How should I train my restaurant employees?

Your employees are the face of your company and investing in them will improve how people view your business. According to Shift E-Learning, a site dedicated to creating online training modules, training employees can increase your employee productivity by over 200%. Proper training can also improve employee satisfaction, engagement, and customer experience.

The average cost of turnover per manager is $14,000 annually, and the restaurant industry has the highest turnover of any industry at 73%. Training can cost less than turnover and improve your bottom line as employees improve. Employees feel a greater sense of pride and responsibility for companies that invest in them. 

The benefits of employee training 

1. Improve employee performance 
2. Improve employee satisfaction and morale
3. Improve product or service consistency
4. Reduce employee turnover

Improve employee performance

Training employees will help them understand the requirements of the job and where their focus should be to keep service consistent. Having that knowledge helps motivate employees to perform better and to perform a set standard. 

There are several ways to motivate your staff which can help in increasing performance; however, in a study conducted by PwC, over 52% of millenials are looking for career growth and 35% are looking for direct training. According to Dynamic Signal, millennials currently make up 50% of the workforce and will grow to almost 75% by 2030. 

Improve employee satisfaction and morale

A happy employee will treat your customers better, try harder at work, and care more about how your business is run. Engaging an employee is an important step in increased satisfaction and can help improve your customer experience.

Improve Product or Service Consistency

When each employee is trained in the same manner, you get a more consistent process when handling customers. This means your employees and managers will go through the same steps to help an unhappy customer, set up and prepare food, and keep things clean and tidy. It can be frustrating for a customer if employees are trained in a different ways and treat them differently than another employee did.  

Reduce Employee Turnover

Proper onboarding and continuous training also helps lower employee turnover and improve employee output. Nine  out of ten restaurant managers started in the industry, you could be training your next operations manager. Consider using HR software to help keep track of which employee has completed each training item. 

How to Train Employees

The most important part of employee management and training is a proper onboarding process. During this process, employees should receive an employee training guide and an employee handbook. The handbook informs employees of your internal policies including dress code, meal breaks, and other important HR topics. This should be accompanied by an employee handbook acknowledgement form in case a dispute around the handbook ever arises.  

The employee training guide should outline the basic tasks for each position your business has. The guide allows employees to go through simple tasks without requiring a large amount of supervision. After the employee understands and reads the manual, a training session with your best employee should be set up for questions not covered in the manual and to assess the new employees skill.