14 March, London - Women’s History Month quite rightly highlights the many improvements that are needed to address equal pay and female representation in senior leadership roles. In the hospitality industry, that picture is not complete without an understanding of the multitude of other factors that affect female workers.

Today, and every day, it is critical that we take into account not only the gap in pay rate but also the discrepancy in flexibility, scheduled hours, and shifts. 

Deputy powers the rotas of over 45,000 British hospitality workers. This gives our organisation access to unique insights into how this industry, with a significant shift worker employee base, has performed in the past and may perform in the future. 

When we analyse these insights via the lens of gender, generation, geography, and industry, it allows us to see labour demand before it materialises and identify workplace trends relating to compliance behaviour, shift worker wellbeing, job stability, and scheduling fairness as well as shift scheduling equality.

Deputy’s snapshot of UK Hospitality looks at current shift-equity trends across the industry, where men still continue to see a greater share in shifts and hours in comparison to women across the majority of hospitality subsectors.

UK Hospitality

Accommodation

Female accommodation shift workers now represent 52% of shift work hours in the Accommodation sector.

Pubs & Bars

Tight labour market conditions have incentivised Bars and Pubs to increase employment and shift work hours amongst women. The sector saw a significant increase in the share of shift work hours amongst women (+9%) who now represent 44% of shift work hours in the sector.

Cafes & Coffee Shops

Despite continuing to face difficulties from changing city economies, women continue to dominate shift work hours in this subsector. 57% of shift work hours in the Café and Coffee Shops sector are done by women in the sector.

Fast Food

Tight labour market conditions have led to a substantial increase (+5%) in the share of shift work hours by women. Women now represent 40% of shift work hours in the Fast Food sector.

Sit Down Restaurants

Women continue to experience a decline in the share of shift work hours (- 2%), ​ now representing 37% of the shift work hours in the Sit Down Restaurant subsector.

Data Analysis

Deputy’s shift-equity snapshot of the UK hospitality was produced Deputy, utilising aggregated customer data of UK shift workers across the hospitality industry. Deputy partnered with Independent Labour Economist, Shashi Karu to analyse 2,341,565 shifts and 17,342,037 hours of 41,884 shift workers to produce the findings.

Shashi Karunanethy PhD Labour Economist

About Independent Labour Economist, Shashi Karu PhD

Shashi provides specialized advisory services in policy and market design; thought leadership in the city, workforce, and future technologies; and economic strategies. He works with a variety of federal and state government entities, international development organizations, tech start-ups, and ASX-listed companies. Prior to this, he held senior professional roles in several consulting firms. Shashi obtained his PhD from the University of Melbourne.