A theme that keeps coming up in the conversations with my colleagues in the hospitality industry is the concern that after Covid we are going to see a dramatic skills shortage.
We have been lucky in the UK with our governments approach to furloughing staff, not all countries have taken this approach but it means that for many operators they have been able to hold on to their skilled and experienced employees.
But after the end of the first lockdown there were more than a few venues who realised that their staff had taken the time during ‘furlough’ to reimagine their lives and had decided to change careers or take on other jobs.
Whilst of course for the individuals involved all power to them, it is a great thing that through a crisis you choose to come out of it with a new or different plan for your future. But the concern is that because of this prolonged period of uncertainty and the inevitable redundancies that there will be a great number choosing to leave the industry.
Of course, this happens naturally over time in any case but when it happens slowly there is potential to plan and retrain new talent, but in recent years even this was proving to be nearly impossible.
Take chefs for instance. In a previous post I discussed the high pressure environment that chefs tend to work in, with or without a good employer it is just in the nature of the work; there are constant deadlines throughout the day; multiple tasks requiring multiple skills where mistakes are inevitable; problem-solving, firefighting, and dealing with uncertainty are part of the daily workload. YTo be sucessful you also need excellent interpersonal skills and a constant ability to adapt your mood as, even ‘back of house’, there are a whole host of personalities, both your colleagues and the public, with whom you have to work out how to get along with.
If you add that to a culture that used to be very masculine and often bullying, long hours and low pay in not too good conditions then it is no wonder that over the past 20 years the industry has lost a huge amount of talent.
To top it off, margins in hospitality are low so the work tends to be low pay and long hours despite the level of skill involved. Being short staffed in this environment adds additional pressure and hours of work to the chefs that you do have creating a vicious circle of people leaving the industry.
Most chefs remain in the job because they love it, & they love the industry, but sometimes that is just not going to be enough.
Nearly every chef I worked with 20 years ago has now left the industry, taken a sidestep into mass catering or is freelance, working less hours for more money and in huge demand (because of a shortage of chefs). They all still speak of their time as a chef romantically, but none would consider going back.
Unavailability of chefs has been so much of a problem that ‘skilled chefs’ are on the skill shortage list for UK immigration.
I am aware of this first-hand as it is something we considered at my last venue. In the area of the country that we were operating we had 2 chef vacancies for over 18 months. But recruiting from abroad is expensive and time consumming it is not an easy fix with a huge number of legal and financial hoops to jump.
The problem is not just historically that we have lost the skill we also haven’t been able to replace it.
To become a great chef is not just a couple of years at college there is one thing to know how to cook but experience in a commercial kitchen is invaluable. There are other routes to a career in a kitchen but even the colleges are ceasing to exist.
As part of our long-term strategy and investment we would always take on apprentices from our local college. The college had a reputation for delivering a high-quality chef education whilst offering exceptional support and a clear structure to the young people.
But recently that college closed the department. A consequence of changes to higher education funding and the squeeze that all education institutions are feeling. With the need to make ‘cuts’ the cheffing side of their school just didn’t have the potential to make as much money for them as the construction side and so no more chefs!
As a business we had to resort to employing apprentices directly but without the professional support of a great apprentice provider then these often fail with young people needing more than a supportive employer to learn how to enter the adult world.
Even on the occasions when an apprenticeships is successful it is not a quick fix, learning to be a chef is at least a 5 year task. No matter what you see on TV it is not just about being able to cook a good dish the ability to do it under pressure whilst simultaneously cooking for other people, manging multiple tasks, understanding the nature of how the restaurant operates, how every element is interwoven, managing your time, manging your colleagues time, is a complex job and therefore the skill high.
So, there are concerns for the post Covid future that are not been explicitly discussed yet (because there are other more pressing issues currently).
Whilst conditions in the industry are far better than they were 20 years ago there is no doubt that Covid will mean that more people will have left the industry, ‘retired’ from the long hours to find a different life where they get to spend more time with the people they love.
But there is huge concern that there are no mechanisms to replace that talent and even if there were, training young people has already demonstrated to be imperfect; not enough young people wanting to enter the profession; not enough quality education providers and not enough time to fill the huge chasm that is likely to appear.
Covid has changed our industry already but this exoduses of skill is likely to be yet another problem that the industry has to solve and it is likely to be on such a scale that it will have an existential impact on the nature of the industry.
Technology in kitchens has already changed in recent years with more sophisticated machines that allow lower skilled operators and therefore on the Highstreet a growth in centralised preparing of food, however ‘lower skill’ is still ‘skill’ and so this alone will not be the solution.
Like everything, Covid will have changed things, but in recent months the hospitality industry has demonstrated exceptional agility, innovation, collaboration & strength so I have no doubt that with a bit on ingenuity there will be a solution but is it yet another reason why we will not be going back to how things were before this crisis.
