Tag: turnover

Posted on

Restaurant workforce management tips to reduce turnover

Restaurant Workforce Management

The restaurant sector sees one of the highest turnover rates, at  81.9 percent as of 2019. But proper restaurant workforce management practices can help managers move the needle in the right direction and motivate employees to work harder and stay longer. 

Even keeping restaurant employees a little longer can help restaurants out, according to Lil Roberts, CEO and founder of fintech company Xendoo. Lower turnover ensures that managers spend less time training new employees, which also ultimately saves money on training costs. 

Also read: Boost your managers’ effectiveness with an essential mobile clock-in tool

Here are six restaurant workforce management tips to help owners and managers keep good employees longer and keep them engaged with the job.

Find the right team members that will be consistent and dependable 

Most restaurant employees don’t understand that their job can become their career, Roberts said. Moving higher up the ladder at the restaurant or moving to a higher-tiered establishment can be a potential career path for them. 

Managers must more carefully consider how to hire right, Roberts said, suggesting that they create scorecards unique to the establishment that allow them to vet candidates for job duties, culture fit and job expectations. Conversely, when they make a bad hire, they should “find the door they came through and nail it shut,” she said. 

For example, if a restaurant sees many employees who are inconsistent about showing up to work on time, managers can consider how to add behavioral-based questions into the traditional interview process. 

Also read: Knock out the practice of buddy punching for good

These behavioral questions shouldn’t be too direct, which might ultimately give a manager a yes-or-no answer that isn’t helpful. The question “Are you organized?” would give a more generic answer versus something like “If I opened your closet and looked left, what would I see?” Roberts said. A more organized candidate might end up being a phenomenal host or hostess, she added, while someone with different strengths may be a better server. 

Talk to employees about their future and career goals 

People often see restaurants as a workplace with few benefits and low pay, but the reality is that benefits and compensation depend on what level of the restaurant someone works at, Roberts said. It also depends on the dining establishment itself. A waiter at a casual sit-down restaurant may value flexibility and making enough money to get by until they move on, but at a more family-oriented restaurant managers have the opportunity to have meaningful conversations with wait staff, Roberts said. 

Questions include: What are your life goals? Are you going to school? Would you like to use this job as a stepping stone to a career in the restaurant industry? 

High-end restaurants like Morton’s Steakhouse with good wait staff jobs will hire based off skills and years of experience, Roberts said, and managers at more casual eateries can use the appeal of these higher tiered restaurants to retain employees longer. They can teach these workers skills needed to work at a high-end restaurant and give them the experience years needed to be eligible for those jobs.

Also read: Employee performance shines bright with valuable, continuous shift feedback

Not only do employees benefit in this situation, but employers in the restaurant industry can save money by reducing turnover.

Keep temporary employees just a little longer 

Not every wait staff member wants a career in the industry, and that’s OK. Restaurants can still benefit from enticing them to stay a few months longer than they originally planned. Managers can do this by learning what drives workers, Roberts said. 

If someone wants a fun workplace, one way to keep them engaged is creating contests that keep them entertained and happy, she said. If someone wants stability in their schedules because of other responsibilities that limit when they can work at the restaurant, managers can honor that and give them the same days and times each week. 

“Then your life is easy, and theirs is easy,” Roberts said. “And it all stems from behavioral hiring and hiring the right people. If you’re a business owner and you’ve got a revolving door, you need to not say ‘Oh, the workforce is bad.’ You need to look internally and say, ‘What process can I change?’”

Restaurant Workforce Management

Invest in the latest technology

Restaurants have been notorious laggards when it comes to adopting new technology, according to Sam Zietz, CEO of payment technology company GRUBBRR, adding that the COVID-19 pandemic has in part exposed what companies have embraced technology versus those that have been stuck in the past. Fast-food establishments like Chipotle, Chick-fil-A and McDonald’s had invested in technology before the pandemic, and they’re leading the pack, he added. 

