Food and Hotel Industry
Hotel and restaurant management success is based on the ability to understand the psychological underpinnings of the hospitality business. The ability to discern personalities that are suitable for different positions in hotels or restaurants is key to the success of this business.
Nature of the Job:
Restaurants have fast-paced and high-stress work environment, and rate of mental illness is higher compared to the other fields. The nature of the job demands the staff to put themselves last and to prioritize taking care of everyone else. For many, the intensity of the roles can lead to burnout, which can make it feel like addressing their mental health is too late.
Physical & Mental Issues:
Physical health problems can come from working long shifts, standing for hours, lifting heavy items, and working with sharp equipment that can lead to accidents. Similarly, other workplace issues could be affecting your mental health and you may not even be aware of them. The pressure to smile through pain is a constant factor taking a toll on mental health in this industry. No matter what you may be battling on the inside, there’s an unspoken rule that you can’t let it show in case it affects your performance. So, chefs, servers, and bartenders will bury it deep down, which causes even more damage.
Reasons behind:
Issues faced in the food and hotel sector are due to workplace stability, interpersonal relationships, personal issues, handling customers, customer complaints, needs of customers, hiring and retaining staff. These industries experience heightened rates of drug use, mental health issues, and harassment. In this industry resilience is everything and burnout is expected. It has a culture where mental health in this industry is never discussed. Those who are suffering are alone and isolated because they don’t see other co-workers going through the same thing which lead to assuming that it’s their problem.
Daily struggle:
All other industry workers have their daily struggles to endure. Food service is different, it’s a combination of physical labour, gruelling hours, unruly customers, and managers, and low wages. In every other profession, people take advantage of their vacation days. Why don’t chefs do that? It doesn’t make any sense and just promotes the toxicity of this industry and shows how much this industry needs mental health guidance. There’s so much stress that comes with being a member of the overworked, underpaid, unappreciated food service.
There’s a rising momentum of mental health awareness sweeping across the industry. So many staffs along with chefs are saying no more to toxic old ways of doing things. They’re creating new paths for living in, operating, and working amongst the food service space. One of the ongoing issues with mental health in food industry is a lack of funds or benefits for employees to get the support they need.
Eliminating Stigma:
One of the most effective ways of dealing with mental health in this industry is talking about it, which removes the stigma and lets the employees know that they’re not suffering alone. Acknowledging the problem is the first step to solving it.
Running Smoothly:
Hotel and restaurant managers deal with a variety of people. Psychologists help to understand a variety of employee and client personalities and reactions can help managers run their businesses more smoothly. The big-5 questionnaire is one of the important tools to assess one’s personality.
Role of Element H in this industry
- Counselling service workshops based on work-life balance, stress management, marital issues, tobacco dependence problem, career counselling, leadership conflict resolution, interpersonal communication, time management, grief & loss, coping with change, building resilience are offered.
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