The restaurant industry, by nature, can be subject to high rates of turnover. This inclination was compounded by labor shortages and staffing issues in the wake of Covid-19 regulations and the economic issues trickling down over the last several years. As the labor crisis subsides, it’s an important time to evaluate your company’s policies and determine how best to keep employees. As our restaurant consultants know, employee retention goes far beyond increased wages, and has much more to do with management and culture.
High on the list of our expertise at National Restaurant Consultants (NRC) is employee hiring, training, and management. Your teams are only as good as your managers and the culture they create—hopefully one that boosts motivation, productivity, and morale. While “a job is a job” and employees need to make a wage, building environments in which employees feel valued and driven yields hard-working teams who are dedicated to their work and the business.
As Jill Raff writes for Nation’s Restaurant News’s Speakerbox, one of the best methods of capturing this motivated commitment is through internal promotional paths. “A well-defined growth path improves job satisfaction, fosters loyalty, and enhances overall productivity. It also gives employees a sense of purpose, belonging, and future within the company, leading to higher retention rates.” Even in QSR spaces, where long-term employment may not be a goal for some younger employees, a company’s consideration for personal growth can be a huge motivating factor. Benefits of internal growth plans, according to Raff, include: personal development, skill development, enhanced morale and motivation, stronger culture and brand reputation—all ultimately leading to increased employee retention.
“Growth paths reduce turnover by showing employees they can progress in their careers and grow within the company, rather than feeling “stuck” in entry-level roles or experiencing instability, needing to move from job to job and look elsewhere for advancement,” Raff says.
In order to evaluate internal growth paths, your business must do the administrative work of building company culture and associated values around this idea of promotion and retention. Raff says, “They must include prioritizing your employee experience to achieve the ultimate customer experience,” adding that this is crucial following pandemic-era expectations.
With this vision established, restaurant owner-operators “can work with their management teams to determine the best way to communicate and implement personal growth paths within their company culture. Raff advises, “It’s rarely 100% one way or the other,” referring to paths based on role requirements versus paths catered to employee expectations. “I think it must be a hybrid approach for the highest efficacy and long-term results.” This philosophy allows owner-operators to control the timeline of such internal workings while involving employees so that they are invested in their growth within the company.
Raff goes on to make many suggestions for methods of communication and implementation, all of which can be modified to best suit a business’s needs.
“While the foodservice and hospitality industry has many staff members that prefer to sustain their positions as professional servers, line cooks, prep cooks,, etc., culture plays an even more important role in attracting and specifically retaining staff,” notes Richard Weil owner and principal of NRC. “No industry position should not be perceived of as a dead-end position, rather a contributing part of a team effort to personally grow while providing service that invites guests back again and again.”
At National Restaurant Consultants, our restaurant consultants are experts in hiring and training employees for a positive company culture and commitment to the business at the time of hiring. Working with our consultants on the hiring process as well as these internal growth paths improves both your company culture and successful employee retention.