Technology that makes restaurant workforce management simpler falls in a broad range, from self-ordering kiosks that allow former cashiers to find more satisfying jobs at the restaurant to shift-swapping software that gives employees a simpler way to trade shifts. 

Meet employees where they are

Regarding communication, managers should consider employee preferences, whether that’s texting, calling, emailing or something else. It’s simple, and respecting employee preference goes a long way, Roberts said. 

“As long as the employee is doing their job and fitting the culture of the company and the responsibilities of the job, pick what matters most,” she said. “Don’t try to have your whole team that just represents you and the way you move through the world.”

Promote a culture where team members feel comfortable approaching management

It’s very important to make sure managers create a safe workplace, Roberts said. According to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data, hourly employees in the restaurant and retail industries are some of the most susceptible to harassment. Managers need to know how to deal with this.

“As owners, you have to train your manager team how to deal with these kinds of situations. The manager can’t just fly off the handle and yell at the employee who called an employee a name. That’s not going to solve anything,” Roberts said. “ You have to be very careful. One thing I will say is if a restaurant doesn’t have an HR person, find a fractional HR person that is HR certified who can help you handle that.”

Posted on

Common scheduling problems: Addressing staff turnover and improving retention

warehouse workers, hourly employees

Employee turnover is a big issue for many employers who hire hourly workers and can help contribute to common scheduling problems like understaffing or last minute schedule changes. And the industries with the highest average turnover are the ones that generally have more hourly workers: 

According to the 2018 Mercer U.S. Turnover Survey, which looked at 163 U.S. organizations, the three highest turnover industries are: retail & wholesale (60.5 percent average turnover), other manufacturing (26.7 percent) and consumer goods (21.5 percent). Meanwhile, those with the lowest turnover include life sciences (14.5 percent), insurance (15.5 percent) and banking/financial services (16 percent).

For businesses, turnover means spending more time and money on the recruiting, hiring and training process. And it also means that making schedules may get complicated when the staff list is constantly changing and when surprise absences come up after someone has quit.

But company leaders and managers are not powerless here. Here are some ways they can address high staff turnover and avoid some of those pesky, common scheduling problems that make managers’ jobs just a little more complicated.

Understand why employees leave

One reason for turnover is when an employee perceives inequitable treatment in the workplace, according to the Academy of Management, which published the paper “Inequity and Its Relationship To Turnover Among Hourly Workers” in 2017. 

The paper explored this relationship within the major production shops of the Boeing company and found that at best inequitable treatment leads employees to not be their most productive selves. At worst, they will leave the job. There are a few ways organizations can address this, the paper added, such as by improving working conditions if necessary and by paying attention to how supervisors treat workers and responding appropriately. 

The adage “employees leave managers, not companies” is a subject of debate among the HR community, but research does support it, said Robert Teachout, legal editor at consultancy XpertHR. The studies above are just a couple that show the potential negative effects of bad management practices.

Bad management practices include not being supportive of employees and being too harsh on employees for making certain mistakes. It boils down to a general lack of respect, Teachout said. Employees want the same basic things, he added: to be treated with respect and fairness, to do something that matters at their job and to get the opportunity to learn, grow, develop and be promoted. 

Teachout used the example of the type of manager that remembers all the mistakes an employee makes but never recognizes the good things they’ve done. When an employee is reviewed unfairly like this, that may contribute to them wanting to leave the job. 

Also read: Absence management is increasingly vital for managers to understand

Provide training for managers

From the manager’s point of view, many of them have been promoted because they were good at their job. But they don’t get training on certain people management skills upon getting that promotion, Teachout said. It’s up to the higher-ups at a company to prepare managers with the needed communication skills like how to engage with employees or how to have difficult conversations with them. 

This type of training is more important for front-line managers than for more mid-level managers, Teachout added. Front-line managers have a direct relationship with staff and have the opportunity to make or break employees’ experiences working for the company. 

