Staffing
Successful businesses never lose focus on their people; they are far and away the most important assets of any organization. Without enough quality employees, even the best designed plans in the world will never come to fruition. The best managers are always recruiting, hiring, training, coaching, developing, promoting, and counseling. In the food service business, probably more than any other, turnover is constant, and if you don't look for employees today (when it appears you are fully staffed), you'll be short-staffed tomorrow, when two of your folks move to Phoenix, your best cook goes to the competition for fifty cents more an hour, and you catch your lead bartender giving away cocktails. On the reverse side of the dilemma, any organization that finds itself short-staffed with un-trained, poor-quality employees, is doomed to failure, or at best, mediocrity. Without enough good people you enter the fight with one hand tied behind your back.
1. Recruiting
Unless your firm is quite small, recruiting quality employees must be part of your every-day activities. Too often firms wait until they are short-staffed and then by knee-jerk reaction post their un-noteworthy classified ad alongside the rest of the food service enterprises desperate for help. I have managed operations in numerous restaurants, hotels and catering operations and almost everyone one of them was short of staff when I first joined them. And they all made the same excuses: We cannot maintain proper staffing because the local pool of talent is either too good for this job, or not good enough. Wrong! Your first step in overcoming this excuse is to not except it. You must make a commitment not to be short-staffed. If you do this, and employ a few of the suggestions discussed in this chapter, the staffing problem can be solved. I have done it 100's of times.
Attracting prospective employees does not solve your problem, but it is the first step in the solution. Here are a few tried-and-true techniques for attracting quality employees.
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