Hiring on ice
Following reports of recruitment freezes at companies across the Middle East, Caterer Middle East met up with F&B professionals at Zuma Dubai, DIFC, to find out whether the end of the employment ice age was near, how this had impacted the industry and what other recruitment challenges were affecting the regional market
Has your property implemented a recruitment freeze at any point since last year?
Nicoleta Cucos: Yes, at Towers Rotana we have. It’s a normal reaction in the current climate — in times of change we all have to react somehow and it was our belief that this was the best step to take. Now we are recruiting again, but only for key vacancies.
Yvonnick Jegat-Deniau: We have implemented a recruitment freeze whereby we do not hire new employees and we do not replace the employees that left due to end of contract reasons.
We had to adapt to this period by working with fewer employees and managing their working hours so that business was not affected.
Swiss Johnson: Shangri-La has a philosophy of hiring selectively during the economic downturn. And in addition to full-time employees, we also take on numerous hospitality graduates who join us as trainees and are assigned to various departments throughout their tenure here to give them an overview of the hospitality industry.
Despo Pishiri: From our side, we didn’t ever implement a freeze as such, but we decided this year that we would only hire for key positions. We wanted to proceed cautiously and see how things would pan out.
But we are back on track now regarding hiring practices — in May we started recruiting normally again.
Ruben Tieken: I think we’re the odd one out here, because we actually had to kick the recruitment machine into a higher gear when most operations around here were putting a stop to hiring. When we opened we were luckily successful enough to need more staff rather than simply replacing essential members who left.
But recruiting at this time was difficult, because there were obviously a lot of people suddenly floating around and generally the first ones to be let go are those who aren’t that good. So we were sifting through huge numbers of resumés and being extra careful with our hiring process.
Desmond Ephraim: We have been cautious; for the first quarter things were pretty good and now things are getting a little slack. So with our new property we’re opening in Dubai Marina, we’re just pulling out a few people from each of our other hotels rather than bringing in new staff.
Pishiri: We have done the same thing; and it is this continued and careful redistribution that helps us to keep our employees in a secure job.
Cucos: We also took advantage of hotel transfers, so that our employees could move to suitable positions at new Rotana properties. But in terms of the recruiting we are now doing for key positions, it’s a good time because there are so many top performers available.
Tieken: That’s true, there are a lot of people job-hunting at the moment. That’s why we’re not advertising, because if you do that right now you have to sort through thousands of resumés. So we’re doing it through networking, through recommendations from people we’ve already hired.
What is the most difficult F&B role to fill and why?
Jegat-Deniau: Assistant F&B manager or F&B manager, as the employee needs to be qualified and able to manage operations smoothly in a period where we have a shortage of staff.
Cucos: Sometimes it’s challenging to get the right candidate, the right skilled chef, for a certain type of cuisine; someone who can create food to very high expectations.
Ephraim: At this point in time, we don’t really find any role too difficult to fill. We believe whenever we have a new opportunity we should recruit internally and as a group of hotels we have a big pool of staff to draw from; people who have been with the company quite a while, climbing the ladder. So when we do need to recruit it is only for entry-level positions.
Tieken: We have found it very difficult to find chefs with specific skill-sets in this region. For instance, Japanese chefs who can make sushi, sashimi, robata — they are still hard to find.
The good ones get paid really good money in Japan so they don’t want to leave, and others are so Japanese that they prefer to stay in their home country.
We as a company believe, and it is my own personal opinion too, that you have to have an authentic chef — so a Japanese restaurant should have a Japanese chef, an Italian restaurant should have an Italian chef.
I see a lot of restaurants in Dubai that do a certain type of cuisine and yet they don’t have a chef from that country, and I think you can taste that in the end product.
What we see as well is that within the company is that empowerment and decision-making skills are really important, so that personality and competency is what we’re looking for.
Pishiri: At the moment, one category it’s difficult to hire people in is Arabic waiters. We have an Arabic restaurant and it is very important to stay authentic, as Ruben said, so we try to find Arabic service staff. But finding Arabic staff has been a real challenge.
Of course we don’t want to differentiate between employees doing the same job with regards to pay, so we have a salary bracket that we stay within for certain jobs. But that doesn’t help us find people. We don’t want to bend, because if you offer one nationality higher wages or preferential treatment, you will of course demotivate everyone else.
And the turnover with Arabic waiters is pretty high; they come, they try it out, after a year they find a position for more money and they go. For us, that has always been the challenge with Arabic waiters: turnover and the package they expect when they join.
Tieken: It is difficult to hire Arabic staff. We treat everybody the same, so if you’re a waiter then you get a waiter’s package. You need consistency.
What are the biggest challenges for you in the current climate?
Jegat-Deniau: That we had to lower the average cheque cost to keep the same flow of people coming in. Another challenge was implementing a lot of saving strategies, while having to do the same amount of work and keep the operation running in the same way.
Johnson: From a human resource point of view, we are of the opinion that the current situation offers a lot more opportunities as there are many more job seekers out there.
Pishiri: Last year it was completely different; accommodation was a major challenges as it was very expensive and the budget we had done was not covering rent increases in the UAE.
But this isn’t an issue this year as rents have dropped significantly.
Also finding and retaining skilled staff was a problem until recently, but not now.
The only real challenge is keeping morale high. When I look at my employees I see the fear in their eyes, worrying about whether they have job security.
Our policy is that we will try to retain our staff in any way we can, but of course we have seen clients that we work for making people redundant, which makes our staff concerned. Not because of what we’re doing, but because of what is going on in the market in general. So the fear is there and as a result staff morale needs a lot of attention in every single company out there. That’s how you’re going to retain your good staff in the long term.
Ephraim: We have not found any major problems; we have built our own accommodation, and no one is worried about their job, we have very secure staff.
Tieken: Now what I am struggling with is being an HR team — providing all the neccessary services to 150 people regarding transport, accommodation and so on. And I have to do what a hotel would have a whole team of people to do.
Cucos: I would say it’s motivating the staff, because regardless of the right message being communicated there are always rumours about down-sizing and lay-offs.
Ask the Expert
Raj Bhatt, director of hospitality recruitment and networking site Hozpitality.com, gives his views on the future of the industry
To what extent have you seen F&B outlets implementing recruitment freezes since the downturn hit?
In the economic downturn recruitment has slowed, certainly — hotels have started utilising their manpower better by cross-training and rotating staff between different departments — but still, hiring has not stopped completely.
It is true that more recruitment is happening outside Dubai, as there is still fear in that market and business is always slower in summer.
How has the site adapted to this?
We have a recruitment job board and are giving very special rates for annual agreements if the contracts are signed now. These rates are for unlimited job postings and database search through the website; they will not change for one year, even if economic conditions do.
What F&B role do you have most requests to fill and why do you think this is?
There are many requirements for line-level and supervisory staff in the F&B arena; service cannot stop and restaurant groups are still recruiting.
But due to the current scenario, hiring for top-level F&B is down as companies are saving costs on expensive managers and are working with capable secondary staff, who now have a strong chance to perform and get noticed. We are positive that after Ramadan things will change back to normal.