New report unveils working conditions for chefs in Australia, New Zealand
Chefs across Australia and New Zealand are starting to consider switching employers as they suffer from long hours and presenteeism in their workplaces.
A new report that polled 226 chefs from Australia and 74 from New Zealand revealed that 52% of respondents are strongly hinting that they will look for a job outside their current workplace this year.
This includes 19% who said it was extremely likely, 17% who said it was moderately likely, and 15% who said it was slightly likely.
Source: The Mental Health and Wellbeing of Chefs on Commercial Kitchens: An Australasian Study
Presenteeism among chefs
The findings come as the report also discovered presenteeism in many workplaces for chefs in Australia and New Zealand.
Nearly half (46.35%) of the respondents said they worked for two to five days in the last 12 months despite feeling sick.
Nearly half of the respondents (45.33%) also said they have "definitely" worked during school or public holidays, according to the report.
A majority of employees also reported working longer hours than the prescribed working hours weekly in both Australia and New Zealand, the report found.
A third of employees (32.67%) said they're working 42 to 51 hours weekly, 18% said they're working 52 to 62 hours, while six per cent said they're clocking 62 hours or more.
Source: The Mental Health and Wellbeing of Chefs on Commercial Kitchens: An Australasian Study
"Following on from the excessive hours many of the sample reported working, nearly a quarter of the sample (n=70) said that they were not provided the correctly awarded breaks they were entitled to at their workplaces," the report read.
Overall, a majority of the respondents (34.35%) said they are able to take breaks "most times” while 27.82% said always, 21.74% said sometimes and 13.48% said rarely.
The authors of the report, citing forecasts from the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment, said students are now less likely to seek hospitality jobs given the problems in the sector.
"By chance, however, New Zealand's new minister for mental health, Matt Doocey, is also tourism and hospitality minister. It is now up to him to make the connection between his portfolios, and work to reduce the heat in the nation's commercial kitchens," the authors said in an article for The Conversation.
