Staff shortages in the restaurant industry - Part 2: Retain staff longer

The second part of the article series goes through the most important areas for retaining staff.

Retain staff longer with the right motivation and work environment.

The most important factors for motivation in restaurants are Good leadership and the right training so that they can get into the routines and feel nice treated.

In addition to that, we need to work on increasing job satisfaction and creating strong motivation for success together.

 

Fair working conditions

Start by listening to your staff to understand their experience of their working conditions and environment. Both physical challenges and psychological stress have an impact.

Summer Anders Johansson writes One should review everything from whether the plates are too heavy to carry to how low staffing creates high stress. Sometimes simple problems can be cleared away, sometimes more effort may be required.

 

2. Good leadership

The most important factor for motivating and retaining employees is successful leadership. Unfortunately, it's difficult to create a bulleted list of what good leadership is in a restaurant, but there are good resources and courses that cover the basics.

Here are two examples:

Within leadership, be sure to set clear goals. It is easier and more motivating to do your best when you have a common goal as a team.

Jenny Sandström at Adore Growth writes about this in her article on 6 steps to optimize your team and help you reach your goals, and provides examples of goals that are clear, measurable, and achievable:

  • Increase average bill
  • Reduce waste
  • Reduce costs
  • Achieve climate goals
  • Become Sweden's best workplace
  • Climb the ranks on Tripadvisor

 

Train the serving staff

To ensure new staff succeed in their new roles, it's important to train them properly. Otherwise, there's a high risk that they will not only perform poorly but also feel insecure, stressed, and unmotivated as a result of unclear tasks or expectations.

Set up a checklist and instructions, preferably in video format with simple videos.

There are also simple models to ensure that the training itself is effective, to avoid repeating instructions, and to shorten the training time. For example:

 

4. More joy in work

Working in a restaurant involves great sacrifices. You work inconvenient hours, long shifts, with rapidly changing stress levels, and interacting with new people.

But it also creates great opportunities for cohesion, challenge, and influence over one's own work – all the most important factors for work motivation.

COHESION

For a restaurant manager, it's important to actively work on strengthening team cohesion for those who deliver the food, drinks, and experience the restaurant stands for. Preferably through:

  • Peptalk – Start and end every session with a positive meeting for the evening
  • Team building - e.g., shared dinners outside of working hours to celebrate a good season
  • Appreciation - Think “employee of the month,” but perhaps less formally, or highlight and celebrate your staff on your social media.

CHALLENGE

Many who seem to have lost motivation and are dragging their feet may have just fallen into old habits and lack the right challenge at work. An ambitious employee needs opportunities to continue challenging themselves, for example, through:

  • Expanded responsibilities and clear career path
  • Additional training within e.g. food and drink as a reward for good work
  • Clearer goals for the restaurant and the team as a whole
  • Collect and share feedback from your guests within the team.

“Investing in people who show commitment and are knowledgeable about your business is also great for the culture and your employer brand,” says Jenny Sandström at Adore Growth, who coaches restaurants in business development.

IMPACT ON OWN WORK

An additional challenge is to give more experienced staff greater influence over how you work. Invite your distinguished employees when you discuss menus, wine pairings, routines and how to treat guests.

Summary

Retaining staff involves many factors, and it’s not easy to create and maintain a culture where people thrive exceptionally well. Much of it is about personalities, how you treat people, and how you handle difficult situations, setting good examples of what is and isn't tolerated in the workplace.

To increase your chances of retaining staff longer, review how you:

  1. Offers staff good working conditions as a foundation
  2. Working with leadership, and how your leaders are perceived and appreciated by the rest of the staff
  3. Training new staff, and offering further training and coaching to those with more experience.
  4. Creating joy at work

 

Curious to learn more?

Get inspired by Aaron Silverman's Ted talk on how he built “the number one restaurant in America” by focusing on keeping staff longer:

To get info about the next part of our article series, Sign up for our newsletter:

  • Staff Shortages – Part 3: Recruit More Effectively (coming soon)

 

Did you see the previous article in the series? Here it is: