In July/August of 2020, Off to Work conducted a wide-ranging survey of our hopes, fears and dreams of a post-Covid world. The hospitality industry is having to adapt quickly to an unknown future so we spoke to leaders and the workforce on their current concerns and how they thought things may pan out.

The hospitality industry has been through recessions before and thrived - is this one different?

We spoke to 80 leaders and 343 staff from across the industry and across the UK- you can find out who they were and where they are from here.

See below for a summary of the key findings, or click through to find out more information.

1. The Economic Impact of Covid 19
2. The Future of Hospitality
3. Health & Safety in a New Age
4. Recruitment, Retention & Training
5. Views of the Hospitality Workforce

The Economic Impact of Covid 19

The information back from our survey confirms what is understood across the industry - high participation in the Job Retention Scheme, a generally pessimistic view on short term growth and an expectation of increasing levels of redundancy (Off to Work is raising funds to support struggling workers through the Invisible Chips campaign - donate if you can). Read the full section here.

What is perhaps surprising, is the disconnect levels of engagement for those staff furloughed. More than one in four staff feel completely disengaged with their company, more than twice what leadership expected.

Reintegration to the workforce is going to be one of the key areas of concern for the industry over the coming months, with re-training previously furloughed staff vital to company cohesion.

Read the full report on The Economic Impact of Covid 19 here.

The future of hospitality

The industry is robust, but both management and staff are expecting short to medium-term contractions in the sector, with 30% of leadership expecting high losses over the next six months. Unsurprisingly there is a strong expectation for use of technology to increase significantly. Read the full section here.

Revenue loss and consumer confidence remain stubbornly ahead in regards to perceived challenges for the next six months, however the success of the Eat Out to Help Out scheme and the re-opening of the British schools may will be seen by many of a sign that the worst is behind us.

Read the full report on the Future of Hospitality here.

Health & Safety in a New Age

With a new world, comes new customer expectations and new ways of working. Hygiene-specific customer-facing roles are now commonplace across the industry as one example.

Most leaders (85%) said mandatory PPE would be their main new health and hygiene process followed by home working where possible and reduced offer.

Read the full report on Health & Hygiene here (coming soon).

Recruitment, Retention & training

Retraining, and the re-engagement of furloughed staff, is the common theme throughout the conversations of senior HR leaders in the sector today. Infact three in four leaders we surveyed said they were likely to do formal training with their workforce.

What is perhaps most interesting is the perception, from both management and staff, that roles are highly likely to change and adapt in the coming year. There seems to be a willingness, if not an understanding, from all sections of hospitality that change needs to happen.

Read the full breakdown of Recruitment, Retention & Training here (coming soon).

Views of the Hospitality workforce

Whilst hospitality is blessed with one of the most diverse and creative workforces in the UK economy, there were a number of interesting trends that did appear. You can read them all here.

Levels of optimism are much higher, than within leadership positions, on the future of the industry and workers feel much more ready to return to work than their management think they do. Although workers can feel disengaged, over half believe their employer has looked after them better than expected during the pandemic.

To see how our collection of the workforce responded, click here.