Men paid 14p an hour more than women
Data from the provider of cloud-based forecasting and cost-control software, which covers the hourly pay of thousands of hospitality workers, across the hotel, restaurant, quick service retail and pub sectors, also revealed that wages as a percentage of sales had risen 0.9% over the past four to six weeks.
It said the gender gap was driven by the male bias of workers in the kitchen and back-of-house roles, which are typically paid a higher hourly rate. This is versus a female bias in the front-of-house roles, where workers had the opportunity to top up their daily hourly rate through customer tips.
The gender pay gap favoured women by 2p in December 2016, before reverting in favour of men in May 2017, it said.
“Our demographic analysis shows that male non-British workers continue to make up the majority of back-of-house workers and chefs in the industry. With continued pressure on skill shortages in this area since the Brexit vote, the hourly rate for men has started to increase, due to the continuing squeeze on supply,” said Mike Shipley, analytics & insight solutions director at Fourth.
“In context with this, female workers continue to make up the majority of front-of-house workers, where tips and gratuities form a key part of remuneration. When taking this into consideration the overall rates of pay become more aligned.”
Fourth said that a regional pay gap between the inside and outside of the M25 had remained the same at 13p in line with May 2017 (and for most of 2016). Businesses inside the M25 paid £8.35 on average, while those outside paid £8.22.
Fourth also said that heavy discounting in the casual dining sector saw productivity slow in the past four to six weeks.
It said that productivity across the UK hospitality industry had fallen, with the key measure of sales per labour hour sitting at £34.01 – a 62p reduction since May 2017.
Fourth said that cost pressures from decreasing productivity were exacerbated by continued, but steady, wage-cost inflation, with the average hourly wage in the hospitality industry now sitting at £8.28, a rise of 2% since May 2017. This is 3% above the Government’s target of reaching £8.05 by April 2018.
Shipley, said that discounting was a “quick fix” to a “complex situation”
“Our figures show that a domino effect of aggressive discounting in the hospitality industry, particularly the restaurant sector, has taken a heavy toll on productivity as brands compete for custom in a very competitive market place,” he said.
