Impos’ Solution to Support Hospo with Serious Staff Shortage

One of the longer lasting pain-points we are hearing from our customers in the hospitality industry post Covid lockdowns is a serious staff shortage. There’s barely a restaurant, cafe or bar operator in Australia right now that is not on the hunt for staff at the moment. So dire is the staff and skills shortage that we see venues all over Australia, but perhaps particularly in NSW and VIC – the two states hit the hardest by Covid lockdowns – that are closed due to lack of staff. Venues that are able to open are often trading on reduced hours or days, perhaps trading only four or five days a week instead of seven due to staff shortages.

This is of course crushing for any business owner and unfortunately there is no silver bullet solution right now. We simply need more staff in the country, but until we once again see travellers returning to Australia on Working Holiday Visas and sponsorships, venues will be doing it tough. However, this also represents an opportunity to embrace new technology and innovations that will help optimise efficiencies and drive more revenue once venues once again are back taking at full capacity.

To assist in alleviating this issue, Impos recently announced their partnership with ANANAS – the online training platform created solely for the fast-paced hospitality industry. Impos have been working closely with Sven Almenning, the Founder of Ananas and the CEO of the renowned Speakeasy Group, a multi award winning bar and restaurant group in Australia that includes Eau de Vie, Mjølner, Boilermaker House & Nick & Nora’s, all powered by Impos.

This valuable resource is now included within customer’s Impos package at no charge, providing access to world class hospitality industry content, as well as everything you need to know about your Impos point of sale system. In addition to up-skilling and tracking your staff’s industry knowledge, ANANAS takes the pain out of the crucial onboarding process of new staff. The ANANAS platform is rich with content and provides spirit category training courses with over 10,000 hospo workers already using the platform and used by some of Australia’s most renowned hospitality groups – Solotel, Red Rock, Hains & Co, The Lobo, Speakeasy Group, House of Pocket.

Impos CEO Andrew Paynter was quick to see the value in the Ananas platform, “This has been an exciting project for us, and we have been working for the past few months with Sven and the team at ANANAS to build out the Impos content, available now to Impos customers. Timing is everything and the recent launch came at a time when hospitality venue owners continue to struggle through the aftermath of ongoing Covid lockdowns and restrictions, which forced a lot of owners to stand down experienced staff. The ANANAS platform provides owners and venue managers with the power to regulate the training and knowledge of their staff, all able to be done virtually and in their own time.”

Staff training is an area that often suffers in hospitality and with the current skills shortages it is going to be more important than ever to have a solid training plan for your team. This is where platforms such as ANANAS can really help. Not only does it come with a hundred-plus hours of world class industry training, but also offers an internal training environment for venues to document and test their own teams on internal processes and procedures etc. This not only automates and speeds up the onboarding process, but it also provides the team with the knowledge and skills they need to excel at their jobs.

Beyond that there is of course also the reporting and data capabilities that ANANAS has allowing venues to more easily identify strengths and weaknesses, as well as driving profitability. There is a lot of technological progress and innovation being made in hospitality at the moment, and I believe smart operators will take advantage of the efficiencies and opportunities these can bring to their business and use them to optimise for the future.