospitality applications for some roles can come thick and fast, so you don’t want to be spending too much time going through them with a fine tooth comb, especially when the vast majority of the people doing the screening aren’t solely focussed on recruitment and actually have other HR responsibilities they’d like to focus on such as retention. Automation tends to be the most efficient way of not only screening candidates but also contacting them, as communication is key to making sure you don’t have candidates ghosting or not turning up to interviews etc. By opening the line of contact early and properly, the challenge of poor communication can be mitigated.

5. How much of a focus is onboarding in the hospitality sector right now?

Onboarding is huge. I think the compliance side of things is very well understood – but the introduction of digital right to work checks has really streamlined that side of things in hospitality. The engagement side of onboarding however is still in its growth phase. There are some brands out there that excel at this, but for many hospitality businesses this is new terrain and is becoming increasingly essential in the competition for talent. The introduction of things like Onboarding Microsites and welcome packs really help with bridging the gap between offer accepted and a new employees first day, and massively help reduce the anxiety around starting a new job, which at the end of the day increases the chances of them staying longer than 6 months!

6. What is the focus for leaders in hospitality hiring going into the new year?

Well we anticipate a bit of a shift in the dynamic of the recruitment market back to an employer-driven model, similar to pre-pandemic, as there is a steady decrease in job vacancies online and an increase in applications. There will continue to be a big focus on ED&I and Mental Wellbeing, however the main focus I think will be around retention. As the economy struggles and businesses tighten up budgets, we’ll see recruitment freezes so HR teams must really focus on retaining their staff and employee engagement will be a big talking point.

7. Will you be hosting more roundtable conversations?

Hopefully in the New Year! We host weekly webinars at Talos360 though, on a range of hiring and HR challenges so we’ll definitely be busy. We’ve had a lot of interest in our recent AI and neurodiversity sessions, so we’ll probably delve more into these areas as we head into 2024, and we plan for some in-person workshops to take place across the country next year with the first sessions due to take place around March time, so keep your eyes peeled for updates on that!