Skills crisis or private sector opportunity?

Employing and retaining a skilled workforce is a commonly acknowledged, cross-industry challenge.  The number of potential employees with the right skill set to effectively perform their function seems to be at an all time low and while this storm may be something most sectors can weather, for the hospitality industry it is particularly problematic.

Our people are the cornerstone of our business.  Even the most luxuriously appointed  hotel will never deliver the experience guests expect if the people manning it are unprofessional or unable to adequately perform their function.   The way our staff comport themselves is as integral to the positive perception of a property as the quality of the physical product itself.   A problem, yes, but an opportunity too.

At African Sun we have taken the destiny of our ‘family’ into our own hands and have leveraged our partnership with HTA to foster excellent service standards and staff training from within.  We believe that there is a real opportunity here for other private sector players to employ the same training model, fund staff development from within and ensure that world class standards are at the heartbeat of their organisations, whatever their industry.

In this way, we can work together to not only close the knowledge gap, but knock the impending ‘skills war’ on its head too.