“[They] can do more damage. That’s where toxic workplaces get created a lot of the time. The frontline managers don’t know what they’re doing, and you give them a checklist and therefore they don’t act like human beings,” Teachout said.

Lack of hours and flexibility

According to a 2017 FSG and Hart Research Associates survey, 83 percent of employees said if they had more control over their work schedules, they’d be more likely to stay at their current job. 

Also, 61 percent of those surveyed said they’ve struggled at work because they have a hard time making enough money to pay for basics like rent and food. More hours are especially helpful to these people. “Offering existing workers additional hours, rather than hiring new workers, may be one way to save on costs and improve employee satisfaction,” the survey conductors wrote in an article for Harvard Business Review.

There are several strategies to respond to these employee concerns, the article stated. For one, companies can better train managers to support their teams and build a better team/workplace culture. Secondly, employers can offer hourly employees more opportunities for job growth within the company. Third, as lack of flexibility is one of the most common scheduling problems, organizations can be more open to offering predictable schedules to employees.

Also read: Shift scheduling strategies can be improved through technology

 Reconsider existing workplace policies 

While employees do often leave bad managers, bad policies make it even easier for employees to quit, Teachout said. These other factors could include low pay, a lack of benefits or the lack of the opportunity for advancement. 

For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light the fact that many essential, hourly workers do not get paid sick leave or certain other benefits, Teachout said.

“One would think [that] out of self-interest alone, the restaurant and retail industries would look and say, even if we’re not required to provide paid sick leave, let’s provide paid sick leave. Because it only takes one person with an infectious disease coming in — because otherwise they don’t get paid — to shut down your business for months,” he said. “So isn’t it more cost-efficient to give them paid sick leave and say, ‘If you’re sick, stay home?’”

More than just putting policies in place, organizations must also train managers on how to apply these policies to the workplace equitably and fairly, he said. For example, a grocery store manager may allow through some flexible work policy for a woman to come into work and leave work a little early so that she can pick up her kid from childcare. If the manager does not allow the same for a father, that could be viewed as discrimination. Managers must make sure they are not violating the law when they’re dealing with company policies.  

“You want to create a workplace that people want to work at,” Teachout said. “If people feel this is a place they want to work at, they feel loyalty. They get a sense of teamwork, a huge piece of the puzzle that gets missed all the time. When people work as part of a team, they feel more loyalty and are more engaged than people working individually. ”

 

Posted on

How to improve manager effectiveness

on-demand workforce, benefits, freelancers, collaboration, communication

As the link between front-line workers and company leadership, managers have a key role in making a company run smoothly. But due to the nature of their job, they also have the potential to negatively impact business in terms of reputation, employee relations and business results. That’s why leaders must pay attention to how to improve manager effectiveness. 

Some 32 percent of employees do not feel that their immediate manager acts as a coach and mentor, according to a 2019 Mercer study.  Furthermore, 23 percent do not feel inspired by their boss and 29 percent do not think their manager evaluates their performance fairly.

Organizations may struggle with how to improve manager effectiveness, but it doesn’t have to be a struggle. Here are some basic guidelines for managers and company leaders to address this.

Also read: Employee communication how-to’s during a crisis

Advice for management

1. Build trust: Not cultivating team trust is where many teams fall apart, said Sari Wilde,  managing vice president at Gartner, whose areas of expertise include recruiting, current and future leadership, and critical skills and competencies.

Managers can build this trust several ways, she said.  They set out to build personal relationships with their team members. They can run their team in a way that embraces and celebrates individual differences.

Also read: How technology can help your employee engagement strategy

One exercise Wilde’s team uses to build trust and strengthen the relationships between employees and managers is called “Each One Teach One.” Each team member takes turns saying something they want to learn and something they’d be willing to teach someone else. This gives everyone the opportunity to get to know each other more and learn from one another.

