Hospitality industry struggles with skills shortage
Much has been made about the great success of the hospitality industry in regional Victoria with food and accommodation ventures springing up everywhere.
But look behind it and you’ll find that the industry in crisis because of the skills shortage.
Award-winning businesses like Lake House Daylesford are finding it hard to hard to hire enough highly skilled staff.
Alla Wolf-Tasker, owner and culinary director of Lake House Daylesford, says it’s been a struggle to hire enough people of a highly skilled level only from Australia.
“There is either not enough of them (people who have worked at Michelin level restaurants and five or six star hotels), or the few that are around are reluctant to relocate into regional areas. This has been our experience forever,” Wolf-Tasker told The Courier.
“When we advertise in Australia, for people with considerable experience and the kind of skills that we need at a very top to middle level, there is just resounding silence.”
She says the problem comes down to training and the fact that in Australia, hospitality is not a popular choice as a long term career.
“Often hospitality is thought of as something one might embark on whilst studying something else,” she told The Courier.
“But I’m not only talking about very highly skilled staff, the industry is now critically short of warm bodies. After all, Australia is now very close to full employment.”
Wolf-Tasker is behind the Daylesford Institute of Gastronomy (DIG). Now in its feasibility and planning stages, the Institute will offer educational programs around good food, its connection to regenerative farming with electives in traditional culinary skills like cheese-making, butchery, sourdough making and fermentation.
“Perhaps keeping an eye on trends in interests amongst young people might facilitate a journey into hospitality based on knowledge and self-development rather than on mere celebrity. I can recall how passionate I felt about the culinary arts and how hard I was prepared to work and to learn. DIG just might provide an innovative solution to how we train young people in Australia,” Wolf-Tasker told The Courier
by Leon Gettler, January 30th 2017
