If I had to allocate a degree of difficulty to working with the various sections of a hospitality business, kitchens would have to get the supreme gong. We always seem to strike our thorniest problems there. I spend a fair amount of my time tearing my hair out trying to work out how to get Chefs and cooks to heave themselves into the twentieth century.

Don't get me wrong - I love working with them. I even have a disproportionate number of Chefs among my personal friends. I find people who are a mixture of craftsperson, artist and manager are quite interesting; although I must admit that many of the Chefs I've dealt with don't exhibit these talents - but the top ones certainly do.

I believe the effective working life of a cook is only about fifteen years. After that they seem to get burnt out if they haven't worked out a way to get off the tools and into management or into their own business. There is nothing sadder than an old cook who has come to hate cooking but can't escape. Unfortunately, we strike quite a few of these in our business.

Some of the not-so-old cooks are a problem in the making. They are in limbo; half way between the old and the new. The hospitality industry is changing; small businesses are being slowly eaten-up by the slicker, larger operations that can deliver better value for money.

As part of our consultancy work with various clients, we have tested a large number of chefs and cooks with the aptitude tests that I have discussed in other articles. One of the results was interesting. There are a large percentage of cooks with either literacy problems or reading disorders. You need good literacy and numeracy skills to prosper in a larger, more professional environment where everything is documented and performance is measured by profit and loss statements.

I first noticed the problem when I started to run the 'Supervision for Chefs' training course about five years ago. A disturbing number of participants could not fill out a course evaluation form at the end. I have a depressing collection of these forms that look like they've been filled-out by a small child.

The literacy problem was indirectly confirmed by our test results. We were most perturbed to see a number of cooks score in the bottom five percent of humanity in the intelligence section. I felt that this couldn't be right, so I investigated further. I'm glad I did, because I could have missed a useful discovery, and jumped to the wrong conclusion about peoples' career prospects. The test is in written form and is strictly timed. These people were not stupid; they just couldn't read too well and either ran out of time or couldn't understand the questions to begin with.

It seems that in the past cooking was seen by people to be a manual occupation without the complication of mathematics or written instructions. Some school leavers who were not too strong in written skills chose to become cooks in the belief that they were not required to possess these skills.

I mentioned this in a conversation with the Head of Hospitality at one of our larger hospitality colleges. He agreed that this had occurred in the past but claimed it was changing. I was relieved to learn that most of the apprentices his college was accepting now hadcompleted year 12. It's not before time. I hope the other colleges are being equally as strict. Otherwise we'll be creating a big bunch of people with nowhere to go in fifteen years and I'll be beating my head against a brick wall for the rest of my career whenever I have to sort out the management of a kitchen.

As a general comment, I think we undervalue reading and writing skills in our school system. It strikes me that if you don't read you are closing your major means of self education. In an industry that is subject to fashion and fast changing technology, you have to keep up somehow.

The other problem we strike all too often is the infamous 'Chef's tantrum'. It's so common it's become cliché. How often have I heard comments like: 'Don't worry. They're all like that.' I used to think so too, until I worked for Hilton Hotels, and saw the same behaviour coming out of the repairs and maintenance section. Then the penny dropped. Same situation as in the kitchen. Technically trained people who finish their apprenticeship and are placed in charge of others with little or no preparation.

Cooks are taught to cook. It sounds quite reasonable but it's just not enough in this day and age. If people could cook for forty years and be content it would be different, but this seems to be wishful thinking. Commercial cooking is very hard work and not terribly well rewarded. No tips, split shifts and long hours are normal in private enterprise. Most cooks either get tired of it half way through their working life or become useless for all but the most mundane or institutional food production.

If you had to train somebody to: supervise a volatile mixture of permanent, casual, qualified and unqualified staff; control anything up to two thousand items of stock, all decomposing at different rates; create contemporary, fashionable food and deal with the public in an environment where peoples' perceptions are distorted by alcohol how would you do it?

Its time to review how we train cooks and chefs. Perhaps split the training into two sections separated by about five years working experience. The first section should consist of food production training; the second should be supervision and management. I don't think the present system is working.

Tony Eldred is the principal of hospitality consultants Eldred Training & Development Pty Ltd.

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