Hospitality businesses failing to maximise employee benefits

Despite continued rates of job vacancies within hospitality, businesses are not maximising every tool in their armoury to attract and retain staff, according to hospitality research consultancy KAM.

New research has revealed that hospitality businesses are not effectively communicating what they already offer, with 75% of employees saying they couldn’t find information about employee benefits while researching their hospitality job. Not only this, but 20% said they only found out during their interview and 15% had to wait until after they’d started in the role.

Hospitality employees say their current employers need to do a better job of communicating the services available to them, since 79% would use employee engagement services more if they were made aware of what was available.

Katy Moses, managing director of KAM, comments: "Hospitality businesses are absolutely missing a trick when it comes to attracting new employees with very few effectively communicating the level of employee benefits. So many companies offer phenomenal employee engagement services but very few are using this to attract potential candidates. Even current employees say they’re not made aware of what is available to them despite the clear impact they can have on staff retention."

Image: Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels

The research found that 55% of employees have (knowingly) worked in a hospitality role that offered some kind of employee engagement services. Unsurprisingly, this is much higher for those who have worked in larger multi-site businesses. Only one in four who work in single-site businesses say they have been offered employee engagement services. Across the board, those in a back-of-house role are least likely to say they have been offered employee engagement services.

However, despite high numbers of employers offering hospitality employee engagement services, the study found that many employees find them difficult to understand and access. Sixty eight percent said they would use employee engagement services more if it was easier to access. The majority would find it easier if they were all accessible in one place, like an app (77%.)

Claire Clarke, people director at steak restaurant brand Flat Iron, comments: "We are expecting our employees to download apps on personal phones, unless they are head office. When it's someone's personal phone, and we are asking people to interact by those means, it just gets a bit sticky. It's app fatigue. The perfect solution would be you join, here is your company app, it's going to give you engagement, comms, rotas, pay, it’s a single sign on."

The majority of employees (75%) say that offering employee engagement services makes the business a more attractive place to work, and there is an expectation for businesses to offer services that look after their physical and mental well-being, as well as their financial well-being.

In fact, offering certain benefits can have the power to encourage employees to switch jobs. Eighty three percent of participants said their company offering a specific health and well-being benefit contributed to them deciding to switch jobs.

With regards to ‘health and lifestyle’, the most popular benefits among hospitality employees are gym discounts, flexible shifts, healthy eating programmes and medical healthcare. The most sought-after financial benefits are 24/7 online access to pay documents, the ability to receive their pay earlier than pay day and an online chat service to query/resolve issues with their payslip.

Anne-Marie Sarantis, head of people at Italian restaurant chain Gusto, says: "Everything has changed since Covid and there has been a shift towards better engagement and usage of benefits – it’s all important, but equally many employees don’t even use it when we give it to them. So it's important that these services can be easily accessed and that we, as a business, signpost them sufficiently to our employees. You can't not have employment engagement services, in this day and age."

The study also looks at happiness level among current employees and found that 88% of people currently working in hospitality are happy in their role, this decreases to 78% for those working specifically in pubs and bars and is even lower for those working back-of-house (73%.)

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