Workforce pressures in hospitality aren’t easing. In a recent survey of UK restaurant owners, around 60% reported concerns about labour shortages and staffing challenges heading into 2026 – highlighting that workforce issues remain firmly at the top of the leadership agenda. This follows earlier research showing that more than half of UK hospitality employers continue to grapple with labour shortages and burnout, with ongoing challenges in both recruiting and retaining staff.

For many organisations, the immediate response is reactive – intensify recruitment, adjust rotas, offer incentives, fill vacancies. These actions are understandable but don’t address the underlying issue: whether the workforce is aligned to business demand in a successful way.

This is where strategic workforce planning becomes critical.

The difference between monitoring and managing

Most hospitality businesses are not short of workforce data. Yet without a structured approach, workforce metrics are often viewed in isolation. Recruitment decisions can default to like-for-like replacement. Short-term pressures drive long-term structures and demographic risks, such as succession gaps or concentration of experience in specific roles, go unexamined.

Strategic workforce planning is about connecting business demand, workforce capability and operational performance in a way that informs action. It encourages managers and leaders to ask:

• How are recruitment patterns influencing cost and performance?
• Where can internal progression reduce external hiring pressure?
• What does our workforce demographic profile suggest about future risk?
• How will decisions made today influence retention tomorrow?

From HR activity to leadership capability

One of the most common barriers to effective workforce planning is ownership. In hospitality and tourism, workforce decisions affect service delivery, financial performance and guest experience simultaneously. When operational leaders, HR and finance share a structured approach to workforce planning, decision-making becomes more aligned and consistent.

Operational leaders need confidence in interpreting workforce data. Finance must understand how workforce design influences performance, and HR play a critical role in enabling alignment, connecting workforce insight to strategic priorities across the organisation.

When workforce planning is embedded across leadership and operational teams, conversations shift:

• From filling vacancies to shaping capability
• From monitoring costs to understanding drivers
• From reacting to pressure to anticipating change

Why this matters now

The pressures facing hospitality are not short-term fluctuations. They are structural – rising operating costs, evolving employee expectations and ongoing competition for skills.

In a sector where turnover significantly exceeds national averages (52% in hospitality compared to 34% UK average according to CIPD), organisations investing in workforce planning capability are better positioned to:

• Align staffing to demand
• Design roles around evolving service models
• Strengthen internal mobility and progression
• Anticipate skills gaps before they become critical

In an environment where workforce pressures show little sign of easing, hospitality organisations face a choice. Continue responding to shortages as they arise, or invest in building the internal capability to plan, design and adapt more strategically.

In our next article, we explore how one hospitality group began making this shift in practice – and what changed as a result.

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