Continuing the bid to address staff shortages in hospitality, the NSW Government has extended its support by pledging more free refresher courses for anyone, continuing into next year.
In light of major staff shortages many initiatives are being undertaken by government and industry to encourage workers into and back into the sector.
Many skilled hospitality staff left the industry during the COVID pandemic, and the refresher training will allow anyone whose accreditation has expired since February 2020 to renew until February 2023 without having to retrain in full.
“Many who left the sector have seen their mandatory certifications lapse,” explains Minister for Hospitality and Racing Kevin Anderson.
“We want to make it easy for those people to quickly and freely renew those certifications and remove any barriers that are preventing them from re-entering the hospitality sector.”
Holding a Responsible Service of Alcohol (RSA) certificate is a requirement for bar and wait staff, but also for anyone that does work where alcohol is sold, including security, crowd control and promotional staff.
The same is stipulated for the Responsible Conduct of Gambling certificate (RCG), required for anyone working in a gaming area.
In February the NSW Government announced it was providing 5,000 free refresher courses to help address the issue of hospitality employment.
Since that time more than 16,000 people have completed the free RSA and RCG courses through Liquor & Gaming NSW.
Online training options and taking an approach of ‘reducing red tape’ are helping attract workers suited to the roles being found vacant in pubs and clubs, courtesy of the removal of visa workers but also transition out of the industry in the wake of two years of instability.
“We would especially encourage older workers with their years of experience to step back behind the bar,” suggests John Green, AHA NSW director of Liquor & Policing.
