Careers: managing the career path
There are some great careers to be had in pubs - but you have to admit it doesn't always look that way.
The permanent recruitment crisis the industry grapples with is as much about the failure to retain people as it is about attracting them in the first place. Perhaps more so.
Plenty take a job in a pub at some point in their lives - precious few find a career there, or even stay for very long.
The problem is the same across the hospitality sector. According to recruitment agency JS Hamilton, one in six hospitality employees leave their new job inside the first six months, and it's something the company wants to help put right.
It's relaunching itself as Hamilton Recruitment Solutions to provide what it describes as "a full outsourced HR service" to managed pubcos, restaurant chains and hotel groups.
This involves developing a close relationship with both the employer and potential employee and continuing to follow and manage the recruit's career 'journey' once they are in place.
For Hamilton's Christine Lloyd, herself a former hotel chain HR manager, the problems start right at the beginning, with the company's attitude to recruitment. "There is a tendency in hospitality to recruit part-timers - students for example - simply according to their availability," she says. "But
companies should be asking more than whether they can do the hours. They have to be clear in advance what they want from their employees, what values they expect them to have.
"Before recruiting we would get to know a company's vision and recruit based on those needs. Then we can ask the right questions at interview to draw out whether the candidate has these values."
Even with the right sort of person on board, though, it often goes wrong because they are thrown in at the deep end in a busy pub and aren't given the chance to settle in and feel they belong.
According to Christine, pay is the last reason someone will leave a job. "Mostly it's because of a lack of training, the possibilities of advancement, and just not feeling settled in," she says.
That's why Hamilton hopes employers - and employees - will not simply see its service as ending at recruitment. "So many pub groups are so busy that someone needs to assist them with the employee journey," explains Christine. "So much of the settling in process is not there. Managers get frightened that staff might have to take a day off for induction training, but it's not like that. We can make the training fit their needs.
"It can be as simple as making sure an experienced member of staff is assigned to look after them. That alone can make it less likely they'll be wondering what they're doing there after the first couple of weeks. If we are asked in we can help coach them, help them to understand the company culture and values, help with employee engagement, bring out the employee's skills, make sure all the boxes are ticked.
"It comes down to leadership style, the ways the CEO's message is communicated. A company's culture sometimes gets lost." As a third party which has both the employer and employee as client, Hamilton believes it is well placed to maximise talent, career potential and retention by liaising between the two.
"We can help plan a person's development and generally keep an eye on things," says Christine. "If an employee is feeling bored, how would you know? If they're unhappy, people don't always want to say that to a manager."
