How Can Apprenticeships Fix Hospitality’s Recruitment Crisis?
This episode focuses on recruitment, perception and the future of hospitality, through the lens of apprenticeships and long-term career pathways.
Timothy R Andrews and Sarah Kettel are joined by Adele Oxberry, Founder and CEO of Umbrella Training, who shares her journey from housekeeping to running a specialist hospitality training business.
Adele reflects on growing up in hospitality, starting work at 14, and progressing through housekeeping, front office and leadership roles before moving into education and training. She explains how apprenticeships have evolved, why their reputation still lags behind reality, and how they can directly address labour shortages, skills gaps and retention issues across the sector.
The conversation explores perception problems in hospitality, the impact of the pandemic on young people’s confidence and communication, and why schools, employers and government all have a role to play in reshaping how hospitality careers are viewed. Adele also breaks down how apprenticeship funding works, including levy accounts, shared funding and why so much available training budget still goes unused.
This is a practical and optimistic episode about rebuilding confidence, investing in people, and using apprenticeships as a genuine route into sustainable hospitality careers.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Adele Oxberry’s journey from housekeeping to CEO
- Why hospitality struggles with perception and recruitment
- The impact of the pandemic on young people entering work
- Gen Z career expectations and fast-track progression
- How apprenticeships support recruitment and retention
- Apprenticeship levy funding and unspent training budgets
- How large employers can support SMEs through levy sharing
- Apprenticeships from Level 2 to Level 7 in hospitality
- Why hospitality needs a stronger voice at government level
- Changing the narrative around hospitality careers
Hosts:
- Timothy R Andrews
- Sarah Kettel
Guest:
- Adele Oxberry – Founder & CEO, Umbrella Training
Takeaways
- Hospitality’s biggest challenge is perception
- Young people don’t see the career progression that already exists.
- Apprenticeships directly improve retention and morale
- Employers report higher engagement and stronger loyalty.
- Funding is available but widely misunderstood
- Large amounts of levy funding sit unused every year.
- Apprenticeships are not just for entry-level roles
- Hospitality standards now run up to Level 7.
- The pandemic has delayed confidence, not ambition
- Young people need support, structure and reassurance.
- Hospitality needs a seat at the table
- The sector requires stronger representation at government level.
***
Editing & Visuals by: Timothy R Andrews
Theme Tune: "Mandarin & Chocolate" by Doriane Woo
Feat voiceover artist, Lara Rathod
Sound Effects by: Epidemic Sound
"Jacob Allen Evil Laugh" by Deven Garber, Freesound.org
Transcript
Welcome to another episode of Talking Hospitality. It's season three and I, Timothy R.Andrews
Sarah Kettel:and my co host, I'm Sarah Kettel
Timothy R Andrews:We'll be focusing on recruitment and employment, speaking to brilliant and inspiring leaders who we are lucky enough to call our industry colleagues.
Sarah Kettel:This week we're welcoming to the show Adele Oxbury, who is the founder and CEO of Umbrella Training, to tell us all about apprenticeships, how they work, how you can get funding for them and the future of hospitality might look like.
Adele Oxberry:Hi, it's so nice to be here. It's great. Thank you for asking me.
Sarah Kettel:It's our pleasure, really.
We're keen to hear more about you because as we established in the little chat just before we started recording, this is the first time we've all really spoken face to face and we want to know more about your journey to create Umbrella, which you did from scratch on your own. Can you share that journey with us?
Adele Oxberry:Yeah, sure. It's lovely to meet you both and it's so nice to be a part of this. Thank you. A little bit about me. I'm a Londoner, born and bred.
I'm the oldest of three siblings. I'm now living in Medway with my lovely husband, two young adults. As children.
My hospitality experience and journey started at 14 as a room attendant. My hospitality background started because both my parents worked in hospitality.
My father started off as a chauffeur for the Royal Family, then ran several hotels in Jersey. My mother, who remained in the uk, was actually the exec housekeeper at some London Mayfair hotels.
My hospitality, hospitality experience started at 14 as a room attendant thanks to a very strong Irish mother. She was always really inspiring to be around who decided to tell me that if I wanted to have a nice pair of trainers, I had to come and earn them.
So I was cleaning rooms at the weekends and in the evenings and during summer holidays for her and had the most amazing experience and starting point in housekeeping and it was the best thing she ever did for me. So at 14 I was cleaning rooms at the Fleming Hotel in Mayfair. I used to have the fifth floor, which is where all the celebrities used to stay.
