Mental health issues are endemic in hospitality.
For anyone who has worked for any length of time in the hospitality industry will know, mental health issues are endemic.
It is reported that in the general population 1 in 4 people will experience a period of poor mental health within their lifetime. The Burnt Chef Project has conducted studies that suggest that within hospitality the numbers are more like 4 out of 5 due to the stress and pressures that working within this industry can cause. With 3.2 million people in the UK that work in the industry, this is not a small problem.
As someone who has spent my whole working life in the industry across all areas, I can attest to the problem.
This is an industry where no matter what level you are working the pressure is always full on. From the moment you work through the door every day, expectations are high, from customers, colleagues, and for the best of us even ourselves. Delivering a ‘perfect’ service to everyone is what we are all about.
It is a high-pressure job with 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. To top it off you 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.
To be honest, though the industry has not been kind to itself.
Certainly, in my 25 years’ experience it has been too often I’ve witnessed colleagues, employees and friends burn out. Nearly every chef I have ever worked with, now no longer works at the coalface - almost all have either left the industry, moved to an office role, or work freelance in order to have control over their work/life balance. It has been a culture of work hard, play hard, and no space for anything between.
As an employer, a great battle was always to help our employees find that balance through the workplace and to build a culture where rest was valued as much as the high expectations and standards set by others.
I learnt early on in my role as a leader in the industry that I needed skills to be able to support the mental health of those in my care and certainly developing an empathetic approach, influencing mindset, and building cultures to support this has been the greatest unseen challenge that I have had in my career.
As expected, it does tend to be chefs who bear the brunt of this.
In my first proper restaurant job I worked with an exceptional accolade winning chef who would throw heavy cast iron frying pans through the kitchen when things didn’t go to plan, (missing the heads of the other chef and us waiting staff by millimeters) but it was a culture that was unchallenged, in fact, it was one where ‘Chef’ was worshipped. ‘Chef’ knew what was best for everyone and if he wasn’t happy then it was our fault. He had a loyal tribe of followers, his ‘brigade’ selected from the best workers would and did follow him everywhere, and that included some of the front of house team including myself who continued to work with and for him in a number of venues. But these chefs would start work at 8 am and though supposed to have a break would often work through to close of service at 10 pm, if they were lucky they may have eaten during the day and even perhaps caught 30 mins sleep but most likely they got through the day on coffee and energy drinks. At the end of a shift, they drank alcohol to relax and often took other drugs just to cope. You add this to an expectation of being on call on days off and coming in at the last minute when there is a problem and you find that sometimes chefs would work 14-hour days 14 days though. This is an extreme example, but it certainly was not uncommon in my experience and ‘front of house’ whilst perhaps without the macho need to demonstrate that they could do the same thing did none-the-less follow a similar pattern.
No wonder so many burnt out and left the industry.
But has it changed much?
Well now whilst working conditions and expectations might be somewhat better, I am not sure it has improved a lot.
Certainly, there are better laws protecting staff, minimum wage and the ‘48 hour working time directive’ (which employees can opt-out of) certainly help if only to acknowledge that this shouldn’t’ be normal and has given employees an understanding of how they can perhaps resist the expectation. BUT, the historic culture within the industry and the damage that has done to passionate people who have departed in droves has left the industry woefully under-skilled.
In my last restaurant, we struggled to recruit chefs at all. There are just not enough people out there with the skills required to do the work. So much so that chefs are on the immigration skilled worker list as it is a ‘shortage occupation’. Even taking on apprentices is becoming no longer an option as higher education colleges experience cuts and opt to no longer provide the courses.
How this manifests itself in the industry today is that even with great employers who support employees, create supportive organisational culture, pay well, ensure quality time off and develop structures and systems to reduce the pressure on employees there just are not enough skilled workers to fill the positions. This leads to a shortage of staff and therefore, inevitably, a pressured situation where, despite us all agreeing that the long term cannot be people working extra shifts and longer hours, it is what ends up happening. Those same people end up burnt out - it is a vicious circle created by the industry itself. Some venues may find solutions but it inevitably leaves the industry needing support for the people who passionately just want to do a great job for their customers!
Whilst I have used chefs as an example similar issues persist across the whole of the hospitality industry at all levels - there is not a single role that I have come across yet in my 25 years where the best of us are not under huge pressure which needs to be managed.
Fortunately, though there are some great projects set up to try to help.
The Burnt Chef Project is one of them. The Burnt Chef Project is a non-profit campaign operating within hospitality to challenge mental health stigma through online training, open conversations and sales of branded custom merchandise.
Hospitality Action is a UK charity supporting both physical and mental health issues as well as financial difficulty, family problems & addiction. Invisible Chips is a great campaign launched by Hospitality Action where customers can ‘buy’ invisible chips from the menu with the money going to the charity to support hospitality workers through the additional pressures caused by Covid-19.
Let’s hope in years to come that as an industry we can find a way to continue to look after each other and change our culture so that the jobs that we all love doing so much, providing exceptional services to the public, can be one which no longer risks our mental health and that when we do need help that we’ve developed a culture where there is no stigma.
