Where there's a skill…
Employers in the hospitality industry repeatedly complain that, despite all the money and effort poured into education and training, they cannot find staff with the skills they need.
Like all industries, hospitality suffers from the fact that education and training of people aged 16 and over has always been a mixed bag in the UK, as sixth-form colleges, universities, in-company training schemes and other commercial training providers have worked to their own separate strategies.
Now education and employment secretary David Blunkett (left) has brought all post-16 education and training in England and Wales under a single strategic structure - a national Learning & Skills Council with a network of 47 local LSCs. Their decisions will be crucial for hospitality, and yet few representatives of this industry have won seats on the boards of the LSCs. Already, many fear the hospitality industry will get a raw deal on funding (see below).
So what exactly are these LSCs? Basically, they will look after training and education up to (but not including) universities. Starting next month, they will take over the work previously done by the Training and Enterprise Councils and the Further Education Funding Council. If a company training scheme or college previously sought funding and/or accreditation from the TECs or the FEFC, it (or the training provider) will need to address the LSCs in future.
From 2002, they will fund education of the over-16s in schools.
Each local LSC has an annual budget of £100m (out of a national pot of £6b), which it will allocate to training schemes that apply for funds. That means more than two-thirds of the spending is decided locally.
So far, so good. The hospitality industry needs to take note, however, that the LSCs are pan-industry bodies, and their staff and representative members are drawn from all sectors of industry and education, from trade unions and from ethnic minorities.
The hospitality sector has won a few key seats, but not enough, says David Battersby, managing director of Hospitality & Leisure Manpower. "We've got to get our industry leaders on to the boards of these councils - we need many more," he says.
One of those leaders who has a key role is Chris Ripper (right), deputy managing director of Scottish & Newcastle Retail. He has been made chairman of the Northamptonshire Learning & Skills Council. In that role he will represent all industry in the area.
At Scottish & Newcastle Retail, which has more than 2,000 pubs and 45,000 staff, the cost of training is carried largely by the company. S&N looks for Government help only with the cost of accreditation - for programmes such as the New Deal and Modern Apprenticeships.
Funding for this is in place for 2001-02, but for the following year, S&N will approach the national LSC. That situation is likely to apply to all employers with a countrywide network of businesses. Independent businesses and their training providers will apply for funding to their local LSCs.
In this context Ripper - a trustee of the Hospitality Training Foundation (HTF) - is keen that the HTF breaks down its analysis of information about the labour force and skills-availability to local area level. This would allow it to be used "to demonstrate what the skills demand is and what the training supply should be".
David Harbourne (left), the original chief executive of the HTF and chief executive since January 1999 of North Yorkshire TEC, will now be executive director of the North Yorkshire LSC, which succeeds the TEC. The hospitality industry can best win support from the Learning & Skills Councils, he says, by supporting their goals - for example, by helping to identify "skills gaps".
Skills difficulties, says Harbourne, fall into three categories:
Skills shortages: not enough people with the skills needed to do certain jobs; for example, there are skills shortages of good chefs in certain areas of Britain.
Skills gaps: skilled people, but they don't have all the skills needed; computerisation may expose skills gaps - people with culinary knowledge or sales ability don't necessarily have the computer skills. Fluency in foreign languages may be another skills gap.
Other recruitment difficulties: businesses cannot employ people, even where special skills are not required. This may be explained by perceptions of low pay, poor image of a career in the industry and unsocial working hours - all of which, arguably, it is in the power of the industry to change, rather than relying on external bodiessuch as schools and colleges to equip people with skills.
"A lot of people who don't understand the hospitality industry think all its problems lie in category three," says Harbourne. "But there are shortages; there are gaps. Once the lay people on the LSCs understand that, hospitality will get support."
Jim McGivern, who recently retired as human resources director of Whitbread's hotels and restaurants division, will chair the Bedfordshire LSC. He sees an opportunity to involve small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and develop their commitment to training. "The SME sector is crucial to hospitality - big companies are heavily into training already," he says.
He says the key issue for hospitality is "improving the quality of what we do", and this in turn requires a better uptake of formal qualifications by people training for work in the industry.
"If you compare formal qualifications in the UK with those in France and Germany, there's a huge deficit. A big issue for the LSCs is to increase participation in study leading to formal qualifications. People should be studying or in some form of work between the ages of 16 and 25."
The LSCs will work, as TECs have done, with the regional development agencies. One example of this is a one-year project being managed by Hospitality & Leisure Manpower for the London Development Agency.
Hospitality & Leisure Manpower won the contract in a tender to the agency on behalf of a consortium including the British Hospitality Association, the Meetings Industry Association, the Restaurant Association, the Academy of Food & Wine Service, London's five TECs (Central, North, South, East and West), 15 colleges and the HTF.
Their task is:
Produce a skills and development plan for tourism and leisure in London.
Research the sector's skills needs.
Plan to build links between schools, colleges and industry.
Work with employers to create quality jobs and improve productivity.
Address the need for craft skills, language training and customer care skills.
Much of the training will be delivered by colleges, but some could be done in partnership between colleges and employers.
Like the present phase of the LSCs' work, Battersby's project is largely a fact-finding, strategic mission. Having agreed a brief on defining London's skills needs with the HTF, Hospitality & Leisure Manpower is meeting with employer groups in each of the five London areas.
Out of these meetings some definitions will be drawn up of the skills required, and the next step will be to talk to the colleges about delivery of the training.
"This is an example of the kind of project LSCs will be involved with," says Battersby. "The LSCs will have a budget to buy training provision from the best value sources."
Funding: what can hospitality industry expect from LSCs?
The LSCs won't bite until next year, and as Caterer went to press, it was still not clear how much funding each industry was likely to get. There is some concern among colleges that funding for catering colleges will be reduced, and that the industry, one of the country's largest employers, need to should louder.
Stuart Rhodes, team leader of hospitality and catering at Harrogate College, aired these concerns at the Chef Conference (Caterer, 22 March). Under the new system, which Rhodes says favours popular courses, Modern Apprenticeships for chefs are likely to be reduced from three year to two simply because there are not enough funds. This mean it will almost be impossible for catering students, many of whom have a "low academic ability", to qualify.
Northamptonshire LSC chairman Chris Ripper says it is sill too early to announce funding and that the industry's representatives are currently making their cases within each county.
Contacts
Department of Education & Employment
Learning and Skills Council
Tel: 024-7658 2761
E-mail: info@lsc.gov.uk
Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 29 March - 4 April 2001
