I read an article in Propel recently on the lack of training in the hospitality sector. Research from the Economics Foundation suggests that spending on training has reduced by 35%, and that this is leading to a reduction in productivity.
I often find myself wanting to challenge perspectives on anything related to how our teams operate, but usually good judgement gets the better of me. In this case, I am not sure whether I want to challenge the article or put more colour on the detail. Either way, I hope it is ok to continue, and I won’t offend.
My first point is that we have had a revolution in the hospitality training environment over the last decade. Fifteen years ago, face-to-face training was the norm, and online training was a minority sport. This made training very expensive, and I suspect it was therefore done very sparingly. Now, online training is how nearly everyone works, particularly for the easier items to train. It has probably cut the cost of training by more than 35%, I would guess by nearer 90% for the same activity. So, our efficiency and productivity in this regard has improved substantially, and a reduction of 35% in total spend probably means we are doing much more training than we used to.
But we need to also consider what is being trained. Compliance courses are a necessity, and it is essential that people are trained to ensure they don’t hurt themselves or break the law. I think we are pretty good at that. I also think the training industry has been pretty good at developing further skills courses, be it wine knowledge or conflict management. I hope here our skills are much better, but I would still argue not good enough.
The article makes the attempt to link the lack of training to poor productivity growth, which of course, is of much more interest to me. At S4labour, we are seeing a massive increase in our requests for training. For the most part, perhaps even all, it is focused on productivity increases. I am also pleased to say that in the more complex world of labour management, it is mainly face-to-face, and in groups. Face-to-face means you know when you need to dig deeper or explain more because you haven’t gotten your point across, or that you can see in the body language that there is some level of resistance. Training in groups means that the team all learn from each other and develop best practices together.
Despite these initial efforts, I think it is fair to say that productivity improvement across the industry has been poor. We haven’t really embraced change in this area, and too many of us are relying on the ways we learned 30 years ago. Best practise is improving quickly and will accelerate further in the next few years.
It of course requires us to change what we have always done. It is a sobering fact that at least 25% of our total labour cost is wasted. At a time when every £1,000 counts, this is still a big opportunity for the industry, and I think it is time to set harder targets and help people become even better. Cutting out the waste through great analysis and good techniques, combined with great face–to–face training will get us a long way!