The Return to Hospitality: How To Enhance Employee Onboarding

After several years of stressful, disruptive labor shortages for restaurants across the country, the leisure and hospitality industry recently added 128,000 new jobs, leading all sectors.

Hiring new staff is exciting, especially after years of severe understaffing. When welcoming new hires to your team, don’t underestimate the importance of onboarding, as 69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years when properly onboarded. Additionally, organizations with a formal onboarding process experience 50% higher productivity for new hires.

When new hires are properly trained, they feel more confident in their roles and the companies they work for can maximize safety, quality and compliance. To achieve this, restaurants and other food businesses should:

Adopt integrated digital solutions

Tech solutions can improve all aspects of your operations, making everything from budgeting to planning, forecasting, purchasing and inspection more efficient, accurate and streamlined. Tech tools offer many significant benefits, helping your brand save time and money, reduce waste and streamline operations.

Additionally, an integrated tech stack can help you gain a holistic view of your entire business, whether you have one location or dozens. Easy-to-understand reports provide key information that enables operators to make more informed, data-driven decisions.

Digital tools require an investment but offer tremendous ROI. These solutions help improve security, efficiency, transparency, accuracy and consistency. These positive changes drive key performance indicators, including higher sales, profits, customer loyalty and employee retention.

Prioritize security, quality and compliance

Each year, 48 million (1 in 6) Americans become ill from contaminated food or drink. Don’t let food safety violations happen in your business!

Prioritize a food safety culture where all employees work together to maximize safety and minimize risk. Establish food safety protocols and ensure all employees follow them. Provide employees with the right tools to ensure food safety, such as B. Bluetooth sensors that can detect when the temperature rises above safe temperatures upon entering, and state-of-the-art food thermometers that ensure food is cooked to the right temperature.

It’s not enough to just follow the right food safety protocols yourself, you need to be sure that all of your suppliers are also following the strictest food safety standards. If you’re following all the right protocols, but a supplier is shipping compromised products, your customers (and your business) are at risk.

Food safety and quality assurance must be maintained from the point of origin of each product to its preparation and serving to the consumer. Conduct regular audits of all suppliers and ensure they have proper and up-to-date safety certifications. When you have multiple suppliers—like most food companies do—it can be overwhelming to manually track and organize those important safety certifications. Tech tools make this ongoing process easier and more accurate.

Modernization of training efforts

Some food brands, particularly smaller companies, believe they don’t need a formal training or onboarding process, or they rely on outdated training programs that have been in place for many years. Swap out your outdated (and/or informal) training programs for something more modern, relevant, and tech-driven.

Add other interactive technical elements to your training program, e.g. B. Microlearning platforms and gamification to make the information more engaging and memorable. Complement online training efforts with a live trainer who shares best practices, answers questions, and role-plays with your employees to keep lessons sustainable.

Don’t just tell the employees What to do but to explain Why The rules are so important. Employees are more likely to comply when they understand why the rules apply.

Remember that training never officially ends. Provide ongoing training opportunities so employees on all shifts can keep tabs on important information. Digital tools not only provide important information during initial onboarding, but are also essential to reinforce instruction, provide updates, and send reminders throughout each employee’s tenure.

Working to keep employees

Did you know that the average restaurant worker changes jobs every 56 days and that losing a front-line worker costs a restaurant an average of $5,864?

Digital solutions can help you retain employees as these technologies make their jobs a lot easier. Tech tools can streamline tedious administrative tasks like inspections and inventory, so your employees can spend more time doing the things they enjoy, like cooking. B. cooking delicious meals and interacting with guests.

Offer competitive pay, attractive benefits, opportunities for growth, mentoring and a supportive culture. And don’t underestimate the “seemingly small” gestures that can make a big difference to your team. Thank your employees often and sincerely. At staff meetings, praise them for going above and beyond. Write a thank you note. Give bonuses and small gifts. promotion from within.

Be inspired by innovative brands

It might sound like something out of a sci-fi novel, but White Castle has a robot operating its deep fryer. Dominos has delivered its first pizza by drone. KFC uses facial recognition technology that recognizes returning visitors and customizes their experience based on their previous orders and food preferences. And Panera Bread uses geofencing to track each customer’s location so staff can get their order to their vehicle promptly.

Your organization may not be able to afford robots in your kitchen or drone deliveries just yet, and that’s okay. But as tech solutions become more affordable, accessible, and user-friendly for food businesses of all sizes and budgets, it’s clear that technology is improving many aspects of our industry. Digital solutions are no longer “nice to have” luxury items. They’re a necessity for brands that consistently prioritize great and safe experiences.

By researching and integrating new technologies, you can provide better service, safer food, and a more enjoyable dining experience. All of this will help you better meet (and exceed) your customers’ expectations.