Food & Beverage Magazine: G&A HR Expert Offers Recruiting Tips for Hospitality-Industry Employers
Did you know the hospitality industry suffers from “bad hygiene” jobs? In her recent article for Food & Beverage Magazine, Denise Macik, Manager of Strategic HR Advisory Services for G&A Partners, quotes a Harvard Business School article that defines bad hygiene jobs as those that are “demanding, low paid, and provide few prospects for advancement.”
This may be why there are so many “Help Wanted” signs in restaurant drive-thru windows and plastered on dine-in restaurant doors, indicating a “painfully obvious” labor shortage in the hospitality industry, Macik writes.
“While the industry has always suffered from high turnover, this year it’s infinitely worse as more than 1 million industry jobs remain open and unfilled,” she reports. “That is why businesses in this industry should strive to find out what is important to potential new hires and existing staff and then figure out a way to offer it, if possible.”
Macik provides five recommendations for business owners in the hospitality industry who are suffering through a labor shortage in today’s market:
- Offer a tuition reimbursement program.
- Offer employees a childcare stipend.
- Set up an employee bonus program.
- Offer flexible scheduling and increase paid time off.
- Consider outsourcing human resources to a professional employer organization (PEO) that can offer access to affordable healthcare coverage with top insurers.
“Taking some or all the steps above will go a long way toward engendering loyalty and improving business overall—happy employees create happy, repeat customers,” she says. “In the long run, it could even help food and beverage businesses remove themselves from the industry’s 'bad hygiene' funk.”
Read Macik’s full article, “How to pass the smell test, attract workers during a labor shortage,” in Food & Beverage Magazine.