How to Reduce Turnover Through Restaurant Staff Training

As any restaurateur knows, the restaurant industry tends to operate in cycles, and the same is true for employee turnover trends. In fact, turnover trends operate in such a predictably cyclical way that numbers from earlier in the year can be used to predict future turnover numbers.

As we at Upserve found in our Restaurant Sales and Turnover Forecast 2018, “the first three months of the year serve as an indicator of annual average turnover rates for restaurants.” In 2017, that number was 44% in Q1 and guess what—the year’s average was also 44% turnover.

That’s a pretty big number, right? The food and beverage industry is notorious for having high turnover rates, but that doesn’t mean that, as a restaurant owner or manager, there’s nothing you can do about it. Quite the opposite, actually. One key element you have plenty of control over is your employee training program—it plays a pretty big role in whether or not your staff sticks around in both the short and long term.

Recommended Reading: Restaurant staff turnover has nothing to do with pay

Curious about how you can make your training program work for you? Here’s how you can use it to reduce your turnover numbers and make sure your customers see the same smiling faces year after year.

Why Restaurant Staff Training Matters in the First Place

Some people still operate with the old school thought that all you need is servers with plenty of experience and everything will take care of itself. Wrong. Even if you have the most experienced staff around, there are still certain things about your specific bar or restaurant and the way that you do things that will be brand new to everyone. Step one is familiarizing them with the ways of your unique restaurant and the expectations that you’ll have of their service, and that starts with employee training.

Using Restaurant Staff Training to Reduce Turnover

In addition to setting expectations from the very start, developing a smart restaurant employee training program allows you to make the most of your staff’s individual strengths and assist them in improving their weaknesses from the very beginning. Besides initial training for new hires, you should also provide ongoing training.

Recommended Reading: How to Empower Your Restaurant Staff

As Restaurant Den explains, “if your employees feel that they’re working a dead-end job with little room for advancement, chances are they’’ leave you sooner rather than later,” likely the moment something better comes along. Don’t force your employees to look elsewhere for opportunities—build them into your training program.

Use Systems That Help

If you’re getting nervous that building a training program from the ground up is too daunting for you to take one, think again. There are plenty of systems out there designed to help you do just that. There are POS systems like Upserve’s Breadcrumb POS system that features staff training webinars that can save you tons of time and 7shifts’ scheduling software that makes plotting out when trainings will take place as easy as can be. You’re not alone out there, promise!