Australians living with a disability could be the answer to the hospitality labour crisis

We all know of a beloved café or restaurant that has recently reduced its opening hours, had to close its doors for a significant period of time, or was forced to completely close down due to staff shortages. While the pandemic was a common reason for struggles in the hospitality sector over the last two years, staff shortages specifically are being called out by more and more businesses as they struggle to stay afloat. 

Taking a surface-level look at employment figures, this may not be surprising. Unemployment fell to the lowest rate since 1974 in June, at just 3.5%. Job vacancies have also risen by 13.8% in the three months to May, 2022, reaching a level 111.1% higher than February 2022 before the pandemic. 

The numbers point to there simply not being enough people to do the jobs our economy needs. Or do they? 

Lifting the lid on unemployment figures

It’s becoming common knowledge that marginalised communities and young people were hardest hit by the pandemic, but this is rarely discussed among conversations related to employment and how these communities could contribute to our workforces. The youth unemployment rate is 7.9%, more than double the national average, and for a long time the disability unemployment rate has gone unchanged. Only 54% of Australians living with disability are engaged in the workforce, and people with disability are twice as likely to be unemployed as people without disability.  

As an employer of people with disability, we have seen first-hand the domino effect of the pandemic on young people’s confidence in joining the workforce, particularly among young people with disability.

Despite the dire skills and labour shortages in the hospitality sector pushing employers to significantly raise salaries, offer generous sign-on bonuses and essentially reduce profit margins due to perceived lack of access to talent, there are hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities willing to work but are too often overlooked or underemployed because of unconscious bias and misunderstandings about their abilities. 

Mind the mindset gap

The recent disability Royal Commission exposed that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done before people with disability have equal and fair access to employment opportunities. 

There are simple mindset, process, and systematic shifts that employers can make to more effectively attract and retain employees with disability: 

• Recruitment: If hospitality businesses are using the same recruitment processes they’ve been using for the past decade, or even the last two years of the pandemic, they should not be surprised to be continually coming up against the same challenges. When hiring people with disability, employers tend to focus on the barriers and challenges rather than the benefits. Lean into their strengths from the get-go, and make a proactive effort to understand their capabilities and their support requirements from the start of the recruitment process; 
• Understand the individual: Not every person with disability needs a ramp in the workplace. In many cases, particularly for people with intellectual disabilities, their needs will be quite different and less invasive than most employers would assume. The easiest way to get the most out of any employee is to ask what interests them, what they’re passionate about, and what their preferences are, and this approach should also be applied to people with disability; and
  
• Have an open mind: As many businesses are currently facing a labour crisis, they should be more open to giving people with disability a go. Too often, employers are not open to hiring people with disability at all, shutting doors to opportunities before someone has even been interviewed. Many people with disability are ready, willing and absolutely capable of working.

With many cafes, hotels, restaurants, clubs, bars, and businesses in the hospitality sector currently juggling the difficult decision of rapidly finding staff or shutting down their operations, we cannot afford to lose any more businesses simply because there is an overreliance on ‘the way things have always been done’.

As diners are excited to be back out and socialising, employers have a huge opportunity to provide new experiences, and this is possible if they also take a new approach to hiring and training staff. It is time to remove the stereotypes and stigma around people with disability — the outcomes could be just what the hospitality sector needed. 

Bianca Stern is the general manager at All Things Equal.