The effect of leisure and tourism on employment opportunities

'Work to live or live to work - getting the balance right'

The leisure industry has traditionally had a reputation amongst young people of low wages, unsociable hours, high staff turnover and a dependency on part-time employment. For young people, although work in this sector has usually been easy to find, it hasn’t normally been viewed as permanent or desirable. Indeed, it is often perceived as inhibiting their social life.

For its part, the industry is becoming increasingly aware of the need to retain many of its young employees, offer training opportunities, become more employee-friendly and offer attractive career prospects. These make economic sense to the employers. At the same time, young people are looking for employment, both fulltime and part-time, which is flexible, supportive, transferable (i.e. when moving to a different part of the country to study) and work which they enjoy and fits in with their lifestyle.

In this activity you are asked to work in small groups (of 3 or 4) to assist a local leisure concern in retaining young employees, taking into account the views of young people regarding their work/life balance. Accurate records will have to be kept of all the work you and your group carry out as well as keeping details of useful sources and advice sought over the duration of the project (at least 3 months)

You are advised to read through all the tasks before beginning the activity.