A marriage of convenience: How employers and students working in hospitality view the employment relationship

Since the 1990s, the hospitality industry has been increasingly characterized by temporary and insecure forms of employment, a development, which has coincided with rising numbers of students seeking part-time employment. This provides increased job competition for non-students and would appear to be of primary benefit to the employer in terms of an enhanced labour pool. This study reports the findings from seven semi-structured interviews with hospitality employers and six student focus groups (31 participants) in South-West England and Wales. It suggests that hospitality employers manage students and non-students to complement each other, particularly with reference to working time preferences. There is evidence that employers pay more attention to the welfare and needs of nonstudent workers in order to protect their core of full-time and permanent parttime staff. However, when employing students, employers and students take a pragmatic commercial view of their symbiotic relationship and both parties report satisfaction with this arrangement. Employers also consider both student and nonstudents as potential leaders. Finally, the study shows that student-employees can, and frequently do, provide long-term commitment to employers, contradicting the usual view of student work as transitory within the hospitality industry.