As part of its campaign to raise awareness of age diversity in the workplace, the Institute of Hospitality is making an official Knowledge Pack freely available to all.
By 2020 almost a third of the UK workforce will be over the age of 50. The removal of the default retirement age (DRA) in 2011, together with implementation of the Equality Act 2010, and related Public Sector Equality duties all raise critical questions for employers.
And recent findings from the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) and the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) confirm the need for help and action: only 14% of managers across the UK workforce considered their organisations to be well-prepared to cope with an ageing workforce.
The 50-page Knowledge Pack – The Case for Recruiting and Retaining Older Workers: A Business Imperative for the Hospitality Sector – has been produced, with the full support of the Institute of Hospitality, by Capita Consulting for the Department for Work and Pensions. It is designed for hospitality sector stakeholders and employers to understand and explain the benefits of older (50+) worker recruitment and retention.
The Knowledge Pack features a range of best practice case studies from the hospitality sector, including the policies on age diversity at Rank, Marston’s, JD Wetherspoon, Hilton and McDonald’s, and also contains:
- Details of forthcoming demographic changes and the impact that these will have on both customers and employment patterns in the hospitality sector.
- Identification of the barriers to older worker participation in the hospitality industry.
- Demonstration of how an older workforce can help address sector challenges (e.g. around skills shortages and poor customer service) via research, case studies and employer stories.
- Links to generic and sector specific good practice management guides/articles and information that can be adapted and disseminated to hospitality sector employers.
The document will be of practical value to managers and HR departments, and can be used to update ageing workforce information on websites and in reports, policy guides, and training materials.
The Institute of Hospitality is the professional body for individual managers and aspiring managers working and studying in the hospitality, leisure and tourism industry. It has been the industry’s leading network for more than 70 years. The Institute promotes the highest professional standards of management and education and its membership spans more than 100 countries worldwide. www.instituteofhospitality.org