According to a 2024 RotaCloud survey, the hospitality industry has the highest employee turnover rate of any sector at 38.7%, rising to 47% for clubs and bars. Factors such as shift work, lower-paid roles and a younger workforce all contribute to employees moving between employers more frequently.
That’s where hospitality rewards can make a real difference. Offering the right employee benefits can help you attract and retain great people while making your business a more appealing place to work.
e have worked with many hospitality businesses over the years and we are fully aware of the challenges they face. We have worked closely with our clients to introduce strategies and hospitality reward to overcome this. In this blog, we’ll explore the hospitality rewards that work best across different types of hospitality businesses.
Why Hospitality Rewards Matter
The hospitality industry is often viewed as a temporary career choice, contributing to the sector’s high employee turnover. In reality, hospitality offers a wide range of rewarding career opportunities, from front-of-house and kitchen roles to marketing, operations, HR and senior management positions.
By highlighting clear career pathways, investing in training and development, and promoting from within wherever possible, employers can demonstrate that hospitality offers long-term career prospects. When employees can see opportunities to grow, they are far more likely to stay with your business.
The Best Hospitality Rewards for Every Business
Employee rewards are typically given for 5, 10 and 20 years long services. However, this rarely works for sectors such as hospitality with a typical high staff turnover rate. Service awards as early as every year or two years usually works better.
Staff Discount
One of the most effective ways to retain good staff is by offering great staff discounts. For hotels, this can be discounted room rates. For restaurants, you can offer discounts on food and drinks. If you have a leisure or visitor attraction. business, you can offer free leisure access or a discount that extends to friends or family members that join them.
Staff Meals
Offering staff meals while on shift is another great idea for hospitality rewards. This is an immediate reward that saves staff money, boosts morale, and ensures everyone is getting a good meal that will keep them energised for a full day of work.
We understand that costs are rising and a lot of hospitality industries have had to pull back on this to make savings. However, if you can offer this, we encourage you to do so. You may find it’s more cost effective than you think.
Flexible Rotas
Flexible rotas can play a significant role in reducing employee turnover by helping staff achieve a better work-life balance and preventing burnout. Giving employees greater control over their working hours, allowing shift swaps where possible, and providing rotas well in advance makes it easier to balance work with family, education and personal commitments. This flexibility helps build trust, improves job satisfaction and encourages employees to stay with your business for longer. It also sets you apart from many other hospitality businesses.
Birthday Leave
Birthday leave offers employees an extra day off to celebrate their Birthday. This can be a great gesture to show your employees that you value them and work life balance is a priority. If you have any embargoed days that clash with birthdays or staff who don’t work on the days their birthday lands, you can add it as additional leave that they can take at any time in the month. We encourage you to set out clear details of this in contracts and handbooks.
Long Service Awards
Introducing good long service awards can help to reduce a high staff turnover rate. As we mentioned earlier, we recommend starting this at one year. You can start with a £50 voucher in year one and offer a month’s paid sabbatical when reaching 5 years of service.
How to Choose the Right Hospitality Rewards
When putting together your employee benefits offerings, the best place to start is by asking your staff what they want. This way, you’re more likely to get it right. You should then look at budgets and see how the suggested rewards match up to this.
Something that staff wanted a year ago might change the following year. Make sure you regularly review benefits to ensure they still align with your culture and what your staff value most.
Technology Can Improve Your Employee Experience
HR admin tools such as Breathe HR can be a great way to stay on track with employee benefits and ensure they are running correctly. It can help you with:
- Holiday requests
- Shift visibility
- Document access
- Employee recognition
- Performance reviews
- Communication
How The HR Booth Can Help
Employee retention remains one of the biggest employer challenges today. Hospitality rewards are just one way to show your staff that you value them. It also helps ensure they are engaged and motivated to stay.
Our team supports hospitality businesses with a wide range of retention strategies. This includes reward and recognition programmes, retention initiatives and wider people management practices. We’re here to help you develop practical solutions that can improve employee satisfaction, reduce staff turnover, and strengthen company culture.
To find out how our team of experts can support you with hospitality rewards and reducing staff turnover, get in touch with us today.
