The Great Retention

How Training is a Key to Success

When we see a mass exodus from the food industry, it is vital to analyze the causing factors. Employee retention is on everyone’s minds lately – mainly, how do we improve it? How do some business owners get staff to stick around for years? Is there a secret that someone isn’t telling you? Don’t fret, there are many solutions for these issues. At the forefront is employee training programs, which set your team up for success. Setting your staff up for success means investing in them, educating them, empowering them, and including them in your company culture.

Training and educational programs instill knowledge and confidence into your employees. The first step for you, as the business owner, is to assess the goals and purpose of your business within your community. Ask yourself what you want to see from your staff and how they can help you achieve these goals. This will create a picture of your company culture and, in turn, encourage your employees to show up every day.

Your next step is to create clear and concise job descriptions for your employees. Assign each role responsibilities and necessary skill sets. This alleviates confusion amongst your staff, empowers them to execute their responsibilities, and creates a system of accountability. Thus, people are more confident in their roles.

Once everyone is knowledgeable in their job descriptions, it’s time for the fun to begin: training. Each training program is different. It’s best to assess your staff’s specific needs and go from

there. The most common method we see in our industry is on-the-job. While this is a fantastic way to enlighten your team, there are other approaches that prove beneficial as well. Based on your employee demographic and their various experience levels, you can try different methods to train your staff such as auditory, visual, and kinesthetic approaches depending on how they learn. You can ask a senior staff member to demonstrate a particular task; the trainee watches and then replicates the actions. Step-by-step instructions are also beneficial. Using an instruction manual for each task such as menu execution, setting up your workstation, or setting a table will also provide consistency, and the staff can reference it during the training process. Lastly, the role-playing approach also proves useful, where the new employee is walked through what might happen in a real-life situation and how to handle it. If your staff members are still struggling, retraining is always an option.

Being patient is key throughout this process; everyone learns differently at different speeds. It is important to stay consistent in your training. In fact, quarterly training sessions are incredibly useful for keeping your employees motivated and refreshed.

Once you’ve completed the training, it is important to also invest in your staff. Encourage them to seek continued education by attending the local food expo, or entering a recipe contest, and create incentives for doing so. Afterall, their hard work and recognition will reflect on your business as well. Workers want to find joy in what they do and immersing themselves in the vast culture of food and beverage on a daily basis can incite creativity and productivity in the workplace.

In the end, your staff will grow alongside your company. Once the basics are mastered, we can introduce them to things like upselling by focusing on increasing customer service skills. Your staff will be mentally stimulated and excited by the prospect of making more money through doing something that brings them satisfaction. This creates a mutually beneficial relationship between you and your employees. When the company culture is informed, confident, and inclusive, we see performance increase across the board, which directly leads to an upswing in customer satisfaction. This is how we turn The Great Resignation into The Great Retention.  KATE RATLEDGE,

TOGATHER RESTAURANT CONSULTING

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