Companies offer incentives to overcome staff shortages
Restaurant group Hawksmoor is offering bonuses of up to £2,000 to workers who recommend friends for jobs in a bid to fill staffing shortages, a report on the BBC states.
Another chain has emailed customers with a promise of gift vouchers if they introduce candidates who go on to be hired by the firm. It comes as the hospitality sector faces a jobs crisis that threatens to hold back its recovery.
Hawksmoor co-founder Will Beckett told the BBC there “aren’t enough people”. The firm’s problems underline the wider staffing crunch facing hospitality with indoor dining in Britain having resumed last week.
Pub chains Marston’s and Mitchells and Butlers both warned last week that they were finding it hard to recruit workers, blaming overseas staff returning home and the stop-start nature of lockdown forcing people to give up on the sector.
Mr Beckett said: “Hospitality is struggling with recruitment at the moment. It’s a little hard to tell whether this is because there aren’t enough people due to them leaving the country or leaving the sector, or because everyone is recruiting at the same time.” Whatever the reason, he said, Hawksmoor needed to “turbo-charge” its recruitment efforts.
For each person recommended and who is hired after passing a one-month trial they will get a bonus – £200 for a first friend, £300 for the next one, and up to £2,000 for five friends.
Another restaurant chain, Caravan, said it was offering £100 gift vouchers to customers if they successfully recommend someone for a job. “We have emailed our lovely customers to help us find superstars to work with us,” the firm said in an email to the BBC.