Now that the hospitality industry is back open for business, having been hard hit by closures during lockdown, it’s facing a new and worrying challenge.
The lack of skilled staff, especially chefs, is a recruitment nightmare and severely affecting the ability of hotels and restaurant to fully get back on their feet.
The chef shortage crisis
Sadly, the effect of the pandemic has prompted many chefs to hang up their knives for good.
Freelance chefs who didn’t qualify for furlough, sought alternative employment and haven’t returned to the kitchen.
Others, who for many years have worked long hours, decided it was time to pursue a different career that offered a better work life balance.
The chef shortage crisis has forced many hotels and restaurants to reduce the opening hours of their kitchens and adjust their menus to speed up preparation time. This has severely impacted sales for many operators.
Shorter service times and less tempting menus have reduced customer spend and the opportunities for extra lucrative sales of wine and high mark-up cocktails have Also been hit.
All this results in a stressful and worrying time for general managers and hotel and restaurant owners just when sales are needed most to offset rising costs.
What can you do to attract chefs to your kitchens?
Hiring less skilled UK chefs or training chefs from scratch is not solving the problem.
It’s no longer financially viable for many employers in the hospitality industry to hire agency chefs, due to the squeeze on already diminishing profit margins.
And employing less qualified chefs comes with the real risk of further waste, inefficiency and quality of meals served. Not great for your business, the environment or customer experience.
How can you as an employer secure the right talent in the kitchen and start to recover your business to post Covid success, when there are fewer skilled chefs in the recruitment market?
There are some basic things you can do to make your proposition to chefs the most attractive.
Firstly, an excellent recruitment and interview process needs to be in place to ensure the chefs feel welcomed and valued. If they don’t, they’ll go elsewhere.
Some hotels and restaurants are offering 4-day weeks, joining bonuses, profit shares and paid overtime to tempt chefs back.
However, an interesting strategy that is becoming popular is to hire chefs from outside the UK through Skilled Worker Sponsorship.
UK Visa Sponsorship
Whilst sponsorship might be a solution to the chef shortage crisis, it has its own challenges, not least the amount of red tape involved.
Even if you have the skills and knowledge in-house, it can be a time-consuming exercise for an already overworked HR and recruitment team.
Gaining a Sponsorship licence and then Sponsorship certificates per chef employed is complicated and can be confusing. It’s easy to make a mistake on submissions at each stage, which can cause further delays and waste time.
There are costs involved, but the benefits far outweigh the investment for those who embrace sponsorship as a solution to fill their chef positions, not lease the guarantee that chefs hired through the scheme will be highly skilled and be retained for the duration of the sponsorship.
Reducing the cost of Sponsorship and speeding up the process
It’s not widely known that you do not need to engage an immigration lawyer which comes at a very high cost, however you do need to be familiar with the legal compliance aspects of Sponsorship.
The most efficient way to apply for a Sponsorship licence and Sponsorship certificates is to:
- Make sure your HR systems are robust enough to meet Home Office requirements
- Avoid application errors
- Know and rigorously apply your legal requirements as a sponsor
We highly recommend that you use the services of a Sponsorship specialist, such as Frances Gillespie HR.
We have expert knowledge and experience in helping general managers and owners of hotels and restaurants navigate the complex process and successfully gain the Sponsorship licence and Sponsorship certificates, without incurring the additional legal costs of an immigration lawyer.
We see first-hand the positive impact Sponsorship is having for our clients and the opportunities it’s providing to talented chefs from around the world.
To find out how Frances Gillespie HR can help you, please email us or call 0203 432 0975