What’s financial stress costing the Pub and Hospitality Industry?

Operational costs in the pub and hospitality sector are at a 12 year high, with staff attrition understood to be a large contributing factor. The retention rate for the industry is 70%, 10% lower than the UK average making it clear that, with Christmas on the horizon, the busiest period for the industry, the need to focus on measures to retain talent are more prevalent than ever. 

Understanding why staff are leaving the sector is the first step in making a real change. The You Gov Deputy survey, ‘Retaining Britain’s Hospitality Workers’, found that the majority of respondents said that better pay and benefits would make them more likely to stay on in the sector, suggesting a focus on financial wellbeing benefits could significantly help to retain staff.

What’s more, 48% of respondents to a PWC Survey said that their financial worries were a distraction at work, meaning that, of the ones that do stay, nearly half are less productive due to financial worries. 

But what’s all this actually costing?

To help get a grasp of the true impact of financial issues in the pub and hospitality sector, we worked out a simple formula to address recruitment costs alone. 

Deputy’s statistics show that the UK hospitality sector has a retention rate of 70%, with 3.2 million workers in the sector in total, that’s a total loss of around 960,000 workers a year. 

On average, a survey by Oxford Economics found that £5.5k is spent on just the logistics of recruitment itself. 

Assuming that all the positions left empty need to be recruited for, this staff churn is costing the industry a whopping £5.3 billion in recruitment alone every year. 

With around 63% of these losses being accounted for by lack of better pay and benefits, addressing these issues through offering impactful benefits that can help support employee financial wellbeing could seriously help to reduce these exorbitant costs. 

By providing income streaming, Wagestream commits to a 10% reduction in staff attrition. If the entire pub industry workforce had access to Wagestream, a 10% reduction would lead to 320,000 fewer leavers with an equivalent saving of £1.8 billion for the industry as a whole. 

If you want to see how much Wagestream could save your business, we’ve built a simple calculator to quickly do the sums for you.

The cost of financial stress and mental health issues

The Mental Health Foundation found that better mental wellbeing support in the workplace could save businesses up to £8 billion per year. Whilst the operational impact of financial wellbeing is fairly clear to define, the mental impact of these issues are often less visible and overlooked within the workplace. 

Mental health issues are generally becoming more widely understood across the UK, however what is often overlooked is how everyday financial issues can cause a decline in mental wellbeing and compound underlying symptoms.  

We know that finances and mental health are inextricably linked with 86% of people saying that their financial situation had made their mental health issues worse and 12% within the pub industry saying that their mental health issues had led to them to be absent from work.

Therefore by offering impactful and effective financial wellbeing support, you’re not only helping to improve staff mental health, you’re also creating a more productive and loyal workforce that’s able to keep their minds on the job.

Take a look at what some employers in the pub and hospitality industry are already doing to overcome their retention issues. 

Increase hours worked by 24.4% in time for Christmas and make it the best one yet with Wagestream.