Employee Retention
Keeping employees happy, engaged, and motivated is a full-time job. In many modern workplaces, organizations endeavor to reduce the manager to employee ratio, but in restaurants, this isn’t usually practical. Reducing Employee turnover can be a critical component in operating a successful restaurant that often gets missed. At Zira we hope to unlock the potential of your workforce, and that includes keeping them part of your team for the long run.
Below we’ve compiled some of the policies Zira customers have activated in their restaurants, proven to positively impact employee retention. Ultimately, the goal is to save on the high cost of turnover and training new staff and replacements.
1. Set your employees up for success
Reducing turnover starts from day one. Getting your new staff off on the right foot has shown a high correlation of lift to improve retention.
When a new employee is added, Send Onboarding Package
This automation runs whenever a new employee is added to Zira. Most restaurants send a message to the entire team introducing the new employee in the entire team on Zira’s restaurant group chat.
Sending training videos and other materials so the employee always has them handy is essential to avoid early cracks from forming in the employer-employee relationship.
2. Create a Culture of Motivation and Congratulations
Punitive styles of management are proven to increase productivity a little, but engagement and gamification, as we wrote about here, often see an upside of nearly 70% in terms of employee output.
If an employee is on-time for all shifts in a week, give Netflix reward.
The easiest way to motivate your employees is through transparency. Showing you are willing to give them something unexpected for their performance is a great way to show that this metric and their success matter to you.
Anniversary Celebrations
Let the whole team and the team member whose anniversary it is, know that you value their time and their loyalty to your brand.
3. Scheduling
As usual, a lot of employee morale issues come down to the day-to-day interactions you and your managers have with your staff. In many cases, the schedule is the tangible connection point between what your business needs and what your employees are asking for.
Increase Value of Employee Time Preferences in Schedule Logic
In Zira, adding more weight to a specific scheduling rule is as simple as changing that rule’s priority on your Scheduling Logic page.
Giving more priority to employee time preferences means that your employees are more likely to get the shifts they want.
Better schedules for employees reduces employee turnover and increases morale.