There is a lot of talk currently about young people Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET), and it is a worrying trend. So I thought I would offer a small business perspective on employing young people – and on what we risk losing if it becomes too difficult or expensive to do so.
I have run a fish and chip business for 27 years and have always supplemented a core, mature team with students. Going back 20 years, these were typically 15–18-year-olds.
They were more willing to work evenings and weekends, which suited the needs of the business. It takes time and money to train young people, and because you often lose them when they go to university, it was important to always have new ones coming through.
They were cheaper to employ because of the lower minimum wage, but their lack of experience meant you often needed more of them on a shift, so the financial benefit was never as great as it might appear.
But their value – and the value of the job to them – went far beyond that.
Whilst working in my business, these young people learned about work ethic, timekeeping and how to behave in the workplace. I also tried to instil in them some of the things I have learned through life, such as the importance of being early for appointments and meetings, as well as offering guidance on careers.
I like to think my business played a small role in shaping these young workers and preparing them for their future careers. As far as I know, none of them has since been out of work.
I often talk about the time I took two of my young team to help with a charity walk in Morecambe Bay. The people taking part would park at the end of the route and catch the train to the start, meaning around 100 people arrived on each of two trains.
When the trains arrived, the charity office employees began to panic a little. My two employees simply stepped in, organised people into queues and worked their way through them.
That is just one example of what working in hospitality can do for young people. It teaches transferable skills – confidence, organisation, communication, teamwork and responsibility – that stay with them for life.
As time has gone on, I have limited the age of the young people I employ to 16–18, and increasingly it seems to be 17–18-year-olds. The cost of employing this age range has increased drastically, to the point where it can sometimes make more financial sense to employ one person over 25 than two young people.
However, I still believe it is important to get this age group into employment, so I persevere.
The decline in employing young people is a trend borne out across my industry and the wider hospitality sector, and I worry that we are losing an important but often undervalued role that businesses like mine used to perform.
If young people become accustomed to working during their college years, learn the benefits of earning their own money and experience the self-development and social benefits that come with having a job, I believe they are less likely to fall into the trap of becoming NEET.
When it comes to the minimum wage, from talking to my team and other business owners across the country, many are starting to see the unintended consequences for young workers.
Young people are also finding it more difficult to find work when they move away to university. Hospitality businesses are shrinking their teams and, in many cases, reducing their opening hours. It is simply too expensive to have staff standing around when trade is quiet.
Another factor making employers less inclined to employ young people is the new legislation around sick pay. We find that younger employees can sometimes be more likely to be off sick, and with sick pay available from day one, some employers will inevitably factor that additional cost and risk into their recruitment decisions.
I am a big supporter of employee rights, but just as we have to protect good employees from bad employers, we must also protect good employers from bad employees.
Employment legislation also does little to tackle the worst employers who pay people cash in hand. Their employees may have few of the protections enjoyed by those working legitimately, while businesses that follow the rules are left at a significant financial disadvantage.
The Youth Guarantee is a good idea on paper as a way of tackling the NEET crisis, but it offers little benefit to a business the size of mine. I don’t have enough hours to give someone 25 hours a week, and I don’t have the time to deal with significant additional paperwork.
The reality is that many small business owners are already working on the coalface full-time just to keep their businesses going.
Larger chains will be better placed to take advantage of schemes like this, potentially giving them yet another advantage over small independents.
The cost of administering such schemes must also be significant, eating into the £1bn budget that could otherwise be used to support employment directly.
For me, there is a simpler strategy: create an environment in which hospitality businesses naturally want to recruit young people, and we will do the rest.
My message to the Government is simple: lower the tax burden and work more closely with the sector on the legislative burden. Give businesses the confidence and financial headroom to employ people, invest and ultimately grow.
If we make it worthwhile for small businesses to employ young people, thousands of businesses like mine can once again become an important first rung on the employment ladder.
It is in everybody’s interest to get this right. The hospitality sector is running out of time and, if we don’t act, there will be countless missed opportunities – not just for businesses, but for the young people who could have gained their first experience of work, their first wage and the skills that help set them up for life.
Andrew Crook CFSP is the president of the National Federation of Fish Friers.
