Employment minister: Hospitality can help ‘good people into good work everywhere’

Employment minister Alison McGovern said hospitality can help get “good people into good work everywhere” as she launched the expansion of a new initiative to improve collaboration between job centres and the hospitality industry.  

Speaking at the UKHospitality Workforce and Skills Event, she praised the work the industry association had done to launch the Hospitality Skills Passport as part of the hospitality Sector-based Work Academy Programme (SWAP), while acknowledging there was more to do to gain the trust of operators.

McGovern said: “I know the Department for Work and Pensions doesn’t necessarily have the greatest reputation at the moment with businesses or with the people we want to serve. [Work and pensions secretary] Liz Kendall and I are determined to change that. Because in every town and city of this country we have got job centres that could be serving businesses.”

She added that currently “only one in six businesses say they use their local job centre to recruit, and that is just not good enough”.

The SWAP scheme was piloted in 2024 and had an 85% completion rate with 80% of those securing employment in hospitality. It will now be expanded to 100,000 job seekers next year. 

McGovern said the scheme provides bespoke training in relevant skills and provides a work placement and a guaranteed interview, helping participants be as job-ready as possible.

She added: “That passport is vital when there are nearly 90,000 vacancies in hospitality in the UK at the moment. I want to help people get into those jobs and to support great hospitality businesses.”

The long-term aim, McGovern said, was get to 80% employment rate in the country. “If we’re going to do that we need to fill those vacancies including in hospitality. Getting good people into good work everywhere.”

UKHospitality chief executive Kate Nicholls urged those present to get involved and connect with local job centres to fill some of their recruitment gaps.

She said: “Think about the great work post-Covid that was done with job centres across the country to get those opportunities for all, really engage with us and help to deliver some life changing experiences for so many.”

Photo: ODI Global/Flickr