The war for talent: Chef offered $20,000 sign-on bonus as hospitality staff-poaching gets out of hand

Friday, 16 July 2021

Upokoina George-Yates, general manager of Churly’s Brew Pub, has offered a $20,000 dollar sign-on bonus in a bid to attract a head chef in a tight labour market.

Upokoina George-Yates thought he had found the answer to his problems.

The general manager of Churly’s Brew Bar had finally found a head chef after searching for over four months.

Then, after three days on the job, the new chef resigned to take another job. Such is the demand for scarce skilled hospitality staff.

Having the head chef leave on such short notice, George-Yates decided to make his next chef an offer they could not refuse. A sign-on bonus of $20,000.

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A recent survey from the Restaurant Association found 60 per cent of respondents have experienced headhunting of key staff in the past year.

George-Yates said the bonus reflected the extreme shortage of skilled workers the hospitality industry faced.

“Everyone knows the situation. Higher-skilled workers such as head chefs are few and far between,” George-Yates said.

Because of the shortage, restaurants who need to hire are often forced to make proposals to people who already have work, he said.

This happened to Churly’s earlier this year when another restaurant poached its sous chef.

“I don’t hold any malice towards the person. The situation, however, is frustrating.” said George-Yates.

Churly’s is not the only restaurant to experience the pressure of staff poaching.

A recent Restaurant Association survey showed that 60 per cent of respondents had experienced attempted headhunting of key staff in the past year.

Of those respondents, 19 per cent had lost staff to headhunting.

Matt Stenton, programme director at Go Tourism, said the pressure was being increased by talent poachers from Australia.

“The war for talent has begun and Australia, at the moment, has been putting the best foot forward,” Stenton said.

“The moment we opened our borders back up to Australia they started a campaign to attract New Zealand workers, we just can’t compete with the money they are offering.”

A chef de partie at a popular Auckland restaurant says moving to Australia will earn him a 50 per cent pay increase.

The extra pressure caused by Australian competitors has caused local businesses to become “creative” to attract staff, Stenton said.

“No-one is meaning malice by it, they are just trying to survive.”

A chef de partie in a popular Auckland restaurant who spoke on the condition of anonymity said staff poaching was a casual and common affair.

“In the industry we all drink and go out together. I have had chefs who have casually asked me ‘let me know if you are looking to move from your current job’. I know if I said yes, I would be at a new restaurant in less than a week,” he said.

While the chef had not accepted offers from New Zealand restaurants, he was moving overseas, a decision he said was the only choice for people in his position.

“If I were doing my role in Sydney or Melbourne it would mean a 50 per cent pay increase. I have worked in restaurants for four years, and I only ever got paid more when I moved,” he said.

“For me as an employee, I would be remiss if I didn’t move somewhere else. Firstly from restaurant to restaurant, and now to a whole different country.”

The chef said unless something drastic changes, the staff poaching will only continue.

Olivia Carter, events manager at Soul Bar in on Auckland’s Viaduct basin said the experience of other businesses propositioning their staff was scary for restaurant owners.

Front of house and bar staff at Soul had been approached on social media by prospective employers and even while working.

Restaurants are getting so little interest in job advertisements that some were offering food vouchers just to turn up to the interview, Carter said.

The feeling of banding together through Covid-19 had been replaced with an environment of fear, she said.

“We still want to feel there is that code of people banding together, as opposed to hurting each other. You just don’t want businesses battling businesses, it is not a good environment for anybody.”

Stenton said if current situation continued , when we reach summer and hospitality’s busy season we will see “s… hit the fan”.

“If we are struggling to find talent now, and we are at our low season, just imagine what is going to happen when we are at our peak.

“We will simply not have enough skilled people to meet the demand that tourism and hospitality has over that period.”

But Stenton said the industry could find a way out of this bind, if it could find a way to band together.

“Half of our industry is ready for solutions, the other half are still living in the past,” he said.

The solutions that Stenton suggested involved working closely with the Government to ensure the migrant workers needed were brought into the country, and the migrant workers that were already here were better used.

For George-Yates, he hoped that the $20,000 bonus would bring attention to the industry and the issues both employers and workers were facing.

“We hope this bonus shows that employers are willing to make hospitality a viable option for someone. It will take a while, but we want to create a better idea of what hospitality is.”