Five Ways to Use Training
to Minimize Employee Turnover
By Jim Sullivan
T
30
he foodservice industry’s annual hourly employee
churn averages 100 percent. Yes, you read that right.
The number is obscene and embarrassing, yet many
foodservice operators merely shrug it off as “the price of doing
business.” That perspective is shortsighted and wrong. I contend
this 100 percent turnover rate is unsustainable for continued
growth, untenable for manager tenure and unnecessary for
forward-thinking operators. Simply put, if your labor strategy is
focused solely on how to get the most out of people while paying
them as little as possible, you’re playing a zero-sum game. So
let’s discuss how training relates to turnover and share a few best
demonstrated practices to better engage and retain our new and
veteran team members.
Culture first, process second. “The only thing we
have is one another. The only competitive advantage we have is
the culture and values of the company,” said Howard Schultz,
outgoing CEO of Starbucks. “Anyone can open up a coffee store.
We have no technology, no patent. All we have is the relationship
around the values of the company and what we bring to the
customer every day. And we all have to own it.” The goal of an
effective training program is to instill and align company culture,
not simply to infuse a process. Process can be looked up. Identify
the five or 10 keystone cultural behaviors that all employees
should share like empathy, teamwork, customer service, commu-
nication, etc. and redesign your training program to reinforce
those skills. Determine first what you stand for and then what
you should do to stand out.
Questions are the answers. Brand execs could ask
themselves a simple question to help solve the turnover crisis: “What
kind of company would have employees fighting to get into it, not
fighting to stay out of it?” At Facebook, candidates are asked the
following question: “On your very best day at work – the day you
come home and think you have the best job in the world – what
did you do that day?” Document the responses and incorporate
those behaviors into your supervisors’ and teammates’ development
program.
Stay Interviews. Ten years ago, the
concept of “exit interviews” was all the rage, a
process designed to assess why employees leave
companies. Roy Hinojosa, a division president
at Golden Corral, has a different perspective:
“I think it’s much more important to know, at
regular intervals, why our people are staying
with us. The more we understand what’s most valuable to them, the
better we can provide more of that, and keep them with us longer.
That’s why regular ‘stay’ interviews, to me, are much more valuable
than an exit interview.”
Educate, don’t lecture. Take a good hard look at the
tone and timbre of your operation’s training materials. Is the
“voice” you’re using in your videos, e-learning and position manuals
patriarchal in tone? Uncertain? Read a couple of pages out loud.
You’ll know the answer.
Fix the disconnect. Do you sit new hires down with a
GM who pumps them up for 45 minutes about how awesome the
company is and then sends them off to HR for a few hours of paper-
work that commences with a detailed checklist of all the ways they
might get fired? Think through the process that new team members
experience and make certain it’s positive, welcoming and engaging
with no mixed messages. Ask employees who just went through
onboarding with you what they liked best and least about it.
Many foodservice brands have grasped the competitive
advantage of transforming training in order to transform their
teams, which transforms their guest service. And they’re seeing
lower turnover, higher tenure and happier customers as a result.
Simply put: from here on out, make hiring the most important
decision. S
JIM SULLIVAN is a popular speaker at leadership conferences
worldwide. You can get his training catalog of resources at
Sullivision.com and follow him on LinkedIn, YouTube or
Twitter @Sullivision.