Firms take desperate steps to tackle UK’s staff shortage

Bloomberg

British businesses are taking creative and unusual steps to attract staff, amid a notably tight labour market.
One of celebrity chef Raymond Blanc’s restaurants is subsidising a bus service. Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, which holds two Michelin stars, contributes to the transport link, helping them reach workers who live several miles away in Oxford.
Supermarket chain J Sainsbury Plc is giving its temporary Christmas staff free food during their shifts for the first time. The Giggling Squid chain of Thai restaurants is offering free accommodation and utility bills for new chefs across England. The five-star Cliveden Hotel in Berkshire has sign-on bonuses as high as $2,277 for kitchen staff.
The UK is suffering from a bout of apparent economic contradictions. It’s heading for the longest recession since records began, the Bank of England warned, while simultaneously squeezing monetary policy at the sharpest rate for 33 years.
Many businesses say they’d like to expand and contribute to higher GDP — if only they could get the staff. Three-quarters of British businesses have been affected in the past year, according to the Confederation of British Industry, and nearly half of those say that tight labour market stopped them from fulfilling orders.
The problem is particularly intense in the capital. London has markedly worse staffing gaps in its health services, with a rate of full-time vacancies at 10.9% compared to an England average of 7.9%, according to the Nuffield Trust.
Workers seem to be less eager to come to London. Employment website Indeed says that searches from people outside the capital looking for jobs in London is down by over a third from 2019. A major reason is the cost of housing — up 18% year-on-year according to SpareRoom. Its data showed that in one area of London, South Kensington, it now costs an average of £1,400 a month to rent just one room in a shared property.
Lower skilled or manual labour is also proving hard to find, with 217,000 vacancies in the health and social work sector — the most of any industry, and more than a sixth of total UK vacancies, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics. Hospitality, including restaurants and hotels, is one of the next-worst affected sectors, with 158,000 open jobs.
Business groups have been calling for greater levels of immigration. However, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s new government brought back Suella Braverman as Home Secretary last month, a move that was seen as an attempt to appease the right of the Conservative party. Braverman typically takes a hard line on migration.

The lack of staff can prevent businesses from growing. Vicky Saynor, who runs a holiday cottage business with her husband in Hertfordshire, said that a lack of cleaners has stunted their expansion plans. Instead of focusing on the marketing and managing of the business, the pair each spend five hours a day cleaning. “We had big plans of franchising,” she said. “The whole growth of our business has been massively affected.”
She said the problem became acute after the pandemic. British workers wanted to spend less time working, while overseas staff went home, either out of choice or from difficulties with the post-Brexit immigration system.
Little more than a year has passed since then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson told the Tory party conference that he would create a “high wage, high skill” economy. Instead, real wages are falling and businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to secure the skills they need.