The Secret To Increasing Your Employee Retention Rate Comes From an Optimized Hiring Process— Here’s What We Suggest
Staffing in the restaurant industry is a complex endeavor. You’d think it’d be as simple as hiring someone—anyone—and training them.
While that sometimes works out, it’s not usually that easy, and making a hasty decision typically lands you right back in the hiring process.
I’m sure you can agree when I say your business depends on your employee retention strategies. Unchecked turnover keeps you in an endless staffing cycle that is time-consuming, expensive, and relentless.
But before you can obtain a solid employee retention rate, you need to find good employees, which means the first step to increasing your retention rates is optimizing your hiring process.
As a hospitality jobs marketplace, we’ve learned a thing or two about the unique hiring needs in the industry. We know how restaurant employers can hire smarter to ensure they bring on the right people who will stick around.
Get Competitive in Your Job Posts
Last year, we asked our worker audience what they look for when job searching. Three items were significantly more important to workers than anything else: pay, company culture, and growth opportunities.
Touching on these topics in your post is an easy way to build interest in your positions and increase your application count—giving you more options as you start scheduling interviews.
Additionally, always check out your competition on Poached. See what others in your area are paying or offering for the same roles you’re about to create an ad for.
With hiring as challenging as it is in hospitality, you must stay competitive to attract the right people for your team.
Keep Up Communications
Things move fast in the hospitality industry. Someone might apply for your job one day and get three job offers the next.
You need to be quick, which is why maintaining communication with applicants is essential. When a resume looks promising, jump on the opportunity to thank them for their interest and schedule an interview.
Keep up on communications throughout the hiring process—send interview reminders and follow-up messages outlining what to expect and any next steps. It supports a positive image of your brand and demonstrates your interest in a candidate.
It sounds like a lot to keep up on, but it really does go a long way.
To give yourself a leg up on your communication game, write some generic messages that you can quickly tailor between candidates. Also, in your Poached dashboard, our messaging feature makes it easy to communicate with candidates rapidly.
Formalize Your Interview Process
Hiring goes both ways. As much as you’re interviewing people to find a good fit, they’re also interviewing to see if your company would be a good fit—which is vital to increasing employee retention rates. Accepting a job offer needs to be a win-win for everyone involved.
This is why formalizing your interview process is so important. It maintains a level of professionality and helps create a great first impression.
When you have a system in place, you can more easily train managers and ensure they represent your company the way you want during the interview process.
Start by consulting an HR professional. They can help you document guidelines to keep yourself and your hiring managers following employment laws and provide resources.
You can also formalize your interview process by crafting standardized interview questions (in addition to role-specific questions) to help identify whether a person fits within your company culture and values.
It’s helpful to create a document to guide the interview, including the role, the candidate’s name, and the list of questions that should be asked. A standardized interview form ensures consistency, but it can also be used as a place to take notes and write a summary of the interview to put on file.
Use Poached Shifts to Increase Your Employee Retention Rate
We know that hospitality staffing is unique, so we created Poached Shifts to give employers flexibility and control missing in traditional hiring methods.
Hospitality employers need more options to fill in as needed and more time to see how someone works within their company and the role they are hiring for—it’s the only way to combat high turnover.
With Poached Shifts, you can take your time to find your next best hire without putting strain on your existing staff.
Quickly post a shift, or a series of shifts, for a role you’re looking to fill. Our network of vetted hospitality freelancers can book and work your shifts. If someone does a fantastic job, you’re free to offer them employment.
You can even view a list of worker profiles in your area that fit the role you’re looking for and ask them to join your roster. You can then book those workers for a series of shifts to find the best fit.
Poached Shifts is a fantastic way to combat the challenging hiring market. You can network with workers, see how they do on the job, get to know them a bit before offering employment—and your existing team gets needed help as you take time to make the right hire.
The best way to increase your employee retention rate is to hire smarter. With Poached Shifts, we’ve created a new way for you to do just that! Click here to learn more about getting started!