Seeking retention

Phil Mellows looks at the results of a new report on pub staffing.

As thousands of sports fans from all over the world converged on Manchester for last summer's Commonwealth Games, the city's hospitality industry faced the toughest of tests.

After a difficult year for tourism this was a precious opportunity. But how would pubs, restaurants and hotels cope?

Researchers from Leeds Metropolitan University's Centre for Hospitality and Retailing, led by Professor Conrad Lashley, decided to find out whether the invasion of sports fans would expose staff shortages and skills gaps.

Pulling together interviews with the city's independent licensees, pubcos, recruitment agencies and others, their report has just been published.

It reveals that while interviewees perceived few problems with recruitment - finding chefs being one of them - this disguises low expectations among employers which could reduce the ability of Manchester's pubs to attract tourists.

High staff turnover is accepted as a fact of life, low pay is not considered to be a problem and the standards required of recruits for most jobs are minimal.

"Many employers merely sought to recruit basic social skills," says the report, quoting one pub licensee: "I don't really need any special skills, just the right attitude and the willingness to learn. The rest I can show them and teach them."

Even so, the same publican experienced difficulties in retaining those people: "People just come and go. Recently I had six people leave more or less all at once. They all went to Wetherspoon because they are paying a few pence more per hour."

Among the problems identified by the research is that staff turnover is not measured and employers lack the skills to manage employment issues.

"Few employers had any systematic ways of recording and managing staff turnover. For many it seemed that they just accepted staff turnover as 'the way things are'."

While earlier research has identified low pay as being a factor in hospitality's struggle to keep people, "not one of the employers in the hospitality sector firms experiencing high levels of staff turnover mentioned pay levels as a problem", says the report.

Manchester's recruitment agencies, however, got a different view from employees as they changed jobs.

"Moans about pay and conditions are the most common complaints," said one. "On pay it's not always the level that's the problem, it's that people are being asked to do extra hours for the same pay.

"Poor working conditions is another that crops up on a regular basis and 'being thrown in the deep end', not shown what to do properly or told what's expected of them."

The report concludes that "this potential misunderstanding by employers of the significance of pay levels and their failure to understand the perceptions of their employees are factors relevant to overcoming these levels of staff turnover."

Hospitality employers also failed to perceive the real costs of high staff turnover, not only in terms of cash - calculated by Conrad Lashley to be between £500 and £1,000 per recruit - but in service delivery.

"The failure to recruit sufficient employees to staff the jobs required for effective operation has an impact on service quality, profitability and performance," says the report. "Insufficient staff behind the bar or in the restaurant has an immediate impact on the tourist experience and the competitive position of Manchester.

"A failure to recognise and deal with these issues will fundamentally flaw the city's strategy to increase tourism."

Conrad Lashley's report​

The report recommends employers should:

• implement a strategy to reduce staff turnover among "unskilled" workers
• adjust pay to reflect competitors' rates and improve productivity and service
• stop measuring labour costs simply as a percentage
  of gross profit
• set pay rates take into account the costs of staff turnover, low productivity and lost customers
• target student recruits
• use local employer networks provided by tourism organisations and Learning Skills Councils to create careers structures and, in particular, develop chefs
• where appropriate, work with tourism bodies to improve staff language skills
• develop their own management skills.