Job: Head chef.
Typical hours worked: 45.
Profile: Melissa is a white female in her 30s who works full-time in London. She is married and is hoping to start a family soon.

Career history

My first career choice was mental health nursing, but when my university course didn’t work out, I thought, ‘Damn, I need to get a job and enter the real world. What do I like doing?’ My mum was an ex-school dinner lady and a great cook. She’d taught me lots of things, so I figured, ‘I’m not too bad at cooking. I love eating. Let’s go and have a crack at being a chef.’

I started working in a pub and was Head chef of a team of one – me! Thought I had made it. I was like, ‘Brilliant. Walked straight into my first Head chef job.’ Then I realised that no, operating a microwave and getting flustered if I get more than two or three orders at one time is not being a chef.

My love affair with the industry really started when I moved to a Commis chef role – that’s the most junior grade in the industry – at a hotel. I then blagged myself into a few roles that were maybe a little bit above me, but that accelerated my learning. I’ve been in the industry 15 years, and I’ve been a Head chef for eight years, which is fairly good going. 

My working day

I’ve just started a new role as Head chef at a high-end restaurant in a busy department store. My role is less about cooking and prepping and more about managing the kitchen, including admin, but I also stand on the pass to vet everything. On a Saturday, we can cater for up to 500 people and everything that goes out has to be an incredibly high standard. There’s a lot of pressure in the job. Having said that, I genuinely do feel like this is the best place I’ve worked at in a very long time.

Typically, when you start a new job in this industry, you just get thrown in at the deep end. I think the feeling is, ‘You have got the experience. You’ll make it work somehow.’ It’s not just about running a kitchen – the fundamentals of kitchen management are the same the world over – but every new company you go into, you need to be doing it their way. What’s good is that I haven’t been brought in to fix anything this time around, which is what has usually happened. 

Work-life balance

My new job is very different to anywhere I’ve ever worked in the industry before. The hours are good. We start at around 9am or 10am and finish around 7pm or 8pm, in line with the store’s opening hours. I have a contract for a 45-hour week across five days, and they also pretty much demand that you take a break. In my previous role, I was doing 60 to 80 hours a week and working on my days off as well. 

Although a lot of companies these days are trying to appear more ‘pink and fluffy’ and like they’re trying to encourage the taking of breaks, does that generally happen? No. No, it doesn’t. At the moment, I’m not even taking the full breaks because it just feels a bit alien to me. Honestly, working those reduced hours, and only five days a week, feels like a bit of a holiday. I’m home for dinner most nights, which for a chef is an absolute dream.

I’ve got a work phone, which is another perk that I haven’t had in several other jobs, so I can differentiate between home and work life. At my last job, I wasn’t given one, so I was constantly being harassed on my personal number on my days off, and I had no work–life balance there. People here seem to have a very healthy view that anything that they want to say can wait until you are back in the business.

Job design 

Every day there will be new problems, new challenges. That’s the beauty of my job. I get to do so many different things. As a Head chef as well, you have got a bit more flexibility. You are not just one of the junior chefs who is stuck on a section prepping and cooking all day. If I get bored, I can have a little wander around the store. That puts me in a better headspace to come back and deal with whatever is going on in my kitchen. As long as I get done the daily and weekly and monthly tasks I need to do, it’s up to me how I do it.

Where I feel I make a difference is to my team. I’ve always gone out of my way to help junior staff, even with their personal lives. I treat the team a bit like my extended family because we spend more hours with each other than we do with our own families.

^{*This graph shows Melissa’s score alongside the UK mean (average) for the 7 dimensions of the  CIPD Good Work Index.} 

Pay and benefits

The basic salary that I’m on now is average for a Head chef. In London it’s around £45,000 to £50,000 a year. With hospitality, you get your basic salary and then you get non-contractual tips or service charge, which is divvied up between the staff, depending on grades. 

In this job I also get paid overtime, something I’ve never come across before – normally those 80-hour weeks, you get nothing for it. I’ve also got an excellent pension scheme here. The overriding feeling I have after three weeks with the company is that they genuinely care about their people and that makes all the difference in the world.