Effective Ways to Hire and Manage Quality Catering Employees

How can you keep great employees at your catering company? Well, a study conducted by The U.S. Department of Labor reveals that the highest-valued employees seek the following benefits from a job:

1. Career development and growth opportunities.

2. Regular feedback about their performance.

3. Opportunities to make direct contributions and be recognized for doing so.

4. Flexible work schedules that recognizes the need to balance work and outside life.

5. A good salary or wage and an opportunity to increase it over time.

6. Benefits tailored to their individual needs.

How to engage employees to increase retention

The primary purpose of engaging your employees is to cultivate a high work ethic and a commitment to your business goals, standards, and expectations. To ensure such engagement, as an employer you need to pay close attention to communication; following are five strategies.

1. Be clear about your company’s goals, mission, vision, and brand; and communicate this information frequently to your staff.

2. Regularly communicate how well an employee is doing and how well your company is doing. The latter is important if you want your employees to feel like they are part of a team with a shared mission, vision, and goals.

3. Recognize different people are motivated in different ways. Seek to understand what motivates each employee.

4. Ask questions and listen to employees. Ask them what they need and how they are doing. Also, be prepared to follow up. If you ask an employee if they need anything to make their job more manageable and they tell you they need, for example, sharper knives—act on this quickly.

5. Empower your staff to do their best with good leadership, resources, training, and feedback.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me directly at [email protected].

Mike Rosman will be teaching a half-day session on QSR/Drop Off Corporate Catering. Click here for more information.