Are older workers a saviour for recruitment problems in the hospitality industry?

Abstract

This opinion piece discusses the potential for older workers to help alieviate recruitment problems in the hospitality industry. These problems have been made worse by the Covid-19 Pandemic and, in the UK, by Brexit and changes to immigration rules. There are many advantages of employing older workers in the hospitality industry but there is a persistent paradigm that older workers are resistent to change, have higher levels of absenteeism and possess poor IT skills. As many of the issues associated with barriers to the employment of older workers are due to negative stereotying and subtle bias, the author advocates the application of Implicit Bias Theory to uncover and subsequetly help address discrimination against older workers.