14 October 2024 - 4 min read
Megan Lipscombe
Head of Marketing
The challenge of retaining staff in the hospitality industry is nothing new, but over the past few years it’s become increasingly difficult to find and recruit quality staff; and so retaining the team members you already have has become more important than ever.
According to CIPD, more than a third of those in hospitality have been in their role for less than a year. So, how do you overcome industry wide challenges to buck the trend and improve staff retention in your business?
As a team with our roots firmly in hospitality, at Rotaready we’re all about people. Our cloud-based rota software is trusted by leading brands across the UK, and we’ve had many conversations with our customers about how they go about maximising retention across their business.
In this article, we’ll explore how to improve employee retention in your hospitality business, and provide actionable insights and practical tips designed to enhance overall business performance. By the time you’ve finished reading, you should have a clearer idea of how to go about reducing staff turnover and retaining your star employees.
High staff turnover goes way beyond just the financial implications. The time and effort it takes to recruit and train new employees takes management away from what they should be doing, and being short-staffed adds extra pressure on existing team members (making it more likely that they might decide to look elsewhere).
Whether it’s down to not having enough people, or because newer staff members will take time to learn your processes and brand values well enough to deliver the experience your customers expect, high staff turnover is also inevitably linked to a drop in customer service; and with declining standards comes declining footfall. It’s also incredibly frustrating to recruit a promising new team member, invest in their training and development, and then have someone else enjoy the benefits of your work when they move on.
Ultimately, the direct monetary value is likely to be a key motivator for many hospitality operators. Centric HR says that employers should expect to pay around 16% of the employee’s salary to replace them. When you’re doing this on a regular basis, it has a huge impact on the bottom line.
Recognised as a diverse and vibrant industry to work in, there are some unique challenges for those operating businesses in the hospitality sector when it comes to creating an attractive job proposition for talented candidates. When 42% of those who join the industry leave within the first 90 days, there is clearly a lot to be done to make hospitality a more attractive and sustainable career option.
Working in hospitality can mean long, irregular or unsociable working hours for staff. Due to the nature of the business, it’s not always easy to take regular breaks, either. This can put many off applying to work in the industry, and is often cited as a reason that people don’t choose to stay in the industry long term.
Hospitality can be physically and emotionally demanding. Staff are often on their feet for long periods, many working in hot kitchens, while others work in customer-facing positions and are thus expected to maintain brand standards at all times. It can be tough, especially when staff feel that their efforts aren’t being recognised.
When not supported properly by their employers, many staff working in hospitality experience burnout – a condition brought about by chronic stress. Sufferers can experience exhaustion, resentment towards their job and ultimately become less able to perform well in their role.
In cases where compensation doesn’t match the effort and skill required to do a job, employees can quickly become dissatisfied. If they’re dissatisfied, they are unlikely to carry out their duties to the best of their ability. And if they’re struggling financially, they’ll almost certainly be feeling anxious and stressed before they even get to work.
With cost of living and mortgage rates high and rental properties often being overpriced yet still snapped up, their personal circumstances will have a huge impact on their state of mind and attitude. While many staff will happily accept a lower salary in return for a better work-life balance, the Retaining Britain’s Hospitality Workers report still showed low pay and benefits and the second most stated reason for people leaving the industry.
Hospitality is often seen as an industry with limited career options. Where there are no clear career progression paths, employees can feel unappreciated, unmotivated, and not as invested in the business; as a result, they’re less likely to stay with you long term, or actively participate in your success while they’re with you.
Temporary or seasonal jobs can contribute to feelings of instability. It’s difficult to build a strong team dynamic when people are coming and going from the business, and this can lead to even permanent staff viewing their role in your business as a temporary stop-gap.
Understanding the key challenges you’re likely to face is the first step in improving employee retention. After all, you can’t fix a problem you don’t know about. But you’re probably acutely aware of many of the reasons you struggle to keep staff, so now we need to look at what you can do about these challenges.
It stands to reason that retaining great staff starts with recruiting the right people. You’re not always going to be able to eliminate the issues mentioned above; sometimes the role is going to be stressful and sometimes it’s going to require unsociable hours, so be upfront about what the job is going to look like in reality.
Make sure job descriptions are accurate, and in the interview you should talk to candidates about the more challenging aspects of the role; there are lots of people who thrive in hospitality, and by taking a proactive approach in the recruitment stage, you’re more likely to find them. You can also talk to them about their aspirations, and how you might be able to work together to build a personalised career pathway that will help them to get there. When you set expectations from the outset, you are more likely to recruit staff who are better suited to long term success in your business.
Employees are 69% more likely to stay with an organisation for 3 or more years if they have a great onboarding experience, so make sure you’ve put some time and energy into this. A great hospitality LMS can help you to develop an effective onboarding strategy.
There should be a structured plan for any new start’s first few months with the business – starting before the first day in their role. This allows you to deliver a consistent experience for every new employee, which ultimately helps them to settle in more quickly and makes it more likely that they will stay. Additionally, a proper onboarding process helps you with compliance, and maintaining the expected standards of customer service across your business.
We’ve already discussed how open communication helps at the recruitment and onboarding stages, but it’s also vital to sustain this throughout an employee’s time with you. Making it easy for staff to maintain 2-way communication with their immediate line managers, other team members, and higher level management makes them feel seen and valued. If they feel that you care about what they have to say, they’re more likely to feel that you’re invested in their future.
