1 in 3 Americans have their first job experience in restaurants and 6 in 10 adults have worked in restaurants at some point. Unfortunately, finding the right workers can be a challenge.
Today, restaurant brands can not afford to have the added challenge of dealing with poor hiring decisions that can be prevented.
1Huddle is the only competitive gaming platform that onboards new hires faster, upskills better, and fires up employees across the restaurant industry. Here are the 7 best practices that we see employed by leading restaurant brands across the globe.
1. Gamify your job ads
Boring job ads just aren’t enough anymore. Instead of the typical job ad that begs people to apply, why don’t you launch an educational campaign to challenge applicants to learn more about how cool your brand is? You can launch trivia or gamified ads to educate potential new hires and increase the likelihood that a new hire isn’t just randomly applying but knows a bit more about the brand before they hit submit.
2. Speed up the selection Process
This may seem obvious, but too often restaurants do not put the right people, time, and money behind the process of recruiting, interviewing, evaluating, and selecting. Restaurants are a dynamic industry, and candidates don’t want to sit around and wait for your answer, especially if you’re a restaurant competing with other brands in your market. Improve the likelihood that a candidate will accept the role you’re hiring for by being quick with your selection so a candidate doesn’t just move on to other opportunities.
3. Always be hiring
The future of work is here. The jobs that make up the majority of work in the restaurant industry are going to continue to change rapidly. This means that you must have a continuous hiring model built into your culture to make sure you are always on the lookout for new hires.
4. Employee referral program
Data shows some of the best hires can come directly from an existing team member. No better time than now to launch an internal employee incentive program to reward team members that connect your brand with new applicants.
5. Pay a living wage
If you think raising wages is costly, compare that to what a weak recruiting pipeline will cost you! Failing to attract new talent can hit you hard (more recruiting costs, more interview costs), so it’s better for your brand to be proactive in raising wages to better compete and take care of your people.
6. Promote your training program
Get to know your people! The manager in any organization plays an important role 43% of new employees that turnover did it within their first 90 days. Now there may be a variety of reasons why, but one thing is for sure; having a strong, efficient onboarding program will put new hires in a better position to be successful and position a brand to onboard any new future hires.
7. Promote profiles of success stories
A subtle way to promote new job opportunities is by highlighting your best team members and their stories. Take a break from that Instagram post of tonight’s special and instead post something from one of your team members talking about who they are or why they work at your brand. You never know who’s watching.
We are proud to work with so many leading restaurant brands across the globe. The work we all do will create a more powerful, more equitable, more connected and more fired up workforce.
If you want to learn more about how 1Huddle can help power your workforce (and reduce employee turnover). Try out our game-based platform here.
