Career Pathways and Professional Identities for Front-Line Workers in the Service Industries

In 2021 an unprecedented labor shortage in service-based industries has significantly impacted organizations' ability to maintain desired levels of sales, service, and market engagement within hospitality, tourism, and food and beverage industries. Economic shocks, first resulting from a rapid and nearly complete shut-down of these industries in March of 2020 to an equally rapid releasing of restrictions 18 months later leading to a vast shortage of front-line workers in establishments ranging from airlines to cruise ships to theme parks to restaurants and bars. These labor shortages are so severe that organizations are finding that they are unable to operate at full capacity due to a lack of workers even as public health restrictions limiting their operations are lifted.

While some of this situation can be attributed as economic fallout associated with the rapid contraction and subsequent expansion of employment opportunities because of the global health crisis occurring during the 2020-2021 period, it is also apparent that the hospitality, restaurant, and tourism industries are responsible for engineering this crisis through their own doing. These industries have long neglected efforts to develop a sustainable front-line workforce in ways that other professional industries have successfully done by using employee development pipelines. Front line positions in hospitality, restaurant, and tourism industries are rarely considered career options by either leadership or the employees themselves. The positions are not considered skilled labor and those filling them have few qualifications in terms of education or experience. The positions are often compensated poorly with few to no additional benefits being offered. Employees who fill these positions are doing so to earn money while focusing on other objectives in life such as college or retirement.

In an innovative and unique synthesis of concepts with industry, this book serves as a gateway to future success for organizations within the beleaguered hospitality, restaurant and tourism industries. These industries are struggling to address workforce issues in a proactive, empowered and long-term manner, and solutions to future state engineering will be provided in this publication by applying dynamics associated with the 4th Industrial Revolution and the Gig Economy: Career pathways and professional identify.