The past year has been a challenging one for UKHA. We’ve lost some superb housekeepers, sometimes because they’ve chosen to change their career, but also because others returned to their native country and haven’t come back.
This has been a problem throughout the hospitality industry, but is felt particularly hard in housekeeping, where we have gone from being cleaning heroes and key worker superstars during the pandemic to now regularly struggling to recruit a full team. The industry has a massive shortage of qualified labour in the UK to fill vacancies for roles previously held by those from the EU.
As an association we have encouraged our members to support petitions calling on the Government to allow EU nationals to come to the UK to work in hospitality for up to two years (please see our website to sign up). We also supported the Living Wage Week event ‘The Cost of Living: Tackling Low Pay within Procurement and Service Provision’ and have shared the information with our members via our website.
At the same time, we are looking at various ways to increase our membership and support housekeepers through this difficult time. For all the issues we face, our association is determined to look on the bright side to ensure our cleaning superheroes bounce back.
As the national chair I’m also aware of the difficulties our regions across the UK are having with hosting regular meetings. We don’t want to put hotel general managers or suppliers under pressure to support us with either free rooms or sponsorship, but without their amazing support we cannot host meetings. Zoom meetings, both regionally and nationally, have been successful in keeping us all in touch. However, moving forward we all want face to face meetings as this allows us to educate, support and develop our future housekeepers.
There is real determination that 2023 is going to be our rebuilding year – not just increasing our membership, but reviewing and updating the constitution, and resetting our aims and goals. To take us on this journey we will hold a development day in January where we can all share ideas and set out our objectives, which will then be shared with our members, followed by regional elections.
And some exciting relationships are being built with a variety of organisations. This will further develop our housekeepers, highlighting the benefits of being a housekeeper and supporting the industry as a whole.
Liana Sparks, the outgoing chair of our London and South East Region, has met with Lakefield Hospitality College. We will work with them on their academies programme and West Kingsway College will endorse and certify this qualification. We have also reached out to the Hoteliers Charter through Sally Beck (general manager at London Lancaster) for us to partner with them and share good practice, along with working with Jackie Marlow from UK Hospitality and Simon Numphud from AA Media. These strong links within the industry ensure the UKHA will continue to build on its strong foundations.
Lastly, we have joined the TSA (Textiles Services Association) Project Group. The TSA is the trade association for the textile care services industry, including commercial laundry and textile rental businesses. I believe that with the TSA support we will ensure our housekeepers have a better understanding of how to manage their linen. We can support and train them in best practice when it comes to laundry and linen stock management. The TSA is building an interesting sustainability plan which will involve uniforms and linen. We’ll be part of this, which we’ll be able to share with our members.
Finally, I would like to say a huge ‘thank you’ to regional chairs and their committees, along with our housekeeping members, associate members and general managers for their continued support.
www.ukha.co.uk
About the contributor
Lorraine Dale
National Chair
UK Housekeepers Association