Hospitality Businesses Failing To Maximise Employee Benefits

Despite continued rates of job vacancies within Hospitality businesses are not maximising ever y tool in their armour y to attract and retain staff, according to hospitality research consultancy, KAM

New research has revealed that Hospitality businesses are not effectively communicating what they already offer ; 75% of employees couldn’t find information about employee benefits while researching their hospitality job 20% said they only found out during their inter view and 15% had to wait until after they’d star ted in the role

Hospitality employees say their current employers need to do a better job of communicating the ser vices available to them; 79% would use employee engagement ser vices more if they were made aware of what was available

Katy Moses, MD at KAM (www kam-media co uk): “Hospitality businesses are absolutely missing a trick when it comes to attracting new employees with ver y few effectively communicating the level of employee benefits So many companies offer phenomenal employee engagement ser vices but ver y few are using this to attract potential candidates Even current employees say they’re not made aware of what is available to them despite the clear impact they can have on staff retention

The research found that 55% of employees have (knowingly) worked in a Hospitality role which offered some kind of employee engagement ser vices Unsurprisingly this is much higher for those who have worked in larger multi-site businesses Only 1-in-4 who work in single-site businesses say they have been offered employee engagement ser vices Across the board, those in a back-of-house role are least likely to say they have been offered employee engagement ser vices

But despite high numbers of employers offering Hospitality employee engagement ser vices the research found that many employees find them difficult to understand and access; 68% said they would use employee engagement ser vices more if it was easier to access The majority would find it easier if they were all accessible in one place , like an app (77% )

Claire Clarke , People Director, Flat Iron: “We are expecting our employees to download apps on personal phones, unless they are head office When it s someone ' s personal phone , and we are asking people to interact by those means, it just gets a bit sticky It s app fatigue The perfect solution would be you join, here is your company app it's going to give you engagement comms rotas pay it’s a single sign on ”

The majority of employees (75%) say that offering employee engagement ser vices makes the business a more attractive place to work and there is an expectation for businesses to offer ser vices which look after their physical and mental well-being as well as their financial well-being

In fact, offering cer tain benefits can have the power to encourage employees to switch jobs; 83% said their company offering a specific health and well-being benefit contributed to them deciding to switch jobs

Scott Read, CEO of Employee Ser vices, at Growth Par tners: “We’ve been keen to understand the relationship between the awareness and usage of employee engagement ser vices and the number of vacancies in the hospitality sector The research has really highlighted a potential problem - businesses may have employee benefits in place but if they’re not easy to access or communicated effectively, they’re not having an impact - potentially adding to the problem rather than helping to resolve it

With regards to ‘health and lifestyle’ the most popular benefits among Hospitality employees are g ym discounts, flexible shifts, healthy eating programmes and medical healthcare (no surprise that this is par ticularly popular among older employees ) The most sought-after financial benefits are 24/7 online access to pay documents the ability to receive their pay earlier than pay day and an online chat ser vice to quer y / sor t out issues with their pay slip

Anne-Marie Sarantis, Head of People , Gusto:“Ever ything has changed since covid and there has been a shift towards better engagement and usage of benefits– it’s all impor tant, but equally many employees don’t even use it when we give it to them So it's impor tant that these ser vices can be easily accessed and that we as a business signpost them sufficiently to our employees You can't not have employment engagement ser vices, in this day and age ”

The study also looks at happiness level among current employees and found that 88% of people currently working in hospitality are happy in their role , this decreases to 78% for those working specifically in pubs and bars and is even lower for those working back-of-house (73% )

You can download the full repor t here: https://mailchi mp/kam-media/employee-engagement-ser vices