Recruitment & retention toolkit – introduction
We’ve created this toolkit to provide a practical resource for businesses to help recruit, train, develop and retain staff.
Giving some time and thought to recruitment and retention will help to keep staff for longer, save time and money on recruitment, and bring in staff who are more likely to repay the business with loyalty, working within a positive environment.
Businesses within the National Park provide unique visitor experiences, high quality service and numerous touchpoints for visitors experiencing this iconic destination. Staff are critical to businesses delivering unforgettable memories and contribute to what makes the National Park a special place to visit.
Businesses have faced additional challenges following the impacts of Brexit and Covid-19, both of which have had significant impacts on staffing recruitment and retention within tourism and hospitality. The sector is seeking to adopt best practice and to find innovative ways to attract the right people, promoting tourism and hospitality as a career choice.
The Scottish Tourism Alliance (STA) national industry survey (June 2022) found that for staffing and recruitment, 60% of hotels, 43% of visitor attractions, and 45% of bars, pubs, restaurants, cafés and takeaways said that they were unable to trade effectively with the level of staff they were currently operating with. Across the National Park, many businesses have made difficult decisions to reduce operating hours, close on quieter days and remove some services to enable service delivery with the number of staff available within their teams. If businesses can better recruit and retain staff, this will have a positive impact for their operations and ability to grow as a businesses while also improving the visitor experience and contributing to a stronger visitor economy.
The top three barriers to retention of staff are:
- business seasonality;
- other sectors being perceived as being more attractive;
- and an inability for business to pay more competitively.
Additional workload on staff due to the recruitment crisis is also a notable challenge.
A record vacancy rate for the sector highlighted that vacancies were double the pre-pandemic rate when 207,000 people worked in Scotland’s successful and expanding sector accounting for 10% of the total workforce, making it the third largest employer.