Day 180 - 31 Oct 95 - Page 26
1 because I believe I have a reasonably familiar knowledge of
2 the industry overall. But what is always interesting is
3 how these averages are made up of very different
4 experiences in the different sectors of catering, with very
5 much lower turnover in the more stable industrial catering
6 area and very much higher elsewhere.
7
8 Whilst I was working for the TGWU, I had contact with
9 personnel officers, senior managers and some of the leading
10 hoteliers in London, Southeast, and became familiar with
11 their turnover figures. You would discuss them; you would
12 think of strategies to reduce turnover.
13
14 I remember a personnel officer of one leading national
15 hotel company telling me it cost them £400 per employee to
16 replace them. Turnover is expensive. In fact, the figure
17 he told me was 400 times the hourly rate; 400 times the
18 hourly rate, actually was the figure, so it would have been
19 £800, to replace staff.
20
21 Q. Just pause a moment.
22 A. Yes. (Pause) This figure of the cost of labour
23 replacement as a multiple of the hourly rate is a fair
24 indication of the waste and the cost to industry -- the
25 penalty, if you like, of high turnover. Of course, the
26 better paid the employee, the more it costs to replace
27 them; that is a truism.
28
29 But this issue of high staff turnover in catering is the
30 industry's Achilles' heel, as anybody familiar with the
31 trade press will know. It is an issue which the house
32 journal for the industry, that is the catering hotel
33 keeper, comes back to time and again.
34
35 MR. MORRIS: We have heard in this case that McDonald's labour
36 turnover figure in the winter of 1989/90 was something like
37 190 per cent, sometimes above, sometimes below. We have
38 also heard that in their Official reasons For Leaving
39 chart, something like 23 per cent of leaving reasons are to
40 do with going back to college, which means that something
41 like 77 per cent were not the same, that is why they were
42 leaving. In your expert opinion, what does that indicate?
43
44 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Hold on. Where did you get that from?
45
46 MR. MORRIS: That was the chart we had, the Official Reasons for
47 Leaving chart, which showed 22.91 per cent said they were
48 leaving to return to school or college.
49
50 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I remember that, but you went on to say that
51 it meant that 77 per cent did not give a reason for
52 leaving.
53
54 MR. MORRIS: No, no, sorry. 77 per cent did not give that
55 reason.
56
57 MR. RAMPTON: No, but they gave other reasons.
58
59 MR. MORRIS: Exactly.
60
