One of the upsides of this downturn is that the labor shortage in the restaurant industry has eased. In an article by
"There are certainly pockets of shortages throughout, but it's not as big of a challenge as it has been" to hire people, said Annika Stensson, a spokeswoman with the National Restaurant Association.
and
What we're seeing is that recruiters are being deluged with résumés of overqualified people," said Joni Thomas Doolin, chief executive and founder of People Report, a
Doolin said that to ward off a future brain drain, restaurants need to focus as much on keeping workers as on getting quality applicants in the door.
Brain drain is an insidious and often overlooked variable in the viability of a restaurant. Your employees are your competitive advantage. (here, here, here). When an employee leaves your organization they take with them operational knowledge about your customer. For example an employee may know that the “Jones” who dine regularly prefer a certain wine or appetizer with a particular entrée or perhaps they prefer to dine by the windows during the day and in an interior booth in the evening. This may seem trivial, however to the “Jones” it is one of the key reasons that they loved the restaurant. This kind of information is internalized by the employee and never shared with anyone else unless there are processes to data mine these all important tidbits.
Brain drain is also a reason that restaurant have to continually relearn practiced calm. The people who did the little things that smoothed the evening out are no longer working here. Suddenly nothing is prepped and everyone is running around looking for salt and pepper shakers during the height of the evening rush.
Brain drain is nothing you can ever plan for completely however having processes in place for every function helps. Enjoy the abundant employee availability while you can.
