Recruiting for hospitality staff in remote areas

Many business owners in remote locations find it hard to attract staff for lower paid roles such as hospitality. This is particularly common in mining towns where most of the town prefers to work for the higher paid roles in mining companies which can make it hard to find hospitality workers. Here are some options. 

Use a recruitment agency

Recruitment agencies can often access additional sources of labour such as travellers and help persuade them to try your town for a while. Many backpackers love a chance to explore the more remote parts of Australia and see more of the country on their trip. You can ask the recruitment agency to do some international reference checks as many backpackers can have great experience in their country of origin or the other places they have travelled, but these can often be time-consuming to chase down as a small business owner.

Show some flexibility

While some jobs in hospitality require specific times and attendance, other roles such as buying and bookkeeping can be done remotely or on a flexible roster to work around an employee's family commitments. This can help you attract what are known as 'trailing spouses' (people who move to the town to follow their spouse's job moves). Offering part time jobs within school hours, such as housekeeping roles or lunch shifts at a restaurant or lunch bar, can often help you to attract parents of school age children who are looking to re-enter the workforce and need to be able to work around their other commitments. 

Offer some additional benefits

If it's extremely expensive to live in your town, this can often make it hard to attract people in your roles. Where possible, look to include housing as part of your package. This could include letting people stay on site at a motel.

In order to attract people who are already in town and have accommodation, it can be great to offer some other benefits such as offering traineeships and qualifications in hospitality. This can help attract younger workers and school leavers to stay in town rather than heading to the big cities for study. 

If you have issues with attracting quality hospitality workers to your remote location it can be good to think bigger. It can often be a good idea to get some advice from a recruitment agency to help generate benefits and salary packages to attract quality staff.