And so that was kind of cool at weekends and just a name drop. UB40, my favorite band at the time as well. So I was proper chuffed to meet them.
And yeah, I've just been focused on that pathway because I was born and bred into it and I loved it. Couldn't see myself doing anything else.
I went to Westminster College and studied City and Guild 708 and 709, which was housekeeping and reception and qualified. And then I became, at the age of 19, I was the head housekeeper at the Britannia Hotel in Mayfair.
So I cut away from my Mother's Day pr, was working for Dorothy Fennell, who was absolutely awesome and worked for her for a couple of years as looking after the VIP floor. Always been around living, breathing housekeeping and hospitality at a networking event.
And I was asked by this really lovely man if I would consider working on reception. It played in my mind that potentially this could be another route for me. And I did that.
And by 21, I was head receptionist at a private gents club in St. James Square Square.
By 28, I qualified as an MBQ assessor and then I got headhunted again by a training provider at the time to be an NVQ assessor, mainly focusing on housekeeping, not on reception. So it brought me back to housekeeping, which was where I really thrived. And a few years later I became the regional manager.
The thing with me is I have to know everything. I'm very detailed and that obviously comes from those transferable skills of working in housekeeping.
ly around apprenticeships. In:Since we are 10 years old.
, November:We're dedicated to it, we live and breathe it and we feel we're a huge part of it.
Timothy R Andrews:Congratulations on hitting your big ten because, you know, I know what effort that takes, so well done.
Adele Oxberry:Yeah, it was. It's a hard game, but it's a game I love being a part of and I'm passionate about.
Timothy R Andrews:What do you think are some of the difficulties faced by our sector when they're hiring people?
Adele Oxberry:Comes down to the perception piece, doesn't it? There's so much out there. I've got a cost of living crisis and, you know, what happened after the pandemic.
You've got business rates going back up, you've got vat. The perception piece is absolutely huge.
It's a difficult time for the Sector, some of our business partners are closing two days a week, so as they can actually, you know, pay their utility bills. We're seeing it from all parts of the sector as well, not just in the small businesses, but also larger businesses. It's absolutely huge.
But the recruitment piece is definitely all about the perception. We've been doing so much around this. We do a lot to advocate the sector to schools.
We were at Skills London where we had the largest hospitality stand sponsored by some amazing employers that we work with. We'd actually, just before that, we'd actually done a survey that was based on the perception of hospitality amongst Gen Z.
And then we actually instigated a white paper in partnership with the University of Greenwich. The findings from the survey are, as we expect, you know, the perception of the sector is on the floor.
11% of young people said they would consider hospitality as a career, yet you had gaming and social media at the very top. So when we were designing Skills London, we thought, let's show them hospitality like the game.
We designed four games, Hotel Hijinks, Pub Panic, Caterer Chaos and Way to Wolves. And they're fast. Eight bit games from the 90s and there were 30 seconds each.
We brought them to Skills London and as a result of that, we had the most attended stand. We had 30,000 young people come through our stand going into schools to promote a sector that can give a career.
Because our survey found that young people are looking for quick wins, fast track, accelerated management programs. By 21, I was managing, these things are possible and I don't think young people realise it.
So we've got some big ways to do around the messaging in schools. We've got big work to do in terms of the culture of the sector and we've got big work to do in terms of the skills piece as well.
And supporting labour shortages. We need a minister at the table. There was something created earlier during the pandemic called a seat at the table.
We need a voice at that level and at the moment we've got the brilliant Kate Nicholls doing the best she can, but she needs to be in Parliament, she needs to be sitting at the table as our Minister of Hospitality.
Timothy R Andrews:Absolutely.
Sarah Kettel:And how do you think the apprenticeships are actually going to be a solution to that issue?
Adele Oxberry: ,:69% of employers say employing apprentices improve their staff retention. 86% of employers said apprentices help to fill the skills gap and develop relevant skills for their organisation. So apprenticeships are key.
Absolutely key. What was interesting around the roundtable, only one employer had an active apprenticeship program. There are about 30 employers in that room.
p levy that was introduced in:But there's more flexibility around that for smaller businesses now. All of them had levy sitting in their account that they weren't using, which is unspent training funds.
