Management skills shortfall needs addressing, says People 1st

Some 6% of hospitality and tourism businesses have vacancies for managerial positions and 42% of these are considered ‘hard to fill’, according to a new insight report from People 1st. 

The skills and workforce development charity for employers has called for higher education to play a greater role in addressing the management needs of the hotel sector.

The report found that 34% of hospitality businesses reported a low number of applicants with the relevant work experience as the primary reason for hard-to-fill vacancies, while 31% reported a low number of applicants in general.

People 1st said that the range of skills and attributes that hospitality and tourism business need their managers to possess continues to expand. The most common reason reported by sector businesses (55%) why managers have skill gaps is that they are new to the role or have not fully completed their training.

The study also found that 36% of employers mentioned that managers lacked motivation, while 32% reported there had been no significant improvement in performance despite employees completing a period of training.

Martin-Christian Kent, executive director at People 1st, said: “We predict the industry will need 66,000 more managers by 2022. Finding these people is going to be really challenging if hospitality and tourism employers don’t think differently about how they recruit, develop and retain their managers.

“The difficulty in recruiting managers is not new, but with an increasing in demand and an expanding skillset the problem is now more acute than ever.”