Consider setting up a buddy system within the business, so that everyone has a specific person they can speak to when they need to.
Flexibility around shifts can go a long way when it comes to supporting work-life balance in your business. This can be a huge challenge when it comes to trying to create rotas that accommodate everyone, whilst meeting the business’ needs. That’s where hospitality rota-scheduling software can be a huge help.
Look into offering family-friendly shifts and shorter working weeks where possible, and carry out regular workload reviews. When this is done in a transparent way, you can make sure everyone knows that you’re committed to making things fair. It also lets everyone see how they fit into the bigger picture and what’s expected of them.
Consider appointing one or more workplace wellbeing leads who can implement wellbeing initiatives and monitor levels of wellness and satisfaction. This not only shows your commitment to creating a healthy work-life balance for your team, but helps you to identify potential issues before they cause bigger challenges in the business.
Offering clear progression pathways is a great way to retain good staff. It shows them they’re valued, and that their hard work will pay off. It also helps them to visualise a long term future with you, and lets them see what they need to do to achieve that future.
If you took the time to understand their aspirations at the recruitment and onboarding stages, you’ll already have an idea of the training and opportunities that are right for each individual. Make sure you’re checking in regularly though; it’s not uncommon for things to change over time, and if it gets to a point where the career pathway you’ve set out no longer fits with their future plans, they might decide to look for a more appropriate path elsewhere.
When you’re creating these pathways, remember to give some thought about how you’re going to make training accessible to staff who don’t work at a desk.
Engaged staff are happy and committed staff, so a good retention strategy will look for ways to make staff feel engaged in their roles, their careers, and the success of the business. Consider investing time into some or all of the following:
Training isn’t just about compliance (although it certainly needs to start there). And it shouldn’t end when onboarding is complete. Regular training, either as part of a career development programme or refresher training for key aspects of the role, is a way to not only upskill staff, but also makes sure everyone has access to the knowledge and tools they need to do their jobs well. This can reduce stress levels, improve job performance, and increase job satisfaction – ultimately leading to reduced staff turnover.
This is usually where a business will start when looking for ways to attract and retain great staff, but when margins are already razor thin, it’s not always practical or even possible to just increase wages. Besides, we’ve already discussed the fact that hospitality employees are looking for more than just a decent salary package. That’s why it’s so important to look at the other strategies on this list before you get to wages and benefits.
Once you’re confident that you’re doing everything you can to create a pleasant, nurturing, and supportive environment for your staff to work in, it’s time to look at pay. Optimising staffing can help you to reduce unnecessary spending on wages, freeing up money to potentially increase hourly rates for key staff.
And if you’re not in a position to offer higher rates of pay, perhaps there are other benefits you could offer employees. If you own a restaurant, maybe they could have a free breakfast, lunch or dinner, depending on their shift? Or if it’s a hotel you run, maybe they could have their uniform laundered?
Employee discounts, either just for the staff member or for friends and family too, can be a great perk. If you operate multiple sites, consider a company-wide discount scheme that offers real value for employees.
You could also consider offering health and retirement benefits, as these can often make a job seem more attractive, and promote the longevity of the role from the outset.
The more benefits you can offer, the more attractive your business will sound to prospective employees.
Effective leadership across your business is key to staff retention. Not only are staff much more likely to leave when they have a poor relationship with management, but a lack of confidence in management causes higher levels of job dissatisfaction, ultimately leading to poor performance.
Managers are responsible for influencing or creating the culture in a team, venue, or even across the business. At the recruitment stage, it’s up to them to choose the right staff. They need to make sure new staff are on-boarded correctly, and welcomed into the team and they eliminate any bad practices early on.
Strong leadership can help to develop a cohesive team delivering an excellent experience and supporting one another. Poor leadership can result in fractured team dynamics, a toxic workplace, high staff turnover, lost revenue, and damage to your brand reputation.
That’s why it’s so important to develop a management team with the skills to lead, and the right attitude to their responsibilities. And when you’ve got great people in your management team, you need to make sure you’ve given them the tools they need to do their jobs well.
The best leaders are able to give, (and receive), feedback. You can help your managers to create a culture of open communication by introducing software solutions that encourage and enable communication across the business.
Effective leadership also requires the ability to make objective decisions that are in the best interests of the business, and the staff. This requires access to the right data. Look for a hospitality CRM solution that integrates with software across your business, and choose technology that gives you access to relevant data easily and quickly.
The best leaders empower their teams. Staff scheduling can be a source of contention, and it can also create a huge workload that keeps your management team tied to a desk instead of supervising their teams. Speciality staff scheduling software for hospitality can reduce the workload, save time, optimise the process, and give staff power over their own rotas, within reason.
In this article we’ve looked at all you need to know about retaining staff in the hospitality industry, including why it matters and what role your management team plays in getting it right. We’ve shared key strategies designed to help you reduce staff turnover and keep your star employees.
If you’re ready to explore solutions to help you implement some of these strategies, Rotaready’s hospitality rota software can help take the headaches and paperwork out of much of your people management. From rota scheduling to optimising wage spending, and from recording attendance to approving timesheets for payroll, our market leading software can help you to put robust systems in place to manage the day to day running of your hospitality business.
“With tools like Rotaready our employees have full visibility over their upcoming shifts and can easily see what they’re going to be paid. This is a key player in giving our team transparency.”
Gauri Marler, Head of Operations Finance at Warner Leisure Hotels
If you’re ready to find out how we can help, get in touch or request a demo to see the software in action.
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