2. Ask questions: Good managers don’t make assumptions about their employees’ work, Wilde said. They ask questions.

Ineffective managers may assume they know everything and tell employees how to do their jobs to a microscopic level. But it’s much more effective to ask questions, understand employee needs and realize the context in which they are working.  From there, they can break these assumptions or misconceptions and manage more accurately. 

Advice for leadership

1. Define effectiveness: Create key performance indicators for managers and specific, measurable objectives around those KPIs, said Andres Lares, managing partner at Shapiro Negotiations Institute. What do you want you managers to do, and why are those objectives important to the organization?

KPIs vary among supervisors. For sales managers, they include average sales per employee or this month’s sales compared to previous months. For other managers, they include evaluation results from team members and how many of them have earned promotions. 

Wilde also provided some KPIs for effective managers, including: skills preparedness, employee engagement, intent to stay at the organization and discretionary effort (how hard employees work).

2. Be patient: Have realistic expectations of how much time it will take to see results.

“If you want them to build trust with their team, they need the time to develop it and the time, from a daily or weekly standpoint to develop and manage their team,” Lares said. 

To help managers meet these expectations, they need resources and processes in place to help them, he added. Without offering the proper tools and formal processes, leaders are not allowing managers the necessities to actually achieve the organization’s goals. 

For example, at SNI, they implement manager field guides within the organization so that managers can use what they’ve learned in training. “This gives managers a tool to coach their people and establishes a cadence (time) for them,” Lares said. 

3. Rewards and recognition: Like any other employee who wants acknowledgement from their managers when they have done a good job at completing an important assignment, so do managers need that recognition from company leadership, according to Lares.

“Increasing their team’s productivity should be rewarded — for both the team and the manager,” he said, adding that this is much easier if KPIs have been defined and if managers are provided the resources to achieve these goals. 

Leaders continue to coach, train and invest in managers who improve. If managers don’t hit their KPIs, even with ample time, tools and processes available, there’s a possibility that the job isn’t a good fit for them. Leaders can potentially change their roles and see if that fits their skillset better. 

Effective managers will ultimately benefit the organization, Wilde said. “When you have a great manager, they are much more likely to create great managers underneath them,” she said. Managers should be good role models for the people below them at the organization. One way to recognize good managers is by assigning them high potential, highly dedicated team members. The manager will benefit, and the employee can learn under them and go on to become another effective manager  for the organization.  

The risk of not addressing ineffective managers

While how to improve manager effectiveness may seem difficult, it’s important to offset the many potential negative consequences of bad management. The axiom “people leave managers, not companies” exists for a reason. 

Ineffective managers may drive down team performance, limit creativity and risk-taking on the team and make employees want to leave, Wilde said.  As the author of the book “The Connector Manager: Why Some Leaders Build Exceptional Talent — and Others Don’t,” she’s found several reasons people leave managers. 

Some managers have an “always on” approach with the team, she said, meaning that they give ongoing feedback to employees so excessively that employees feel suffocated and stifled. “Always on” managers want to be the person to give advice, answer their questions and tell them what to do — even if they don’t know the answer. They may be trying to help, but being involved in every aspect of an employee’s work can be detrimental.

Managers aren’t helpless if their current management style isn’t working. They can work to improve their shortcomings and offset these potential negative consequences and ultimately  build a stronger team, making their organization strong as well.

Posted on

An employee engagement formula that cuts stress in a turnover-plagued industry

employee retention, engagement

Turnover on the front lines is always a hiring challenge. But in the world of drug development, it can directly affect how quickly and safely drugs get to market.

Clinical research associates, or CRAs, are the pharmaceutical industry’s front line workers. These associates are in charge of making sure trials run smoothly, which includes constant travel and high-stakes tasks. “It’s a very stressful job,” says Domantas Gurevicius, director of clinical monitoring for Advanced Clinical, a contract research organization, also known as a CRO, based in Deerfield, Illinois, which runs trials for pharmaceutical companies.

