Reasons to change field of work and leave restaurant industry

Recent years restaurant industry has faced challenges with finding capable employees for open vacancies. Studies have been made of attraction problems, and the number of stu dents applying for restaurant business schools have dropped significantly during recent years. Last year restaurant industry confronted global pandemic that put everything on stop and hit the industry´s economy hard. Careful forecasts trust that the industry will overcome the problems and continue to develop with future workplaces and the need for workforce will remain. Object of the study was to get more detailed and deeper understanding on what are the key issues that push people away from the business. Study was conducted as qualitative research by interviewing four people who have left restaurant industry. Participants were people who have made active decision to move on from restaurant industry to some other field of work. Research material were collected with semi-structured interviews during February and March 2021. Material was analyzed by theming and searching common char acteristics from the answers by color coding. According to the research, people seem to seek for restaurant work in situations where they are unaware with future choice of a career and looks for some job that is easily availa ble. The work itself meets expectations but could have more emphasis on well-being at work, staff benefits and supervisor work. The results indicates that reasons to leave restaurant industry work are salary, working times and nature of the job in general. It was experienced that as the length and intensity of working days can change and shift planning can be somewhat unorganized, the work can get straining and recovery from work does not always happen between work shifts. As a conclusion it could be stated that if the industry´s salary level could be improved, more effort or education were put to supervising work and wellness at work would have more emphasis, the careers could lengthen and attraction towards restaurant work could increase