Employers should communicate their workers’ roles as a “job landscape” instead of a mere job description, an expert for an HR think tank suggests, to address recruitment and retention challenges in the tourism and hospitality industries.
“Tourism and hospitality employ a combined 1.4 million workers and tourism alone is worth $40 billion to the Australian economy, so it is too important to get this right,” said Dr Lindsay McMillan, lead researcher for Reventure.
Aside from the skills shortage that has been responsible for a combined vacancy of 38,000, the two industries are also plagued by low employee satisfaction and high turnover.
“A job landscape is a list of end goals that are intertwined with the goals of other employees,” McMillan said.
“Something that the sector is not doing well is demonstrating that employees have purpose and are valued. As a result, employees feel expendable and find another job as soon as they feel unhappy.”
To arrest this, employers must demonstrate how a role prepares an employee for the future, whether they want a career in the industry or want to gain transferable skills.”
Reventure, a not-for-profit organisation, recently launched A Future That Works – a national workplace renewal campaign after it found that 49% of Australians were likely to look for a new job in the next year.
This campaign is aimed at highlighting effective and practical solutions so that workplaces can more actively engage with modern challenges.
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