Skills redeployment in the Covid-19 age

Hospitality businesses and people are used to fielding knocks from world events but CV19 has dealt a staggering blow. Everyone is responding in their own way, as best they can, with the resources they have, and the UK hospitality sector is doing a seriously impressive job of it. Businesses have been left reeling with vast numbers of people displaced, but our industry is rallying and rising together to respond to the crisis. When we come out the other side, what will be remembered is how we treated each other, what we did to help, what we stood for. That’s the spirit of hospitality and as a sector we’ve shown once again that we have an abundance of it. Significant government support has been revealed in stages and the tireless work of Kate Nicholls and her team at UK Hospitality ensured direct help for the sector. Industry charities such as Hospitality Action mobilised fast with emergency grant funds and schemes to help the thousands who desperately need it. Several local initiatives launched to connect employers and their people with alternative roles in other sectors and these are all to be welcomed. Every single person helped is a win. But helping our hospitality people find work in this crisis is a mammoth task. The need is huge, ongoing and impossible to address from one source. Non-hospitality sectors desperately need to hire thousands of people to keep the supply chain and the country moving. Thousands of hospitality people are out of work, or unable to work, and they want an income and purpose. What’s ideally needed is action that can make a serious difference, on a significant scale, fast. When a fire starts, we look to the best resources we have at hand to help control it. At Caterer.com we have access to unparalleled resources which we are mobilising; including access to millions of hospitality candidates in our database and tens of thousands of non-hospitality roles through our partnership with totaljobs. We have technology and teams that are built to deliver major digital solutions. We have strong, long-standing relationships with industry bodies, charities and employers to further the reach to those who need help. That’s why Caterer.com, UKHospitality and Hospitality Action have joined forces and launched the industry's largest jobs hub for non-hospitality jobs during the CV-19 crisis. The Hospitality Redeployment Hub is now live with over 26,000 jobs curated to be a likely match to hospitality candidate skills. We’re sharing these roles with over 600,000 hospitality candidates in our active database, and working with industry bodies, employers and charities to ensure they’re made visible to anyone in the sector that needs to work right now. When hospitality thrives again, which it surely will, Caterer.com will be dedicated to welcoming these same candidates back to the sector. Caterer.com is in a unique position to help in this way, and it’s part of our contribution to tackling the crisis. There is absolutely no charge for the service to any hospitality employer or candidate, and no additional charge to non-hospitality employers either. All relevant jobs on totaljobs will also appear on Caterer.com for free. We could never have imagined a time when the 20,000 hospitality jobs on Caterer.com would fall back to be replaced with over 26,000 jobs from other sectors! But we had no hesitation in making the decision to create the new hub, to help the sector and its fantastic people during this extraordinary time. We’re proud to be in full partnership with UKHospitality and Hospitality Action on this initiative, with the support of The Institute of Hospitality, Springboard and People 1st amongst others across the sector. Neil Pattison, director of hospitality job board, Caterer.com