Making Australian hospitality careers attractive
On the plus side, Australia’s hospitality and tourism sector has been listed as one of the country’s five "super growth" industries.
Indeed, the government has been investing heavily promoting Australia’s fantastic food and wine scene to the rest of the world.
But there’s a problem: it’s the skills shortage with the shortfall expected to reach 123,000 by 2020.
Leaving aside the fact that the government has abolished the 457 visa scheme, the industry desperately needs talent.
But young Australians don't see hospitality as a promising career prospect.
The best indicator of that is the number of apprentice chefs.
In New South Wales, that has fallen 36.4 per cent in just six years from July 2011 to July 2017. And that’s despite a predicted annualised revenue growth rate of 3.5 per cent for the five years to 2017-18.
So far this year, 872 people have begun a Certificate III Commercial Cookery apprenticeship. That’s down a sizeable 12.4 per cent from 996 in 2016. And completion rates are low at just 40 per cent in NSW.
Quite aside from revisiting the policies around visas, what the industry needs is a rebrand.
Training and career pathways need to be overhauled so that kids and parents stop seeing hospitality as a dead-end career.
This means that educational institutions need to start offering educational tertiary degrees that can incorporate hospitality courses.
It’s what Le Cordon Bleu does with its hotel management courses.
This would give young Australians the opportunity to complete a chef apprenticeship while also gaining a degree in business or marketing.
Of course, all of that takes a bit longer but kids are more likely to do it if it means they come out of it with a tertiary degree.
And with their university course funded, they can train as a chef, sommelier or restaurant manager, and perhaps one day even end up as the marketing manager for a global food or wine brand.
by Leon Gettler, January 19th 2017
