A NEW jobs hub is helping hospitality workers hit by the COVID-19 crisis to find jobs in other industries.
With 500,000 hospitality workers in the UK expected to lose their job due to the pandemic, trade body UKHospitality, jobs board Caterer.com and charity Hospitality Action have created the portal featuring thousands of short-term roles in other sectors to help people find work.
The Caterer.com Hospitality Redeployment Hub enables displaced hospitality workers to find work in a broad range of sectors currently in need of staff.
These include supermarkets, delivery companies and care providers.
There are 311,000 hospitality workers in the South West, says Caterer, making up 11% of the regional employment and placing it the third highest industry employer in the region.
In the South West alone the new hub lists over 2,300 roles suitable for its hospitality workers, whose key skills such as team work, customer service, relationship building and adaptability can be called upon to help keep the country moving during the pandemic.
While hospitality has been one of the worst affected industries, the pandemic has seen the creation of thousands of essential new short-term roles and the transferrable skills of hospitality workers make many an ideal fit.
Kate Nicholls, Chief Executive from UKHospitality comments: ’The scale of the crisis we are collectively facing is unprecedented, and hospitality businesses have had to make the incredibly difficult decision to lay team members off.
’We want to give our fantastic workforce all the support we can to help them through this difficult period. Caterer.com and Hospitality Action have helped coordinate efforts at a very difficult time.’