In current times, restaurants are experiencing more employee turnover than ever before. With all the fluctuations in your team members, it’s important that you stay on top of training, even when things feel hectic. Without properly training restaurant employees, your restaurant’s reputation will suffer. You need training strategies that are simple, straightforward, and get the key points and concepts across to new hires.
Don’t immediately get discouraged if your new hires aren’t picking up the ins and outs of the way your restaurant works as quickly as you’d like them to. It doesn’t mean that they’re unqualified. Usually, it’s just a sign that you need to invest time into giving your new employees the attention they deserve. Properly training your employees is important to make sure that your restaurant runs smoothly and successfully. This is the key to helping your business succeed.
Your longtime employees shouldn’t be left out of training procedures, though. Keeping everyone on the same page is essential to prevent miscommunications and confusion. There are a lot of changes going on currently in the restaurant industry. Being clear about what these changes mean for your employees is important.
Tips for Training Restaurant Employees
Pay your employees for training. Not only is this common courtesy, in most areas it’s actually illegal not to pay your employees for the time they spend in training. Make sure that you communicate clearly to your employees that they’re being compensated for their time. This is important in cultivating a culture of transparency and mutual respect.
Plan your training well. While this may sound like a no-brainer, loosely-planned training is usually completely ineffective. Plus, it’s a waste of your time and your employees’ time, too. Make a list of all of the information and skills that need to be covered and taught. It may help you to break down the information by job–for example, waitresses, hostesses, chefs, sous-chefs, and busboys.
The Perfect Staff Meeting
You now have an outline of the information you need to get across during your staff meeting. It’s time to talk about the most effective ways for your employees to learn these new concepts. Sitting in a meeting room or simply demonstrating the proper kitchen procedures is a simple way to teach. However, it’s not the most useful way for your employees to retain new information.
Assign mentors to new staff members. Forming positive relationships between team members is key to building a great restaurant culture. Assign new employees mentors that work in the same position they do. By doing this, you give them someone to turn to with questions or for guidance.
Act out restaurant scenarios. Making sure that your employees know how to respond to typical restaurant scenarios is a key part of training. Inappropriate reactions to rude guests, ingredient shortages, and more can damage your restaurant’s reputation. Make sure that you compile a list of some of the most frequent scenarios like this that your restaurant employees could encounter. Throw in ones that have been problematic in the past, too. Acting out these situations gives your employees a sense of what’s expected of them.
We hope that these tips for training restaurant employees were useful to you. Best of luck!
