The Importance of Health and Safety Training in Hospitality

Managers in the hospitality industry have difficult challenges to meet when it comes to employee retention, training, meeting high health and safety standards, and developing a good safety culture. The high turnover rate of employees and other factors we'll discuss, contribute to these overall challenges. In order to gain insight into this, let's discuss 4 factors showing the importance of health and safety training in the hospitality industry.

• Younger Employee Demographics
• Insurance and Regulation Concerns
• High Turnover Rate
• Reputation from Quality of Service

The broad term hospitality includes mostly hotel and restaurant businesses, but also amusement parks, tourists attractions, transportation, and the businesses that support these. According to statistics found on PlunkettResearch.com, the hotel and restaurant industry globally is a 2.55 Trillion dollar business. We can easily estimate tens of millions of workers are employed in this large industry, which globally contributes 9.6% GDP annually.

Younger Employee Demographics

The hospitality industry has the youngest employee demographics of any other major industry. Many teenagers and students are employed in this industry part-time and as a first job. Generally, the jobs don't require as much experience, and most positions don't require higher education degrees. These factors, coupled with high turnover rates, allows younger people the chance to get hired.According to U.S. Census Bureau's 2013 American Community Survey, 28 percent of restaurant employees are enrolled in school, compared to 11 percent of the total U.S. labor force. Most managers and workers know from experience this is true, but to reinforce this, the ADP Research Institute in a report about the U.S. says: “Hospitality employees were the youngest with an average age of 34".The reason why this matters is because younger people in the workforce are less experienced. Their lack of experience in the workforce and in life, means they're more prone to make mistakes or disregard the severity of haphazard behaviour. Of course, this doesn't mean all younger employees are dangerous, but on the whole this is a big factor showing the importance of health and safety training in this industry.

Insurance and Regulation Concerns

Hospitality involves customer service, and this means there are insurance and regulation concerns for managers and owners. Being sued or getting a food permit taken away can mean the end of a business, so this is an important factor when it comes to training employees on health and safety.Handling food and using safe practices when serving customers, is vital for businesses to avoid risking accidents involving customers or employees. Avoiding lawsuits, compliance issues, and accidents are all vital for the profitability of businesses in the hospitality industry. Effective training on health and safety is the number one way to accomplish the avoidance of these potentially ruinous incidences.

High Turn Over Rate

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2014, the restaurant and accommodation sector had a 66.3 percent turnover rate. In contrast to the total U.S. private sector of 44.4 percent, we can see this industry has a high turn over rate. Although these stats are of the U.S., this is a global trend generally.There are many factors which cause high turn over, such as: many of the jobs being seasonal and part-time, the wage on average being low, employees upgrading their positions with another company, and the amount of student workers.This factor could be the most important of the four we're discussing, because the high turn over rate means constant new employee onboarding. Also, employees are moved from different positions often, in order to fill in the gaps caused by turn over, which means training for the new position is needed more often.

You will want to try and limit turn over as much as possible.

Reputation from Quality of Service

Businesses in the hospitality industry are dependent upon a quality reputation, in order to attract customers and business. For instance, if a restaurant has an incidence of food poisoning, their reputation would suffer from the exposure of this. Conversely, if a business is well-known for their cleanliness and safe practices, customers will increase and a culture of quality will result.The most effective way to ensure a business has a quality reputation, is to effectively train employees to meet high health and safety and service standards. Avoiding undesirable incidences will go a long way in fostering a quality reputation for any business in the hospitality industry.

These four factors showing the importance of health and safety training in the hospitality industry, should have managers asking how to enhance their training methods. Onboarding new employees and training existing ones for upgrades or compliance, are key ways to ensure health and safety standards are kept high.

Meeting high health and safety standards is now easier than ever with Intuto. Managers and business owners can streamline and integrate their existing training materials into an easy-to-use central interface. Training will become more flexible, effective, and even fun, with Intuto.

Intuto is a comprehensive solution for businesses to conduct and manage training. The process of creating training modules for any purpose is designed for efficiency and ease, while the sharing and tracking capabilities gives managers the ability to provide employees with high quality training - all at an affordable price. Training is key to meeting high health and safety standards, and Intuto is an innovative solution that can enhances your business's training capabilities. If you are interested in learning more, please contact us today.

Next, preview our course template on preparing for natural disasters in the workplace.