Better LCUK next time for BII training arm

The British Institute of Innkeeping has relaunched its careers arm, formerly LCUK, in response to industry apathy.

At any one time, there are an estimated 60,000 jobs advertised in the licensed trade. To make a rash generalisation, that means that each pub in the country is permanently looking for one more member of staff.

The shortfall not only puts pressure on licensees and the people in the pub - in any moderately successful business that missing person also has an impact on trade, slowing down service and reducing potential take.

The recruitment challenge is undoubtedly an issue for the industry as a whole - so why are pub companies so reluctant to support successful initiatives?

This frustration is perhaps felt most strongly at the British Institute of Innkeeping (BII). Under the directorship of Mary Curnock Cook, the BII transformed itself from a stuffy professional guild into a dynamic force for improvement in the industry.

Part of that was the launch of Leisure Careers UK (LCUK) three years ago which took on the daunting task of changing the widespread perception of pubs as no place to pursue a serious career.

Initially funded by the Government's sector challenge initiative, the idea was that, when the money ran out, LCUK would be able to keep going, and even expand its activity, thanks to the generous contributions of pubcos.

The big money has not materialised, however. Before leaving the BII a couple of weeks ago, speaking at the Institute's annual lunch in July, Mary Curnock Cook's parting shot was targeted at those who had failed to pull their weight.

LCUK has now been relaunched in an effort to win the industry support it needs.

It is broadening its work to cover the recruitment of lessees and tenants and it is being rebranded as BIICareers.

The latter might seem like a cosmetic gesture, but the people at the BII were faced with the fact that the LCUK has actually been quite successful. This success included:

• A dozen industry open days, involving 18 different operators, which last year gave nearly 1,000 students an insight into what it is really like to work in the licensed trade. Remarkably, following the experience 95 per cent of them added pubs to their career options.
• Barzone, the LCUK website, has been attracting up to 250,000 hits a month, generating about 50 enquiries a week from people interested in joining the pub industry.
• Nearly 20,000 careers brochures have been distributed and the LCUK's newsletter is regularly sent to every school, college, university and employment centre in the country.
• Countless articles in the national, local and business press, all seeded by LCUK, plus a short film for Channel 4, have presented a positive view of a career in the industry.

So the achievements are there. The problem must lie, to some extent, in the way the organisation presents itself to the industry, and Richard Parker (pictured)​, who heads the new BIICareers, believes that there has been a lot of confusion about its role.

"Some companies seemed to see us as a kind of recruitment agency and could only seem to see the results of what we were doing in terms of the number of new recruits they could get," he said.

"We have got to get across much more clearly that we are not here to find staff for them, but to to improve the overall perception of the pub industry so that it becomes, in general, more attractive as a career."

Richard feels that, among newer companies in particular, LCUK became muddled with a plethora of recruitment firms and organisations and failed to stand out from the crowd demanding attention. "They didn't know where it had come from," he said.

Calling it BIICareers will immediately identify it with a body that certainly does command respect and attention and should bring a more positive response, in effect raising brand awareness.

The other major change will require more effort. LCUK focused almost exclusively on the managed house sector. BIICareers will also reach out to potential tenants and lessees.

This will obviously help when it comes to appealing for support from the giant tenanted and leased pub groups.

It is also a response to the deepening recruitment crisis in this sector.

Somehow, companies have to find good licensees for the hundreds of pubs that are currently transferring from management.

What Richard has spotted, however, is that as the demand from the pub industry grows, manufacturing industry is shedding workers.

"There is certainly the opportunity to target redundant people," he said.

Redundancy money offers a traditional and well-beaten path into a pub tenancy, of course - often followed an equally quick exit as soon as the cash has run out.

Richard hopes the BIICareers strategy can avoid this. "We will get companies to tell prospective tenants about the way of life, the financial implications, the types of pub on offer and make sure they know what they are letting themselves in for," he said.

"We shall be looking for genuine entrepreneurs. Part of what we do has to be to try to improve retention of tenants as well as recruit them."

BIICareers will host three tenant recruitment open days in the Midlands and the North of England next month that will allow potential licensees to talk to companies face-to-face.

Richard is also working on the possibility of going direct to big firms making redundancies in order to reach people forced into a career change, and there is a plan to launch a website aimed at tenant recruits, provisionally called Pubzone.

Activity for the managed sector will continue to involve open days for students. Four are already lined up for October and November in London, Manchester, Oxford and Swansea.

BIICareers will also be improving the links between industry and education, in particular establishing relationships between pubcos and a specific local university.

Forums will be organised to bring together people in education and the pub industry to open up new lines of communication.

Recruitment think tanks are also planned with companies getting together every three or four months to discuss problems and come up with new ideas.

Next year, the BII aims to carry out a new piece of research to find out whether perceptions of the industry have changed in the last few years.

While, hopefully, there is likely to be improvement, you can be sure the results will also show there is a long way to go before working in pubs gains its rightful status as a career.

It will be down to the industry to make sure that BIICareers can play its part in making sure that goal is met.