KFC hatches recruitment scheme to hire 6,000 disadvantaged young people

Fast food chain KFC has launched a new recruitment scheme designed to help 6,000 disadvantaged young people get jobs at its restaurants.

The group, which employs 27,000 staff across its 1,000 UK sites, is aiming for one third of all its new hires to be people aged 16-24 who have faced barriers to employment by 2030.

It has partnered with charity UK Youth to create the Hatch programme, which provides young people with one-to-one training and practical work experience to build their skills.

Candidates, which have included people with social anxiety or who do not speak English as their first language, are offered an interview at KFC on completing the course.

Hatch was piloted in Manchester with over 80 young people, and half of those who completed the scheme found full time employment.

The programme will be scaled up in 2023 to recruit 500 people into KFC locations across the UK.

The hospitality industry had around 158,000 job vacancies in the last quarter, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Meghan Farren, general manager at KFC UK and Ireland said the scheme was "an investment in the future" of the business.

She added: "If we're to tackle the labour shortage and provide better jobs and economic growth across the country for the next generation, then we urgently need to help young who have been excluded from education and training opportunities to find their feet and their voice in the workplace."

KFC and UK Youth are calling on the government to directly fund a scheme to help businesses and youth organisations offer training to disadvantaged young people.

The chain also wants firms to be offered tax breaks for investing in training.

A poll of 1,000 UK employers and 2,000 16-25-year-olds by KFC and UK Youth found that 42% of young people said they need practical on the job training but 37% of employers did not currently offer work experience opportunities.

This was despite 55% of employers ranking practical work experience as their most important consideration when hiring someone new.

Four in five (79%) young people said they would be more likely to choose to work for an employer who invested in developing their skills.

Some 65% of KFC's workforce are under 25-years old but the company would not confirm how many vacancies it had across its restaurants.