Ways To Improve Equality In The Hospitality Industry

Much like our society as a whole, the hospitality industry continues to make great strides in achieving equality, but still has some ways to go before things truly change. In this helpful guide, we provide useful and essential ways of improving equality in the hospitality industry, to provide a safe, accessible work environment for all.

Accept Mistakes

The first step in making positive changes to help improve equality in the restaurant and hospitality industry is admitting that there have been mistakes in the past. Unfortunately, restaurants and chef work is historically a male-dominated culture, passed down and promoted through years without challenge, which has led to potentially toxic, emotional, and even physically abusive spaces. This has led to many women feeling excluded from working in a kitchen environment.

Commit To Change

Accepting your mistakes is one thing, but unless you implement the necessary changes required to rectify them, you won’t be making the changes required to improve equality in the hospitality industry. It’s vital that women understand the industry as a whole wants them to both be involved and to succeed, committed to having women join professional kitchens, influence industry decisions and play a pivotal role in how things will operate in the future

This can be achieved by women sitting on councils, being judges on TV shows, and at grass-roots level, with more emphasis on recruiting and supporting female students at the very earliest stages of their career.

Analyse Recruitment

When looking to improve your levels of equality in your kitchen, the best possible place to start is at the recruitment level. Consider your recruitment strategy and ask yourself, are women applying? And if not, why? Analyse your recruitment, perhaps there is an issue somewhere that is deterring female applications.

Open Communication

It’s important that your industry is equal on paper, sure, but this won’t matter unless the equality is felt in person. It’s important for women to feel integrated, involved and able to communicate themselves and their opinions freely and without fear. This can be potentially challenging, with an already informed culture developed as mentioned, making it even more important that extra effort is made to achieve greater inclusion.

Training & Feedback

Improving equality in your industry can be improved by the implementation of key coaching and training techniques, to help eradicate and examine gender bias and how this may influence hiring decisions and workplace behaviours.  As an additional commitment, when a female team member leaves the kitchen, offer them a parting questionnaire that specifically asks for feedback on their experiences of gender equality in the workplace.

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