Offering an incentive to succeed
Whenever I have been talking with colleagues in the industry recently, I have experienced a sense of impending doom.
The subject of our discussions has not been business, Government or the economy, but staffing. Everyone agrees: the future looks bleak.
In London, there would be a kitchen catastrophe but for the young Australians, New Zealanders and South Africans who help us out.
We struggle to find the skills needed to maintain production, never mind standards. I could name a dozen good restaurants within an hour's drive of the Angel Inn that have been struggling all year to fill important vacancies.
As long as I can remember our industry has suffered from staff shortages. But, because standards have risen so much in the past 10 years, we also have huge skills shortages.
Over the years the industry has tried to make itself more attractive to prospective employees. Chambermaids have become room stewardesses, kitchen porters are now hygiene operatives and personnel managers call themselves directors of human resources.
Yet when we do attract youngsters to train, the system lets them down. At a dinner the other night I sat opposite a senior catering college lecturer. He admitted that qualifications, suitability, or an interest in hospitality were not requirements for courses. Colleges accept students simply because they get paid for "bums on seats", not for the quality of the product they turn out.
Most colleges require only 15 hours a week attendance at lectures. How does that prepare students for the work that will be required by our industry?
I recently hosted a luncheon party at the Angel Inn for careers officers, teachers, the local authority and the Yorkshire TEC, at which I described the industry as I saw it.
My vision was of one where a skilled person need never be out of work; which offers career progress to dedicated and enthusiastic young people and an opportunity to travel; one which is exciting, varied, well paid and satisfying.
Our guests were staggered. They had no idea of the incentives and opportunities the industry could offer.
In France, hotels and restaurants are staffed by French nationals. We could solve unemployment problems in the UK if our nationals did the same.
I dream that one day the Government will help to change attitudes to the industry, that we will be supplied by a few specialist colleges of excellence, with our youth clamouring to obtain places, ending up with a career they can be proud of.
