(Dreamstime)

By David Opinko

As Alberta emerges from the pandemic, restaurants struggling to hire enough staff

Jul 19, 2021 | 12:35 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – “A lot of these places are stretched extraordinarily thin.”

Jeff Jamieson, a board member of the Alberta Hospitality Association (AHA) and a local restaurant owner in Calgary, says most employers in the foodservice sector are unable to recruit and retain an adequate level of staffing.

The Canadian Brewhouse, in particular, stated in a press release late last week they have more than 800 open positions across the country as they try to reopen their 34 locations and get them back to normal operations.

Jamieson told LNN that there is a wide range of reasons for why this is the case, but the majority have to do with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think that the uncertainty caused by opening and closing over and over again has made the industry a little less attractive to people to work in. I think that, also, the closing of restaurants during the pandemic caused a lot of people to look elsewhere for careers.”

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Ongoing COVID support programs have likely lead to many hospitality workers deciding that they are better off staying at home until they stop receiving financial aid.

A report from the Alberta Government says, prior to the pandemic in 2019, about 146,100 Albertans worked in the accommodation and food services industry, making up around 6.2 per cent of the entire workforce. No data is available for how much things have changed since the first wave of restrictions was implemented.

It has, according to Jamieson, led to many business owners seeing declining revenues and customers experiencing longer wait times and lower levels of service quality.

“You’re going to see a little bit of a correction period where restaurants may not exist in the way they had prior to the pandemic for a while while they try and get their feet back underneath them.”

If you own a foodservice business, he says that not all hope is lost.

While there are no exact dates for when many of the federal government’s financial aid programs will end, Jamieson believes that more people will look for work when they do inevitably get scrapped, and those working seasonal jobs in the summer will look for something to tide them over for the next several months.

The lack of staffing, however, creates a situation that will give employees an upper hand at the negotiating table. Jamieson says they will have their best shot now at bargaining for better wages, benefits, and other working conditions.

“More power to them, obviously. I’m a capitalist so, I mean, when you have an advantage like this when you’re in demand, you should take full advantage of that and I would recommend employees do so because good people are in high demand right now.”

He adds that restaurants are going to have to find creative ways to recruit and retain staff if they want to ensure they have enough people on hand.

“Some people are offering recruitment bonuses to their current staff, so if you bring in a staff member and they’re retained for any period of time, you as the staff member who recruited that person into the business will receive a bonus – those have been in place in some businesses for a while. We’re seeing an expansion of benefits to full-time staff or putting carrots out there for retention.”

Some companies have also implemented signing bonuses for new workers.

Going forward, Jamieson would like to see “a really concerted effort” from both the provincial government and the industry on a campaign to promote the hospitality sector.

The Alberta Hospitality Association represents around 300 restaurants in the province since being founded 14 months ago.