If you want the best talent to look, it’s time to start turning their heads.
If you’re yet to find the perfect chef for your cafe or restaurant you’re not alone; there is a significant skill shortage across the hospitality industry, and it’s likely your competitor up the road is losing as much sleep as you are.
A Deloitte 2016 industry report found that more than 38,000 chefs are currently needed throughout the country; an already alarming number that’s predicted to increase to 123,000 by 2020.
For hiring managers, this makes one thing very clear: it’s never been more important to focus on becoming an employer-of-choice and actively partake in the process of employer branding. Or to put it simply, it’s never been more important to work towards becoming a place where people want to work.
FYI: Employer branding refers to the practice of actively promoting your business as an employment destination, often by highlighting employee benefits such as flexitime, staff discounts and workplace culture.
Widespread research points to its benefits: active employee branding has shown to increase the quality and quantity of job applicants, lower overall recruitment costs and increase retention levels.
For hospitality businesses, employer branding should be treated as an exciting opportunity. The practice is largely underutilised in the industry, so if you’re looking to gain a competitive advantage in the market, get to it.
At a minimum, hiring managers should note employee benefits in job ads. A common mistake many operators make is to treat their job ads like job descriptions and go too heavy with role responsibilities and KPIs.
For long-term success, a more in-depth approach should be adopted – one that doesn’t just involve telling people how good it is to work at your venue, but one that shows it instead. Venues that do it best adopt strategies that utilise targeted communication channels to exhibit their employee benefits, such as videos, blog content and social media.
Venues should be thinking about their employer branding continually, even outside recruitment periods. No different from promoting consumer brands, forming and changing perceptions is something that takes time and reinforcement. Job candidates are just as likely to make decisions based on brand recall as they are on what’s available to them at the time.
Over the next few weeks, Scout will be looking deeper into the world of employee branding to help local hospitality businesses attract the best talent. We will also be releasing the results from our recent survey on what employee benefits hospitality workers prioritise when deciding which venues they most want to work for, so stay tuned.
Read More: How to Turn Apprentice Chefs into Long-Term Employees
For more information on how we can assist you with your employer branding feel free to contact us at shane@scoutjobs.com.au.
