Oh..An Industry-Crippling Labour Shortage

Not another “Optimizing Remote Work” article! Let’s talk about those who never stopped attending work on site. In the midst of the COVID-19 Pandemic, mainstream media seemed to miss the unsung heroes – frontline hospitality workers.

The hospitality industry has been turned upside down, inside out, and back to front over the last two years with challenges changing and evolving faster than the virus itself. From mass stand downs to JobKeeper and Furlow arrangements to hotels being used for quarantine and an absolute fear from frontline hospitality workers who did not have the option to work from home. What more could there be!? Oh… An industry-crippling labour shortage.

"When reviewing your Talent Management strategy, it is important to remember that you may need to completely start from scratch."

Albert Einstein said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome”. And so did I (many years later) after another “Post and Pray” job ad on Seek.com returned about one tenth the volume of applications that it once would, and about one one-hundredth the quality. As senior management turn their heads to their HR team to find solutions for the national problem, pressure is increasing to deliver out-of-the-box solutions.

Companies have turned to social media advertising, refer-a-friend campaigns, higher-education partnerships and even “We Miss You” campaigns to reach out to employees that had recently exited. These have varying degrees of success depending on execution and the individual organisation. However, at some point HR professionals need to ask Senior Management to face the truth: “quality candidates are gone, and we don’t know when they’re coming back”. We need to make the most of the ones that we have got.

What this is underneath it all is an outstanding opportunity to optimise your Talent Management. The best way that I saw how was to create an onboarding, training and development strategy so robust that even “I” could start day 1 as a Hotel Housekeeper and be delivering quality rooms on time by day five. Upon reflection, a business model that relies on employees being exceptional in order to achieve organisational success may be (tiresomely) sustainable, but certainly not scalable.

We talk about hiring for attitude and training for skills and experience. However, a global labour shortage told me loud and clear that what was being preached was certainly not being practiced. And I understand why… Bringing inexperienced employees into your high-pressure, time-driven and five-star team environment is hard work.

When reviewing your Talent Management strategy, it is important to remember that you may need to completely start from scratch. As painstaking as it is to re-do work that is already brilliant, if it doesn’t fit, it is just a nice-looking document / process / system. I believe the key to success in this space is:

Accept that your line managers are (probably) subject matter experts in hospitality – not training.

Create a training manual for them to follow that is simple and practical, yet detailed and informative. Creating it in your ivory tower won’t work. It needs to be bespoke and relatable. It is our responsibility as HR Professionals to create Talent Management strategies that work for the business, not that require the business (or it’s frontline leaders) to work for it.