Employee turnover in the hospitality industry hovers around 74 percent, making staffing a perennial challenge for operators. While employee compensation and benefits are important to attracting staff, they may not have as much power as more human elements of employee retention. That came through during a panel discussion at the National Restaurant Association Show earlier this year, where restaurant operators with higher-than-average retention rates spoke about how they find and keep talent. As Foodservice Director reported about the discussion, operators emphasized the importance of figuring out your message before recruiting, having a people-first mentality, and offering a clear career path. Operators who do this know and understand their brand purpose and message before hiring, ensure employees know what the business stands for, and illustrate how each employee’s role contributes to that message. They lift up the team over the individual, taking politics out of the equation by supporting each person’s value to the team. They also prioritize hiring from within and showing each person a roadmap of where the job can lead.
In a recent podcast, Ed Daugherty, executive campus chef/regional director of dining at the University of Tulsa, demonstrated how he uses all of these approaches – and has achieved 71 percent employee retention as a result. During a multi-part candidate interview process, he focuses on the organization’s core values and on finding candidates who possess related traits: friendliness, teachability, and a “willingness to do the next right thing” over cooking skills, for example. As soon as an employee is hired, they are wrapped in the message that they belong there – through pre-shift huddles, promotion of employee wins, the sharing of staff ideas and feedback with management, the celebration of employee milestones, and the use of multiple communication channels to share ideas and promote staff successes. Each month, managers nominate employees of the month for a random gift drawing and must explain why the person is valuable to the team. Their comments are shared with the employee whether they win or not – and winners come from across the larger foodservice operation at the university, highlighting roles and opportunities that employees can consider in their longer-term career plan.

If it seems like unionization is becoming more widespread among hourly restaurant employees right now, new research confirms its appeal: According to 2024: The State of the Hourly Workforce, a survey of over 1,500 hourly workers and 550 managers in North America, 27 percent of hourly workers hope their organizations will unionize. Poor employee morale and retention are at the root of this, with just half of respondents believing their employers care about creating a positive work environment and 41 percent reporting that they have seen no workplace culture improvements in the past year. If any of this sounds familiar, it might help to understand what hourly workers value in an employer – as well as the reasons driving the appeal of unionization. Among the top aspects they appreciate, according to the findings, are their coworkers (69 percent), the work itself (60 percent) and schedule flexibility (52 percent). Recognition, early pay and shift flexibility also encourage people to remain in their jobs. On the other hand, low wages, poor benefits, poor work-life balance and lack of schedule flexibility are driving workers’ efforts to unionize. Improving just one of these factors, specifically schedule flexibility, could have a significant impact on employees’ job satisfaction – yet less than 20 percent of managers surveyed report using automated scheduling programs, instead using inefficient methods like calling or texting to fill shifts. If you’re looking to improving staff morale and retention, where might you make incremental improvements to your culture in ways that could have a positive impact?