STAFF: 11 Ways to Drive the Best Job Candidates to Your Restaurant
We talk a lot about how to retain your best employees, but even before that you need to find and select them from a dwindling pool of job candidates. So how can you find the best of the best? We look at general hiring best practices, tips for selecting FoH and BoH, and your administrators.
DID YOU KNOWS…
Carbs, Calories & ABV in Beer
Summer’s just about here and thus begins people’s search for their “beach body.” That often means counting calories, limited carbs, and watching booze intake. And while the idea of a “healthy beer” is a bit of an oxymoron, this handy infographic by VinePair lists the calorie count, carb total, and ABV for America’s best-selling beers. Might be a handy image to share with guests.
Global Brand Ranking
According to WPP and Kantar’s second annual BrandZ Top 75 Most Valuable Global Retail Brands report, Amazon is by far the biggest retail brand in the world. With a brand value of $315.5 billion, Amazon accounts for nearly a quarter of the combined value of the top 75 brands, edging out second-placed Alibaba by nearly $200 million. Two food & bev companies made the top 10. Can you guess which?
Success at a High Price
Since the Abu Dhabi United Investment Group acquired Manchester City in 2008, the club has been transformed from mid-table mediocracy to a global footballing powerhouse. City’s success has always been eyed with suspicion though as it wouldn’t have been possible without the financial muscle of its Emirati owners. As the following chart shows, no other club has spent nearly as much money on transfers over the past 11 years as City has under its new ownership.
SEPARATE, NOT EQUAL
Why it matters to you: Equality of opportunity should guide your approach to developing and promoting staff.
Anytime the conversation turns to race, people go scurrying for the exits. That’s why media articles like this one published on Mother Jones are really frustrating. They accuse the California restaurant market of implicit bias as exhibited by a pay disparity by race. On the surface that sounds horrible, and the statistics kinda bear that out. Nationally in the industry, 22% of white workers earn a living wage, while 19% people of color earn that much. However in California, 45% of white servers earn above that line and only 28% of people of color achieve it. Here’s the problem: there is good news surrounded by terrible news in this.
The good news is, in California, people of color are out performing the national average by 9%; bad news is they are 70% of the employees in the industry. The national average for whites is 26% less than California white employees, almost three times the success. That’s clearly out of whack. None of this accounts for the fact that most fast food workers and recent immigrants across the industry are predominantly people of color. This distinctly skews the results, but the problem is real. The rub of course is, good news or bad, our industry can ill-afford to ignore anyone that is qualified.
And California being an extreme example of inequality is shocking on two fronts. First, because it’s just plain wrong and, secondly, because as the king of the blue states, California is supposed to lead in equality and fairness. It just goes to show you that social issues like this are complicated and a 1500 word essay on a news website can’t hope to convey the full story behind them. We all have to work harder, not just to create a work environment with equality of opportunity, but also to staff our restaurants with qualified candidates, no matter what their ethnicity.
[Source: Mother Jones]
KEEP GOING [Song]
Why it matters to you: Retaining GM’s may be the most important thing you focus on this year.
If you are reading this and you are a field manager, especially a GM, then you already understand the intense stress your job creates. The full-service dining segment is headed for a nexus that might not end well for many of us.
Start with the challenges associated by staffing. The lowest unemployment rate in five decades continues to sustain, causing real strain on the managers called upon to fill the gaps and has driven turnover rates in our industry to 120%. Among general managers that number is now 40%. How many of you are helping out at another restaurant in your group as they search for a new GM? High GM turnover is the single most deleterious outcome of low unemployment that our industry could endure.
GM’s “run” the business; heck, in many cases, they ARE the business. If we do simple math, there are 660k restaurants in this country. If half of them have someone with the title GM that means the industry will need an additional 132k qualified GM candidates in the next 12 months. Given that it costs upwards of $14,000 to replace a GM, it just makes sense to focus on that position with both improved compensation and infrastructure support. It’s just plain cheaper to keep them than it is to replace them. In fact, any operator that reduces their GM turnover by 10% would be saving hundreds of thousands of dollars, not to mention improving their operations by preserving continuity in leadership. So, don’t forget this most important position when you are addressing your retention efforts. The whole of your business is definitively in the balance.
[Source: FSR Magazine]
