The statistics don’t just speak for themselves, the message is clearly audible if you travel down the main café strips of Paddington in Brisbane, Surry Hills in Sydney, or St Kilda in Melbourne. Signs in café windows and sandwich boards on footpaths read: hospitality staff are in demand across the board—chefs, cooks, waiters, front-of-house, and kitchen hands alike.

Almost half a million Australians work in the hospitality industry. (The figure is as high as 1.3 million when hospitality and tourism workers are combined, according to Tourism Training Australia.) For some time, hospitality and tourism have been among the fastest growing industries in Australia. Yet the supply of skilled labour simply hasn’t been able to keep up with this growth.

While the cookery profession has faced skills shortages for some years now, the need for quality and properly trained staff has become vital across all occupation groups within the hospitality industry.

And if you feel the need for some kind of statistical evidence that there are jobs aplenty, stop off at the Australian Bureau of Statistics website: www.abs.gov.au (although we do recommend taking any statistics with a grain of salt or at least a good dose of sugar).

The Australian Job Search Vacancies Report for December 2006 (visit www.workplace.gov.au) shows that vacancies in the Food, Hospitality, and Tourism industry on the Department of Employment and Workplace Relation’s online employment website, Australian JobSearch, numbered 9,515.

The industry ranked third in terms of the number of vacancies, after Labourers, Factory, and Machine Workers, and Accounting, Finance, and Management. Per state, by far the largest number of vacancies in the industry were in Queensland, with 3,094 vacancies, ahead of Victoria (1,705), South Australia (1,667), and New South Wales (1,493).

These figures relate to just one of the numerous job search website but are indicative of a wider trend in the industry. A search on 14 January 2007 on Seek (www.seek.com.au) revealed 4,627 hospitality and tourism jobs listed nationally (including 855 job ads for chefs, 966 for management, 495 for bar/beverage staff, and 350 for waiting staff). On the same day, CareerOne (www.careerone.com.au) listed 4,907 hospitality, travel, and tourism jobs. Obviously the two databases of job vacancies are not mutually exclusive; nevertheless, these figures do give some indication of the state of the industry.

The range of advertised positions is expansive—from general waiting staff to restaurant managers, baristas, sommeliers, sous chefs, head chefs, cellar door supervisors, and corporate concierges.

Industry body Restaurant & Catering Australia states on its website (www.restaurantcater.asn.au):

R&CAs survey work demonstrates that every restaurant could now employ another member of staff if they presented for a job. The sad fact of the current hospitality workforce is that a suitable employee is highly unlikely to present for a position.

For restaurant and hotel owners, this shortage means significant wage pressure, as employers are forced to pay apprentices and trainees penalty rates and overtime, and to increase wages generally in order to retain good staff.

So, what might the skills shortage mean for hospitality workers? Well, the immediate consequences are that employment prospects are very good, particularly for chefs, cooks, pastry chefs, waiters, and front office staff.

For job seekers with varying levels of experience, now is the time to seize job opportunities. Most hospitality jobs in Australia do not require formal qualifications (with the exception of chefs and managers). Although employers generally prefer to hire applicants with relevant experience, opportunities exist for job seekers with less experience to step forward and, with a positive attitude, demonstrate their willingness to learn on the job. (It’s probably also fair to say that opportunities for promotion are also opening up to a somewhat wider range of employees, provided they have the right attitude.)

A focus group of restaurant owners and other industry players for a recent government-funded Food and Hospitality Project Skills Shortage Report (The waiting is over: A report into skills shortages in the hospitality industry, June 2005) indicated that a poor attitude was one of the biggest problems with people presenting for jobs.

It seems superfluous to stay that a positive attitude towards work will work in your favour (and for reasons far beyond getting the job, such as making work more enjoyable for yourself and others), but you really do put yourself a step ahead of other job applicants if you simply adopt the right attitude. This includes refraining from complaining about past employers—keep it to yourself.

Another obvious consequence of the skills shortage is that skilled employees are in a much better position to negotiate their wages. For the time being, it’s an employee’s market. (Your ability to negotiate an increase in wages will, however, depend upon factors such as the size of the business. As the industry is characterised by small businesses with low profit margins, the industry may not be able to sustain significant wage increases. Don’t forget, it’s not always about the money.)

The Federal Government has articulated that it seeks, from an employment, education, and training perspective, to build an industry that is “more skilled and professional, with a good supply of quality staff and more skilled business managers”. (The Business of Eating Out – An Action Agenda for Australia’s Restaurant and Catering Industry, March 2004.)

Over the past couple of years, the Government and hospitality industry bodies such as Restaurant & Catering Australia and the Australian Hotels Association have been collaborating to address the skills shortage by researching the issue, making recommendations, and developing action plans.

A number of recommendations in the 2005 Skills Shortage Report (para-phrased below) will have particular impact on hospitality workers in the near to immediate future:

• Promote the industry as a career path to the complete range of job seekers (school leavers and mature age industry entrants) by developing and distributing a careers resource highlighting benefits including the transferability of skills, career progression, and lifestyle choices (Recommendation 2)
• Educate employers on the value of adopting more contemporary human resources practices by developing resources for employers focusing on the value of taking good, long-term casual or part-time employees, and resources on rostering and management options to improve retention of existing employees (Recommendation 3)
• Improve the quality of training of apprentices and trainees in the workplace (Recommendation 5)
• Promote the uptake of apprentices and trainees with employers (Recommendation 6)
• Increase the number of mature age workers entering the industry (Recommendation 7)
• Increase the quality and effectiveness of the delivery of hospitality training by Registered Training Organisations (Recommendation 9)
• Increase the amount of owner/operators in the industry who hold formal qualifications (Recommendation 10)

The potential consequences of these recommendations and implementation strategies for hospitality workers are clear:

• A clearer understanding of the benefits of a career (short-term or long-term) in hospitality (Recommendation 2)
• Better training (Recommendations 5, 6 & 9)
• Better management (Recommendations 3 & 10)
• Greater access to jobs for mature age workers, who offer maturity and reliability, contrary to the industry mindset which often prefers younger workers to mature age workers because of the physical nature of many hospitality jobs (Recommendation 7)

For too long the industry has not been perceived as a desirable or respected career choice. Many young people use their hospitality jobs as a “fill-in” while they study at university for “professional” careers.

While the industry will remain a dependable source of flexible, casual work to see students through their days studying, most industry players agree that efforts need to be made to change perceptions about hospitality in schools and the wider community. If this can be achieved in the long run, then some of the honour and passion that has been waning can be brought back to the industry, with benefits for employers, employees, and the paying customer!

But remember, it’s a joint effort—hospitality workers themselves have a responsibility to take pride in their work and earn the respect they deserve.