Sarah Kettel:One of the questions I had is how easy is it for employers to get help with funding for training, whether it's an apprenticeship or something similar. When you're saying that they have this levy and it's sat in an account and it's not being used, is access to that must be easy then?
If they've got the money and it's sat there, they just don't know what to do with it or aren't using it right now, then this isn't hard for an employer to get involved, right?
Adele Oxberry:No, it's not hard at all. Initially, when it was first launched, it was only available to large employers, so anybody had a 3 million pound pay bill or more.
So 3 million pound pay bill or more. The beauty of it was it went into an apprenticeship account in the apprenticeship service.
Employers would see how much they paid into the levy and then they'd be able to spend that on designed apprenticeship programs.
Back in:The standards that have been created have been created around job roles. So you have a standard for commerce, chef, chef de parti, host, hospitality team member, hospitality supervisor, manager.
They range from level two all the way up to level seven, if you want to even obtain a master's degree. Coming back to the question is, once the account was set up, employers then can see how it works, like a bank account.
So they can see how much the training provider is approved to claim and that comes out on a monthly basis.
They can stop the training provider taking any money, they can stop the apprentice, they can start the apprentice, so they have full control over that funding. A simple system to use. But initially, when it first came out, it was a little bit Bureaucratical, let's put it that way. But it has got easier.
Employers have fed into that system over the years and that has become much easier for them to be able to access funding. They're a small business. There was a requirement for them to pay 5% of the funding.
But now what happens is there's large employers out there and we have access to quite a few who share their levy pot. They share that levy pot with smaller businesses as part of their core corporate social responsibility, but also the system itself.
The apprenticeship services developed and advanced so much that employers now see on their system when they log in employers who are willing to give them some funds. It's very easy once you've worked with someone who understands how to set it up.
You could talk to your accountant, Your accountant will be able to help you set up your apprenticeship account. If you're a small business, you can request funds.
If you're a business that pays the levy, you can start using it and start selecting your apprentices and start actually putting in development programs if you want to use it for that side of things.
As long as there is an apprenticeship, this novice to expert journey, it has to be a meaningful apprenticeship program that you put in place and it's better to use an expert to do that. So not everybody can do an apprenticeship. Remember, there's a whole heap of eligibility. That eligibility piece is. Can be complicated.
Timothy R Andrews:Yeah. And I'm so pleased that the apprenticeships are so much better than they were because I do remember the time when they. When they weren't.
And sadly, that reputation for the older generations that remember it still exists. So it is important that we see people like you making sure that everybody knows that these are different.
I think even you and I originally said, I said something a little bit sarcastic about apprenticeships when we first met. And you put me back very firmly back in my place to tell me they are very good.
Sarah Kettel:I can see that actually, for young people. They've been through a very, very nasty few years. You know, the pandemic has thrown everybody out.
Those who would have been just on the cusp of going, right, what's my first job? Let's take this. Were then locked up in a house for nearly two and a half years.
They couldn't complete education, they couldn't take exams, they couldn't see people, they couldn't learn from things, they couldn't have those experiences. And maybe that transition is going to take a little bit longer. It's going to. Of course it is scary. It's kind of scary.
Adele Oxberry:100%.
Social Mobility Commission reports done a report that said there's a two year backlog in people's education and that's why the catch up sessions that were being proposed by certain people in the education sector said it needed a £13 billion investment to get young people to catch up on their education and only 2 billion was given. Worked out at something like £50 ahead.
We really see it in this cohort coming through in terms of their confidence, just their confidence and mental health is through the roof. Their ability to communicate is much worse than I've ever seen before because as you said, they've been locked up for two and a half years.
We've been told to.
I certainly know I was washing all the food when it came in the house, in the bags, you know, so there's an element of fear, I suppose, when you see your parents reacting that way.
Sarah Kettel:Thank goodness that's over now. It's going to take some time, but we can move forward.
Organisations like yours are going to be front and center of getting that confidence back and making sure young people know they can be supported. Yes, this happened. Yes, it was scary. But you know, to a certain extent it's behind us now.
I'm really looking forward to the future and what you can do to support hospitality and these young people through your initiatives. Thank you on behalf of everyone. We're grateful for people like you, Adele.
Adele Oxberry:Well, we do it with meaning and everything we do with meaning. We're a small training provider with a big voice and, you know, we're consistent with our messaging about how fantastic the sector is.
