HOW CAN WE BETTER engage our employees ?

It is generally accepted that a business’s success is all about its people, a sum of its parts so to speak. At the end of 2022 there were 149,000 vacancies in the hospitality industry, according to ONS. With the level of vacancies, the industry is experiencing at the moment, it really puts importance on making sure employees, the parts, are happy, motivated and retained.

KAM has just launched a report in partnership with Growth Partner looking at how businesses can make themselves an attractive place to work by engaging their employees to ultimately drive recruitment, loyalty and retention, as well as productivity.

No surprise that salary is obviously absolutely key to the vast majority of people, but three other things are also critical when choosing and staying in a job.

Work-life balance has risen sharply up hospitality workers’ agendas, meaning that flexible working and all that it encompasses is here to stay. A common conception within the hospitality sector is the long, unsociable hours, so flexibility around which and how many hours worked is important – 38% of hospitality workers say they’re offered flexible shifts. However, this desire for flexibility is seen in other areas too, such as flexibility around perhaps which locations they work in, when they get paid, or with annual leave, be that being able to trade in unused annual leave or more than statutory amounts.

NEARLY 1-IN-2 HOSPITALITY EMPLOYEES ARE NOW OFFERED GYM DISCOUNTS BY THEIR EMPLOYER (49%), 1-IN-4 ARE OFFERED ACCESS TO FITNESS PROGRAMMES AND 14% A CYCLE TO WORK SCHEME.

Work-life balance also bleeds into the general trend towards “well being”; nearly 1-in-2 Hospitality employees are now offered gym discounts by their employer (49%), 1-in-4 are offered access to fitness programmes and 14% a cycle to work scheme.

Training and development is also an area that hospitality employees see as important; 59% now have access to online training and 1-in-2 have had face-to-face training courses. More than 1-in-3 have access to apprenticeships.

I recently chatted to Claire Clarke, People Director at Flat Iron Steak restaurants, who gave her thoughts, “it’s all of the above [perks and benefits], but it’s also the environment they work in, the learning and development that we do, it’s how we treat them, even from the interview process, recruitment, induction, right through the employee journey right to when they decide to leave. If you have an engaged employee along that journey, everything else falls in place.”

I couldn’t agree more!

A restaurant needs to make potential customers aware of the food they offer, the price, offers, or the general experience they will have to market themselves to customers. As an employer looking to attract staff the sentiment is no different. The vast majority of those who work within the sector agree that a business that offers employee engagement services are more attractive places to work, but they need to be told about it. First things first is that 95% of employees want to be made aware of any employee engagement services and benefits PRIOR to making the decision to join the company. We often need to do a better job of communicating our employer brand as well as customer brand.

You can download a copy of the whitepaper here: https://mailchi.mp/ kam-media/employeeengagementservices or via QR code.