Hospitality employers are increasingly seeking technological solutions to address staff shortages, achieve cost savings, and increase productivity. However, little is known about how these changes are affecting workers, and what can be done to minimise sector-specific workforce challenges. Funded by the British Academy and taking a multi-method approach to gather data from workers, employers and key stakeholders, this study examines the ways in which technology is transforming hospitality workplaces and how workers exercise agency in order to anticipate, mitigate and manage workforce implications. It aims to equip policymakers, industry, employers, unions and worker groups with evidence on how digital transformation is reshaping hospitality work and power relations in workplaces, and provide policy and practice recommendations to ensure all stakeholders benefit.
Project Team
Dr Agnieszka Rydzik
Dr Agnieszka Rydzik is Associate Professor in Tourism and Work at the University of Lincoln. Her research focuses on: i) employment relations and the future of work; ii) the gendered, racialised and precarious nature of work; iii) tourism and hospitality employment; and iv) hospitality, migration and welcome.
Agnieszka’s research is worker-centred and focused on making workplaces more inclusive. She has researched the employment experiences of migrant women in hospitality; experiences of women brewers; the implications of technology-driven transformations on lower-skilled tourism workers; socialisation of young workers through flexible hospitality work, and working students’ experiences of insecure employment. She has published in highly ranked journals, including Work, Employment and Society; Human Resource Management Journal; Annals of Tourism Research; and Journal of Sustainable Tourism. Her WES article on women brewers and identity work was nominated for the BSA’s SAGE Prize for Innovation and Excellence. She is currently co-editing (with Chanamuto and Chambers) a Special Issue of Hospitality & Society on ‘Migration, hospitality and belonging: Negotiating and enabling belonging in times of increasing inhospitality’.
Agnieszka is the founder of the Hospitality, Now! Students for Hospitality, Hospitality for Students initiative that engages business and education stakeholders, unions and policymakers in working together to bring change in working conditions for working students. In November 2023, together with industry partners, she launched the Good Student Employer Charter, which champions best practice in student employment.