It might be having these labor issues right now and these skills issues right now, but it's not forever. This is going to change and the sector is about to go on a massive boom, I believe.
And a lot of people I'm speaking to are saying, actually we're really busy. And that's really encouraging when you hear that they're bouncing back so quickly and that business looks amazing for them. It's coming back.
And obviously we see apprenticeships as a way of being a real support for any of those labour shortages, but also for it to help upskill first time supervisors, first time managers and really getting the kind of like people strategies right in businesses because it's got to be about positive cultures in those businesses and that's where we fit nicely because we can support it.
Sarah Kettel:Put the cuppa down. Question time. In the interest of taking fun very seriously, which I know you do, we have a fun bit for the next part of the show.
Every guest that we have on. Obviously, we love to hear your story and we love to talk about the industry stuff, but we also have the Quick Fire around.
So this is where we're going to ask you a series of questions. Just want you to say the first thing that comes into your head. But it's just for fun. And really, it's just to.
Like we said, we'd like to get to know you, we know your career story, but let's really delve a little bit deeper into the Quick Fire round.
Timothy R Andrews:For Adele Osprey, who is Adele Otsbury?
Sarah Kettel:And Tim always makes this sound a little bit sinister and scary. It's not.
Timothy R Andrews:It is. Oh, it is.
Adele Oxberry:Thanks, Tim.
Sarah Kettel:What's your favourite colour?
Adele Oxberry:Purple.
Timothy R Andrews:What's the favorite place you've traveled to?
Adele Oxberry:Oh, it's gonna have to be London. However, I feel the Middle east is calling me somehow.
Sarah Kettel:Describe yourself in three words.
Adele Oxberry:Bossy, caring and matriarchal.
Timothy R Andrews:Tottenham or Arsenal?
Adele Oxberry:Arsenal. Yes, any day.
Sarah Kettel:What's Your favorite band?
Adele Oxberry:UB40 and Blondie. Can I have Dick and Little Mix?
Timothy R Andrews:What color shoes are you wearing?
Adele Oxberry:Black.
Sarah Kettel:How many keys do you have on your key ring?
Adele Oxberry:Oh, I'm a classic housekeeper. I've got everything on my. My keyring, everything. It must be about 20, 25 when you're coming.
Timothy R Andrews:Do they. They can hear you?
Adele Oxberry:Yeah, and I wear them around my way. Some worker's coming. Right?
Timothy R Andrews:Capri's cream egg. How do you eat yours?
Adele Oxberry:I just bite the head off.
Sarah Kettel:What's the last emoji that you used?
Adele Oxberry:The face with the kiss. That one. Cute.
Timothy R Andrews:The one food you wouldn't give up?
Adele Oxberry:Steak.
Sarah Kettel:Apple or Android?
Adele Oxberry:Android.
Timothy R Andrews:Adele, what annoys you most in people?
Adele Oxberry:Dishonesty.
Sarah Kettel:So what issue will you always speak your mind about?
Adele Oxberry:Adele in Arabic means justice. So anything that's unfair, I would speak about it.
Sarah Kettel:If you could live in a book, a TV show or a movie, what would it be?
Adele Oxberry:I really love Bridgerton, so I'm gonna say Bridgerton.
Timothy R Andrews:And it's not because they're all hot in that, is it, Adele?
Adele Oxberry:No, not at all.
Timothy R Andrews:What's something you learned in the last week?
Adele Oxberry:That blood fats actually take longer in your body to digest than blood sugar levels.
Timothy R Andrews:We've run out of time.
Sarah Kettel:Hashtag science.
Timothy R Andrews:Adele, I'm gonna go and binge on a burger and some chocolate.
Sarah Kettel:Test that hypothesis.
Timothy R Andrews:Test it. Adele, thank you so much for joining us.
Adele Oxberry:Thank you for having me.
Sarah Kettel:It's been very enlightening. I'm so glad that we got to talk to you.
It's opened my mind to apprenticeships, which is something that I'm learning more and more of a lot at the moment and love hearing more about. So hearing your take Husband Fabric. Thank you.
Adele Oxberry:Thank you so much for having me.
Timothy R Andrews:Sadly, that's all of this episode, but tune in next week where we will have another fabulous guest and we'll be talking hospitality. Don't forget to like and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Have a great week and stay awesome.
