Chantal Wilson: Why hospitality needs to get rid of ‘sh*t jobs’

The hospitality industry has a “job problem” rather than a “recruitment problem”, according to the interim people director of NQ64 Arcade Bars. 

 

Chantal Wilson told The Caterer’s People Summit last week the industry should strive to inspire the next generation to actively “want to be a part of hospitality”.

 

She said: “This is a call to action. I do not want to hear we have a recruitment problem. We have a job problem. I worked two hospitality jobs through university because I had a mum that said this is a great option. How many mums says that about hospitality? Not enough.”

 

Wilson said there was a chance to reshape the employer-employee relationship over the next two decades, which included acknowledging that “wage matters – we can’t pretend it doesn’t”.

 

She urged managers and business owners to learn to ask the right questions when developing contracts to better meet the needs of staff.

 

“There should be ’no sh*t jobs’ in hospitality, as people’s expectations have risen and businesses cannot get away with bad practices, such as delayed confirmation of rotas or only giving people a day off work each week,” said Wilson.

 

She added: “The tech industry has shifted from having no one to having a vast problem of supply and demand. We’re at the start of that journey post-Covid. We don’t have enough of a flux of Europeans showing up that gap, but we do have a great intention and a sh*t-load of talented people in this room and beyond.”

 

Hospitality job vacancies dropped to 107,000 between February and April 2024, down from a peak of 176,000 between April and June 2022, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

 

Despite the downwards trend, the number of unfilled roles in hospitality remains around 21,000 above pre-pandemic levels.

 

The accommodation and foodservice sector has the second highest number of job vacancies compared to pre-pandemic levels of all areas of the economy, behind health and social work.

 

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