Nearly six in 10 hospitality workers (57%) identify "unfairness and exclusion" as the main driver of high employee turnover in the sector, according to the Better Hospitality report published by Be Inclusive Hospitality, a UK industry body focused on improving inclusion across the trade.

The finding lands at a moment when UK hospitality employers are already under pressure from higher employment costs and persistent headcount challenges, and it puts a direct question to people leaders: if more than half the workforce links churn to perceived unfair treatment, retention strategies built purely on pay and scheduling may be missing the root cause.

The report goes beyond general sentiment. Some 38% of respondents said unfairness is what drives people to leave the hospitality industry altogether — not just one employer for another. Half of those surveyed said their employers have taken little or no meaningful action to address the problem.

The data on progression is sharper still. Among respondents from ethnic minority backgrounds, 21.1% said they had been overlooked for advancement because of their identity. Among white respondents, that figure was 6.4% — roughly one in three the rate. That gap points to a concrete area where hospitality HR teams can audit existing promotion, development and internal mobility processes.

The retention case

The survey also frames the commercial stakes. Forty-four per cent of employers cited finding candidates with the right skills as their greatest recruitment barrier, while 80% of employees said they were open to new opportunities. Only 26.7% of employees said they had a clearly defined career path.

Read together, those numbers suggest hospitality employers face a tight external labour market while doing relatively little to secure the internal one. Be Inclusive Hospitality advised that retaining and developing talent already in the business is crucial given these figures — a conclusion that aligns with the turnover drivers identified earlier in the report.

Data as the starting point

The body called data collection a high priority for employers seeking to address inclusion issues. Without understanding who their employees are and what their experiences of the workplace are, employers cannot identify disparities or measure whether their interventions actually work, the report argued.

That is a familiar ask in sectors wrestling with equity: measurement before action, and measurement after it. For HR teams in hospitality, it raises practical questions about workforce analytics capability — how many operators currently track progression rates by ethnicity, or run exit interviews that capture whether unfair treatment played a part in a departure?

A leadership group and public commitments

A number of senior executives who contributed insights to the report have formed the Better Hospitality Leadership Group, bringing together leaders from hotels, restaurants, pubs, catering and hospitality training providers.

Employers are invited to become Better Hospitality signatories, committing publicly to the initiative's six priorities and associated actions. For operators deciding whether to sign, the report's findings suggest the bar is low: half of surveyed employees say their employers have shown little or no meaningful action so far.

Lorraine Copes, founder and CEO of Be Inclusive Hospitality, said: "This industry has the power to create opportunities, build careers and change lives. It is also one of the UK's most diverse and dynamic industries.

"Yet a diverse workforce does not automatically mean that everyone feels included or has fair access to opportunity."

She added that the group's research evidenced an opportunity to build a "fairer, stronger and more inclusive hospitality industry".

What it means for HR teams

For people leaders in the sector, the report's findings translate into several immediate decisions. First, whether turnover analysis should incorporate inclusion-related exit drivers, given that 57% of workers see unfairness and exclusion as the sector's core retention problem. Second, whether progression pipelines can demonstrate equity — the 21.1% versus 6.4% split on identity-based exclusion from advancement is the kind of disparity that internal data can either confirm or refute for any given operator. Third, whether the absence of defined career paths for nearly three-quarters of employees (73.3%) represents a cheaper retention lever than external hiring in a market where 44% of employers struggle to find skilled candidates.

The report positions the Better Hospitality Leadership Group and its signatory commitments as the sector's vehicle for turning these findings into measurable change. Whether that translates into improved retention data will depend on how many employers move from sentiment to the kind of workforce measurement the body has put at the top of its agenda.