PRLA Restaurant & Lodging Matters Summer 2021

14 • PENNSYLVANIA RESTAURANT & LODGING matters • Summer 2021 How to Address Today’s Severe Restaurant Staffing Challenge Unable to reimplement pre-COVID-19 operating hours, restaurants must rethink, retool, and revitalize how to attract and retain employees. By Brian Brinkley IN TODAY’S CRAZY environment in which staff is hard to find and keep, you must embrace change to keep brands alive. Are you ready for a more flexible workplace environment? Your employees are. This past year has demonstrated all businesses need to think differently about how they service their customers and how they can best retain and attract talent. This is especially true of restaurants that are now forced to try Herculean tactics to get applicants in their doors. There’s more than coffee brewing in our nation’s restaurants. Demand to eat tableside and barside is plentiful, yet the inability to hire and retain sufficient staff is creating a perfect storm. Restaurants that made it through temporary closures and decreased revenue the past 15 months—thousands of which laid-off and furloughed staff—can’t attract and/or retain enough workers, many of whom found jobs in other industries or are collecting more in unemployment benefits than they can make working in restaurants. Some frustrated restaurateurs are hanging the “No one wants to work anymore” sign because their efforts to attract workers are futile. But what’s a restaurant owner or operator to do? Perhaps it’s time to get creative by offering incentives you might not have previously considered or simply haven’t implemented. But before heading down that route, let’s look at what’s happening in the ultra- competitive restaurant world. High Turnover—Nothing New Long before the pandemic, retention issues were the norm for an industry where turnover is notoriously high. During the 2015–2017 period, for instance, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that turnover rate for the restaurant sector was 81.9%, but industry estimates reached 150%. Restaurant staff has long been thought of as expendable and replaceable, although training new staff obviously takes time and costs money. The Center for Hospitality Research at Cornell University estimates the cost of employee turnover averages $5,864 per person for a typical front-line employee. The revolving door has been spinning faster the last few years as restaurant workers look for better pay, conditions, hours, benefits, and treatment. After all, who wants to work until midnight on a Saturday? This industry relies heavily on teenagers, many of whom are working their first jobs. This demographic is easily swayed to leave their current job to pursue “greener grass” elsewhere. The pay is always better, the tips are higher, and that new, chic bistro? “It’s the bomb!” And COVID-19 restaurant closures and limited hours have only exacerbated these issues. What’s Up with This Whole Unemployment Thing? According to the National Restaurant Association, the eating and drinking industry lost 2.5 million jobs in 2020—20% below pre-pandemic employment levels. And while more restaurant jobs have 81.9% TURNOVER RATE FOR THE RESTAURANT SECTOR 2015–2017 Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics