Bentley's story

In my ten years of experience working in the hospitality industry I have seen first hand, time and time again, the frustration my employers experience with staff turnover.

I truly feel this is the major crisis of our industry: it hurts business, costs money and wastes everyone’s time and resources with the constant re-hiring of staff.

Why won’t hotel workers stay in their jobs? Why do Hotel workers view their jobs as an in-between job or as a temporary situation? Together we can crack this chestnut, and in doing so we can make everyone’s work life better.

I think it all comes down to training and motivation by way of reward. Until we have set comprehensive training programs in place that are TAFE recognised, we will always be viewed as unskilled labour. When we label a worker as “unskilled labour” the attitude born of that is “my job is just a job.”

Let’s change this attitude to “I am a Hospitality professional. This is a serious career option for me and this is definitely not just a job.”

I believe the first two steps in this change of attitude are TAFE-recognised training and the incentive of financial reward.

A small service fee to our customers, with monies pooled by this system being shared by everyone working in the hotel and distributed on a pro-rata basis of hours worked, not on the basis of the position held, means everyone who works in the hotel would benefit financially from this system. In return for the service fee the customer would get a hospitality professional who is fully trained, motivated and committed to their service needs.

Under a small service fee system the customer benefits, the employer benefits, and the worker benefits - in other words everyone wins.

We must solve this massive problem of staff turn over and we must solve it together.

Bentley, Luxury Hotel Worker, Sydney