We’ve all been there before. The struggle to get out of bed, trying to find any excuse to stay in it just a bit longer. The lack of desire to do anything above the bare minimum. The irritability you feel both inside and outside of work. The hours spent digging through online job ads in the hopes of finding something more—heck, just to find something different.
As a restaurant operator, that’s the exact opposite of how you want your employees to feel about working for you.
It’s not enough anymore to just focus on how to recruit and hire the best talent. You’ve got to learn how to retain employees for the long haul, too.
Why Your Employee Retention Rate Matters
In a recent study by CareerBuilder, 21% of those surveyed intend to leave their current job by the end of the year. When looking solely at the younger age bracket of workers aged 18 to 34 (basically, millennials), 30% stated that they are planning to leave their job by the end of the year.
Now, regardless of the average age of your employees, those statistics should frighten you. If you take a look into any one of your locations right now, this basically equates to one out of every four or five employees quitting before year’s end.
Any time your restaurant loses an employee—especially a good one—you can expect it to cost you anywhere from 16% to 21% of that employee’s revenue. In addition to the monetary loss, employee turnover will cost your operations:
- Expertise and knowledge
- Overall team morale
- Quality in customer service
- Time spent in the recruitment/hiring/onboarding cycle
- Productivity as staff retrains new team members
- And more
So what are you going to do? Employee retention is crucial for any business’s long-term success, but it’s especially important for restaurants right now. With increasing costs all-around, you can’t afford to let your good employees walk out that door without a fight.
10 Simple Questions That Will Show You How to Retain Employees Better
If you want to increase your employee retention rate and give your restaurant a fighting chance to not only survive but also thrive, take a look around. If you answer “no” to any of these questions when it comes to your employees, then it may be time to rethink your talent management strategy:
- Compared to other similar restaurants in the area, are your employees compensated fairly and well (including benefits)?
- Do you have a performance-based or incentive rewards system in place?
- Is there a training program to assist in your employees’ ongoing educational needs?
- Are you providing your employees with technology solutions to improve communications, enhance their productivity, provide interactive training opportunities, and keep your restaurant on the cutting edge?
- Does your workplace feel stable and your employees’ jobs secure?
- Does management provide regular supervision, guidance, and support to employees?
- Do your employees know where to go to when they want to voice their concerns, questions, or suggestions?
- Is there room for advancement within your operations and are your employees encouraged to pursue those opportunities?
- Do you have a consistent and reliable means of creating schedules for employees that allows them to better balance their work and life?
- When your employees quit, do you perform a retention survey to identify what went wrong, ask for their insights on areas of improvement, and to also try to counter-offer?
The key to employee retention lies in truly understanding what your employees want and need.
If you did happen to answer “no” to any of these questions, this is the perfect opportunity to make some simple changes to your restaurant operations and show your employees that they matter (and that you care).