Hospitality seeks GR8 solution to staffing shortfall

Monday 05 April 2021

Staff from an esteemed Kenyan hospitality college will be arriving in the island shortly to help fill vacancies.

This year’s first group of experienced hospitality staff from Kenya are due to arrive in Guernsey this week. Once they have completed their 14-day quarantine period, they will start work in the Bailiwick’s hospitality sector.

The first cohort of five are all graduates of Kenya Utalii College in Nairobi and have already gained extensive experience of working in the hospitality industry. They will be spending 9 months working under licence for Randalls of Guernsey. A further ten people will arrive shortly afterwards to work across the sector.

Pictured: Jersey-based GR8 recently returned from Kenya where they signed an official Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Utalii College to secure overseas employment opportunities for the Kenyan institution's alumni. 

They were taken on following a recruitment drive and selected through an online recruitment portal specifically set up to help the hospitality industries in the Channel Islands.

It’s managed by GR8, an employment solutions company that specialises in partnerships with colleges and other establishments in Britain and overseas. 

"These talented young people are bringing with them a range of experience having studied and worked as part of the Kenya Utalii College programme," said Cathy Wanyoike, Recruitment Executive at GR8 Guernsey.

"It will be great to meet them properly once they have completed the mandatory isolation period and can start to familiarise themselves with their roles in Guernsey’s vibrant hospitality establishments.”

Pictured: Many key players from the local hospitality industry attended a talk by GR8 last year about staff from a college known as 'Africa's leading Hospitality and Tourism training institution'.

It is hoped that Guernsey will be able to fully re-open its borders to leisure travel in July. Having already recruited more than 100 qualified Kenyan workers into Jersey, GR8 Managing Director Lee Madden is pleased to be up-and-running in Guernsey. 

“I have been working with Utalii College for a number of years and was lucky enough to visit them to see how hard the students work at the faculty," he said.

"I have been genuinely impressed with the level of skill displayed by the staff that have come to the Channel Islands and we are proud to have helped make connections between our islands and Kenya.

The company is also forging links with "world-class colleges" in other countries including Rwanda and Bulgaria.

"By running our skills match software across our extensive database of quality candidates, we select and associate the best candidate matches for roles in Guernsey and Jersey," he said of the recruitment scheme.

"With the welcome news that island businesses are re-opening, we are hoping that the industries in both islands will act quickly to take on suitable candidates for the roles that are currently vacant.”