Tourism and hospitality industry needs recruitment and retention
The tourism and hospitality sectors are booming but that has opened up a serious skills shortage.
By 2020 the hotel sector nationally is expected to need another 123,000 skilled and unskilled workers.
This is the focus of a new report Industry Insights, from global HR think-tank Reventure.
The report says the sectors need to find new ways to address recruitment and retention challenges as the Government’s Tourism 2020 target nears.
According to the report, the tourism and hospitality sectors are experiencing a skills shortage with 38,000 current unfilled vacancies.
This is critical because both sectors are big Australian employers.
It’s also important with the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures revealing that Australia’s tourism boom continues unabated with short-term arrivals increasing to 756,000 in August, up 0.8 per cent on July’s figures and 7.9 per cent year-on-year.
Reventure lead researcher Dr Lindsay McMillan says what’s important for the sector is to get the internal settings and workplace conditions right.
Workers, according to Dr McMillan, are just not happy putting in the hours for hotels, restaurants and pubs.
“Tourism and hospitality employ a combined 1.4 million workers and tourism alone is worth $40 billion to the Australian economy, so it is too important to get it wrong,” Dr McMillan told eGlobal.
“Unfortunately, it is no secret that both tourism and hospitality have high turnover and low employee satisfaction.”
What employers need to do, he says, is to get employees to look at the big picture. The work has to be put to them in terms of the job landscape, not some individual job description.
A job landscape is a list of end goals that are intertwined with the goals of other employees,” Dr McMillan told eGlobal.
“Something that the sector is not doing well is demonstrating that employees have purpose and are valued. As a result, employees feel expendable and find another job as soon as they feel unhappy.
“Employers can improve their retention rates by demonstrating how a role prepares an employee for the future – whether they want a career in the industry or want to gain transferable skills.”
by Leon Gettler, October 20th 2017
