Being in a season of high turnover, maintaining good employees past the 90-day mark has never been more important or more difficult. Especially with good customer service, a skill perfected by a strong and long-term restaurant staff, being one of the most important attributes of a restaurant establishment. A restaurant with great customer service creates a lasting effect on its customers and can determine whether or not they return or encourage others to visit. This is clearly shown with how 25 percent more people turn to consumer reviews on sites like OpenTable, Yelp, and TripAdvisor than reviews by professional food critics. 60 percent access customer reviews before heading out for a meal, a habit that is prioritized over getting directions to the restaurant, or looking at photos of the food. (OpenTable)
This all begs the question: How can a restaurant properly train a strong set of employees while also retaining them? Listed below are just some of the solutions you can implement in your restaurant to solve this problem!
Four Tips to Build and Maintain Your Staff:
1. Effective Scheduling
Having a more effective scheduling system, perhaps simplified through the use of scheduling software, can alleviate the stress on your management as well as prevent overstaffing/understaffing individual employees. Making data-driven schedules and determining when you actually need multiple employees can help prevent your workers for dreading their shift because of a lack of work.
2. Readily Available Training Materials
When given the proper resources, any employee can become a great addition to your staff; therefore, when not given access to said resources many workers who would’ve been great fall short of success. How do you ensure training materials are always available to your employees? The answer: put everything online. In fact, about 57% of hourly millennial workers would prefer to use their personal phones to access their training materials (WorkJam). By making training materials easily accessible on your workers preferred platform, they will be more likely to refer to them when needed.
3. Advancement Opportunities
One of the most common reasons employees voluntarily leave is a lack of advancement opportunities in the restaurant industry. This lack of opportunity causes them to search for other restaurants, if they desire to stay in the industry, and potential competitors to your establishment. Combat this by awarding loyal and hardworking staff with higher positions, pay, and benefits.
4. Recognition for Hard Work
Recognizing your employees for their accomplishments and hard work is a great way to reinforce a positive work environment and provides an incentive for your staff to continue working for your establishment. This can be easily accomplished by starting an incentive program in which employees are awarded for either out-performing their coworkers or meeting a set goal. Another option is to vocalize their accomplishments through praise which, while not always as effective as an incentive program, has been proven to be effective in improving employee morale and engagement.
Want help applying these tips to your restaurant or learn of more ways to improve your franchise business? Contact us at support@zignyl.com and we can share with you the amazing features zignyl brings to the table!
