Greater Manchester hospitality businesses encouraged to access fully-funded support

Hospitality businesses are being encouraged to access fully-funded support to help them recruit and grow following the Covid-19 pandemic.

The city-region’s Night Time Economy Adviser, Sacha Lord, has given his backing to Greater Manchester’s Skills for Growth – SME Support service. Delivered by GC Business Growth Hub, the scheme connects small businesses from all sectors with a Skills Coach who for six months will offer an in-depth business diagnostic and workforce development plan tailored to achieve the business’ growth ambitions as well as creating personal employee development plans and signposting to appropriate training courses. The programme aims to support the hospitality sector to upskill and retrain employees to aid staff retention, boost morale and attract new staff into the industry.

Speaking about the programme, Sacha Lord said:

“This is huge for the hospitality sector. We have seen an exodus of workers over the past two to three years and many operators are having huge difficulties either attracting new staff to plug skills gaps, or financing training programmes to upskill existing employees.

“This programme offers hope to operators across Greater Manchester’s hospitality and night-time economy sector and will give them a real helping hand through these difficult economic times.”

The hospitality sector accounts for over 6% of the city-region’s total workforce, however, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has seen many leave the industry, which as of August 2021 had around 2,500 unfilled vacancies in Greater Manchester.

Cheadle based events business, Fresh Approach UK, has seen staff undertake 96 training courses since engaging with Skills for Growth – SME Support, which have helped to create four new jobs, increase productivity by 20 per cent and make £18,000 in savings. Kellie Humphries, Head of Support, Fresh Approach UK, said:

“We’ve had a great experience with the Growth Company, accessing funded training for over half our team.

“We would not have been able to offer this number or variety of training to the team without the support of the team at Skills for Growth – SME Support or the funding towards training.”

Dawn Duggan, Head of People Skills and Talent at GC Business Growth Hub, added:

“Businesses across the hospitality industry are feeling the impact of skills shortages and we want to work with as many of them as possible to ensure they are accessing the range of training available to them.

“Skills for Growth is all about helping SMEs, including the likes of bars and restaurants in Greater Manchester, to grow by identifying skills gaps and providing both the businesses and individuals with training and development to fill them.

“Hospitality businesses that work with us also get the chance to shape the future of the training landscape in Greater Manchester. When we identify skills gaps we feed this information back to Greater Manchester Combined Authority who then look to develop bespoke, fully funded training to support others in the city-region’s hospitality workforce to thrive.

“We know that it’s a challenging time for the hospitality industry and we’d urge any business that thinks they could use some help with skills shortages to get in touch to see what we can do for them.”

To find out more about the programme, visit the Skills for Growth – SME Support website to learn how to access the fully-funded wraparound support