At National Restaurant Consultants (NRC), we’ve always been focused on company culture—and that’s even more true in the wake of a post-pandemic labor crisis. Team-building and work incentives are key to creating a working community that workers want to remain in.
However, the knee-jerk reaction to losing employees is to offer more money. The appeal of increased wages may bring in more workers initially, but rarely are wage increases enough for employee retention. A recent Nation’s Restaurant News article confirms as much: the article quotes Victor Fernandez, vice president of Black Box Intelligence, who served on a panel about the topic during the CREATE Live Learning Series. Fernandez said, “Starting wage attracts them but once they’re there and they encounter a team culture that’s not a right fit, that’s when they leave really quickly. Culture is how you make that transition from ‘I just want to get paid’ to ‘I want a career in the industry.’”
This comment directly aligns with National Restaurant Consultants’ longstanding advice, and other large industry players concur. “Katie Bach agreed and said that when she joined the &pizza team in Dec. 2021, they were struggling with turnover rate, so they had to change their approach to improving staff culture to encourage longevity,” says the NRN article. Bach added, “Pay matters, but you want meaning and a sense of belonging…Even if you’re paid well, if you have enough days in a row where you’re disrespected and set up to fail, you’re going to leave your job.”
More money matters little to an unhappy employee. The number one killers of good company work culture, the things people leave jobs over, are bad management, a difficult on-boarding process, unpredictable scheduling, no growth trajectory, and employees feeling unheard. By adjusting company culture to promote team building, reliable communications, consistent schedules, and an environment where everyone’s opinion matters, employers will see their employee retention rise.
NRC owner, Richard Weil and team can support any food service and hospitality industry operator to reduce turnover and labor costs through effective, proven key strategic management processes and verifiable action plans. “Don’t do nothing. Simply put, there are dozens of solutions that can be customized for almost any operation”.
To learn more about training and curating your restaurant business’s company culture, consider working with one of our restaurant consultants, who have decades of experience building successful, happy teams.