Before a trial starts, the clinical research associates have to be sure site staff have all the equipment and training they need. Then once it begins, they are responsible for gathering and uploading all trial data, ensuring protocols are followed, monitoring patient safety, and making sure patients and staff have everything they need for the trial to be a success.

Each clinical research associate manages 10 to 15 trial sites, which means they are constantly on the road and are often the only representative from the contract research organization that trial staff will engage with. That means that when staffers have questions or complaints or require additional support, they turn to the clinical research associate for help.

retention engagementThe constant pressure, isolation and travel leads to a lot of burnout. Despite relatively high salaries, industry turnover rates among the associates is more than 25 percent, creating a constant risk for their employers and pharmaceutical companies. When these workers quit — or get recruited away by competitors — it can cause trial delays, and force other clinical research associates to pick up the slack, which creates a ripple effect of frustration and attrition.

It’s impossible to eliminate these risks, but Advanced Clinical has employed a number of tools and engagement strategies to keep its turnover rates at less than half of industry averages.

Part of the Team From Day One

Engagement starts with a multi-day onboarding process. The focus is less on paperwork and more on introducing the new associates to staff, sharing company success stories and helping them build a network in the organization. “It lets them see where they fit in the company, and why people love to work here,” Gurevicius said.

Once on the job, managers use a number of tools to make the associates feel connected and heard, including regular one-on-one calls to check up on trial progress and make sure they have what they need.

“You can talk about whatever is on your mind, whether it’s about the study, regulations or something going on at a specific site,” said Wes Boynton, a senior clinical research associate who has been with Advanced Clinical for six years. “They make it feel like a safe environment to talk about anything.”

This open communication doesn’t just make associates feel good. It helps the company constantly improve, Gurevicius said. The associates often have the most relevant information because they spend so much time at the sites, he said.

For example, in a recent call, an associate pointed out that the company’s database for tracking site staff had to be accessed by someone internally, even though the associates have the most up-to-date knowledge about the site. Gurevicius agreed and provided all of the associates with their own access to more efficiently manage that content. “We leverage their experiences so we can improve,” he said.

NPS for Engagement

Managers also use a number of practical tools to keep clinical research associates engaged, including an online expense reporting platform so they don’t have to scan every receipt, and a messaging app for frequent check-ins that asks associates to rate their day on a 1 to 10 scale. “It’s like a net promoter score for engagement,” said Steve Matas, senior vice president of strategic solutions for Advanced Clinical. The ratings give Matas an instant pulse on employee engagement, and allows him to identify issues before associates start looking for another job. “Anything under a 7 prompts an immediate call,” he says.

To minimize the burden of travel, clinical research associates are assigned sites based on their home location, and the company tries to limit on-site days to eight per month. Occasionally that number will go over due to site set-up or because a site has some issues, but in those cases, managers check in to make sure they aren’t overwhelmed. “We find out if they need extra help, and we try to push that number down for the next month,” Gurevicius said.

It is a low number of site-days for the industry, but it pays off because people stay, Matas said. When associates are overworked they quit, which puts more pressure on other clinical research associates and negatively impacts site productivity while their replacements ramp up.

“They make sure we aren’t stressed out,” Boynton said. The associates also have a weekly group call to discuss their trials and share best practices, and a dedicated administrator for all the trial sites who they can tap if they are having difficulties. “It helps to know you have someone you can rely on at the home office.”

All of these methods are paying off. Advanced Clinical’s turnover for clinical research associates is 10 percent, part of which is due to promotions. “They see opportunities for growth here, and that keeps them around,” said Gurevicius, who began his own career as an associate at the company. “We don’t ever want to hold someone back from taking the next step.”

Whether a company is hiring clinical research associates or parking attendants, or any other front line position, the key to engagement is investing in your people and showing them you care, he added. “When you build relationships and give your people a voice they won’t want to leave.”