Letters

A minimum wage makes good business sense

It is not surprising that your readers are concerned about the removal of the minimum wage. Nor is it surprising that the BHA, which represents only a small proportion of the industry's employers - and does not speak for all its members - produces spurious statistics purporting that a minimum wage, even at £2.96, destroys jobs.

The fact is that our industry - more than almost any other - depends on the skills and motivation of our staff.

As an employer within the restaurant sector, I have found, like most of my colleagues, that competitiveness is affected more by other issues, such as product and service quality, than by whether we can pay our lowest-grade staff less.

Those arguing against a minimum wage do not fully understand the nature of the business - or have ulterior motives. They see a minimum wage as a cost, but ignore the vast number of other costs upon business, direct and indirect, of low pay. These include:

• The cost of high staff turnover - recruitment costs, training costs, down time and low quality. (One of the more conservative estimates of this is as high as £5,000 per lost employee.)

• The cost of low service and product quality - lower quality in both product and service, leading to customer dissatisfaction, ineffective competition, loss of market share, and reduced revenues.

• The costs from the effect on society. Scores of young people are unable to find work at rates which enable them to do more than merely exist, and are turning to crime. This affects firms through rising tax and insurance premiums, as well as through criminal damage and consumers' fears about venturing out in the evenings.

Most successful businesses in our industry see a strong link between the investment they make in their staff and success. It is time that others, particularly some of the larger employers able to wield political power, recognise this too.

HERIBERTO CUANALO

Oxford.

Can we stand up to criticism?

I very much agree with Judith Belton's comments that customer satisfaction can be measured far more accurately by means of well-designed surveys than mystery shoppers.

A good example of this took place within a variety of large corporations in the USA. Staff were classified as customers and the organisation itself was the service provider.

Staff were questioned about their perception of their employment and how they felt in their current position, as well as their attitudes towards their employers and their job. The findings were staggering.

It resulted in a number of companies having to review their current employment terms and policies to ensure higher customer satisfaction.

How could this have been achieved without the customers as a collective unit? No matter how often a mystery customer visits the premises, the results will be one-sided. As Judith Belton pointed out: "Who decides how long an acceptable waiting time may be?"

Surveys, no matter how well designed, do highlight a lot of factors which can be pre-determined. And to be fair to both mystery customers and surveys, the results in either case may not be favourable. Negative comments may make some managers feel that they have failed; others may use them as an opportunity to review structures or approaches to certain tasks. In no way should any result be used to determine how good or bad a manager or staff member is in their job.

Companies have to decide for themselves how they want to check their customers' satisfaction levels. But one underlying question remains: - do we really want to find out what our customers think of us, and how much criticism are we prepared to take?

WOLFGANG MATEJEK

Research Executive,

M&G Research, London.

Top-class school nutrition

I read with interest your article on CCG Services' computerised nutritional assessment of school meals in Scotland. It inferred that this was something new and worthy of note, especially as it applied to the public sector.

Birmingham City Council for one, has not been inactive in this area. During 1990-1994 it was a requirement of this authority that recipes and menus met basic nutritional food standards based on industry recommendations, amended where appropriate by local health service dietitians.

Birmingham Education Committee included these standards in school meals specifications. Revisions and additions to recipes and menus were then analysed by dietitians using a computer package, before recipes were used in schools.

The need for awareness of diet- and nutrition-related illnesses in later life is now a key message in Birmingham schools.

Birmingham's Citiserve has used its computer package for some time now. This ensures that meals provision in schools remains at the forefront of initiatives such as Healthy Birmingham 2000 and the Government's Health of the Nation scheme.

ALAN KEEPAX

Assistant Client Services Manager,

Education Department, Birmingham City Council.

A tribute to the charity helpers

It is very sad that Dine-a-Mite, the industry charity, was not successful.

I think we should pay tribute to the efforts of Gerald Milsom and the team for a valiant attempt to start a charity from scratch.

It generally wasn't recognised that the trustees and a number of other people gave an enormous amount of voluntary time. It wasn't their fault that it didn't take off.

MELVYN GREEN

Melvyn Greene & Associates,

New Malden, Surrey.

Why it's so hard on civvy street

The letter from Mrs Hartley about her husband, unable to find employment when leaving the forces is not the first of this kind I have read.

I served for 22 years in the Royal Navy, and I can assure Mrs Hartley that employers do not find ex-forces employees unable to do the job. In most cases these people are well-trained and capable.

However, employers want those that are consistent. Many ex-servicemen do not stay in their first civilian job for very long. After leaving the service they often find it very difficult to settle into civilian ways and may sometimes have five or six jobs before settling to any kind of steady work.

In service life there is a lot of time off for sport and so on, but a civilian life requires full commitment to work.

Mike Screech

GENERAL MANAGER,

Aramark,

Yeovilton, Somerset.

A waste of time for tourism

I was amazed to receive through the post last week the 5mm-thick, well-printed and well-presented English Tourist Board/British Tourist Authority users manual 1995, headed British Hotel Catering & Institutional Purchasers Database.

I was amazed, first because I had not asked for it, and second because they had wasted so much time producing something that will either collect dust on the shelves, or be assigned to the bin.

Surely their research would have told them that all consortia and most local hotel associations already run purchasing schemes and hold similar databases.

What a duplication of effort! All most of us want the ETB/BTA to do is to promote us to tourists who will use our facilities.

As Adele Biss says in her preface to this manual: "The BTA was created with the remit of boosting tourism to Britain through marketing and promotional activities overseas."

The budget is small enough. Please, Adele, let's spend it on marketing and not yet another purchasers database.

I then turned to read the foreword in this manual, written by Viscount Astor, minister for tourism. In his final paragraph he says: "The computer is now so central to all our lives that it is important we grasp its great potential."

Why not concentrate on the one issue on which the whole industry is saying it wants some action - the reduction of VAT? We have already discovered computers and purchasing manuals!

TREVOR FORECAST

Congham Hall,

King's Lynn, Norfolk.