Career progression key to hotelier staff retention

While staff retention figures in the region’s hospitality industry are positive, further opportunities for training and mapping career progression need to be created to improve these numbers.

According to the results of the Hotelier Middle East Salary Survey, 18.4% of this year’s respondents have been with their companies for between 3-5 years, while 22.1% have been with their current employer for six years or more.

FRHI Hotels & Resorts SVP development Europe, Middle East, Africa Francois Baudin told Hotelier that employee satisfaction and long-term progression is key to retaining staff members. “We need to make the employees happy and believe in what they are doing. In FRHI there is a high level of training, and a high level of follow-up as well for careers and goals and making sure people explain to us how they build their careers with us – because retention is very important in the hotel industry. Turnover costs money.”

Currently, 18.3% of the survey's respondents are completely happy to remain in their current job, while 35.9% are actively looking for other opportunities.

However, while 60.8% of our respondents said they were offered training opportunities by their employers in the last 12 months, 56.4% revealed that their companies have not made them aware of their career road map or development route within the organisation.

In reaction to the growing concern around skills shortage and lack of perceived career progression, Rocco Forte Hotels brand manager Irene Forte is launching an upskilling and career progression app. Called 'Map My Future', Forte said about the initiative: “The app is effectively a career progression app, an upskilling tool. It has learning on the go, it shows a career map with all the routes you can take within your industry so people can set goals and work towards that goal.”

AccorHotels managing director and COO Olivier Granet added: “Hospitality is a great opportunity for career and development and we can do it through our training programme.”

Read the full results of the Hotelier Middle East Salary Survey 2016 in the June 2016 issue of Hotelier Middle East.