The catering sector in Italy is one of those most characterised by high turnover. Having a continuous turnover of staff does not allow for investing in employees and building up working standards. Moreover, it often forces a change of kitchen and dining room service methods, depending on the availability of cooks and waiters, which in the long run damages all other aspects of the business.

But then what could be the right way to attract human resources and then retain them? The paths to be pursued are certainly those of continuous training, motivation, 'right' communication, human resources selection, incentives and corporate welfare.

 

Training

La training is very important in catering to have an effective staff, and is a vital tool to overcome today's and future challenges. All successful companies base their personnel training on improving and consolidating professional skills. Potentially, it is first necessary to build the relationship with the person, then to build the job skills. To do this, it is necessary to put the individual at the centre and make him feel important, listened to, supported. He must feel that we are sensitive to his well-being. We must learn to create a positive loop that generates positive energy in him: "I do everything to give you a way to do well, if you do well you get charged up and do even better!" This is the real secret of training. When we talk about training, we mean both training for new resources and ongoing training for the restaurant, for management, and for the entire staff. Ongoing training with clear short- and medium-term objectives, as well as measurable KPIs on the increase in the performance of individuals and the team. Training in the kitchen and dining room should be on the job and with various courses (kitchen and dining room techniques, sales and communication techniques, marketing...) at all levels, focused on real objectives as well as real experiences. A restaurant that includes this type of activity in its budget and planning will then achieve great staff involvement and an improvement in profits. All this will generate a mirror effect, which will make employees identify more with the company and thus be more motivated, since they are also taken into account outside their daily work activities.

 

Motivations

To be at their best professionally, employees must also be adequately stimulated. They are in fact the justifications deep, mostly psychological and emotional (rather than rational and logical) motivations that drive people to act. Therefore, in order to influence the behaviour of individuals, one needs to know the motivational mechanisms and leverage them. The unmotivated employee becomes listless and unproductive. One must also trigger other springs that gratify the human personality on higher planes. This is as true as the professional level of the employee is high. Praise and reprimands must be timely, justified and frank, not excessive for good or bad. But how to get motivation from staff? First of all, it is necessary to identify the personal motivational lever in each employee. It is necessary to understand what is that quid that spurs each individual staff member to give his or her best. Then we must find the motivational lever of the entire staff considered as a single team, determined to achieve a specific objective, accepted and shared by all. In order to do this, one must experience company operations as much as possible: only in this way can one realise how things really are. We must take responsibility for making enthusiasts all elements of our team.

 

Communication

La communication must be frequent, orderly, precise and above all sincere. Every day we start from scratch, every day something changes, every day there is some problem to deal with and in this context of instability we have to think about how to improve ourselves every day. It is therefore necessary to have a flow of communication that calms, organises, simplifies and motivates, in order to transfer a mood of security, simplicity and continuous improvement. The team wants and needs to be managed! To do this we must necessarily organise our communication very well to ensure that useful information is passed on effectively. This is both to the team, through pre-service, post-service team briefings, weekly and monthly meetings; and to the individual members through one-to-one meetings and the six-monthly evaluation process (skills review and ambition assessment). But the most important thing of all is to adopt sincere communication. Sincere means caring for staff, i.e. first of all creating a human relationship based on listening before talking.

 

The Selection

La selection of human resources is the first step that needs to be taken when starting a new staff or expanding an existing one by adding new people. One of the most important things a human resources manager will do in a restaurant is to ensure that the 'right' people are employed. We start with the fact that the ideal employee does not exist in realitybut only exists in our heads. Having said that, one must focus on the positive sides of a candidate, see if these are the basis of a good employee. There is always time to correct someone's work shortcomings and improve them, but basically you need a good base: attention to detail, punctuality, respect for the rules, for the owner, for the team, respect for morals and ethics. But above all, honesty: this is perhaps one of the qualities one thinks of first. In fact, it takes honesty with regard to the money in the till, the hours worked, etc.

 

Incentive

L'incentive is the set of possibilities that are given to the individual worker to bring him/her to success, and a successful team is synonymous with a successful business! It is necessary to give small goals to be achieved or rewarded, outstanding work performance with continuous positive feedback to keep the person valued and motivated. It is especially important to make each employee aware of the path they have to follow and the time it takes to improve their position within the team. The productivity of employees must be measured and 'rewards' must be given to those who do their work well. It is not always about money but the 'rewarding' (rewarding) is also important when it is a pat on the back or a mention in front of the rest of the staff, to emphasise commitment or adherence to working hours, or good productivity of a waiter, or a sommelier. Sales-related incentive mechanisms can also be used, in the form of monetary bonuses but also a coupons for the cinema, a concert ticket.

 

Corporate Welfare

The corporate welfare is the set of initiatives, goods and services that the company makes available to its employees, to increase their wellbeing and facilitate the reconciliation of private and professional life, particularly on aspects such as the safety and health of workers. In fact, the welfare of employees is fundamental for the development and growth of the entire company as it allows for increased benefits in fiscal, productive, psychological and relational terms. Welfare policies are today considered among the most important levers of personnel management for three main reasons: they are considered a tool to improve the wellbeing of workers, especially in medium and small enterprises; they represent an evolution of company benefit packages; and, finally, they constitute a new lever of Total Reward with a greater incidence in large companies than in small ones. In this way, the company or organisation takes on the role of a functional tool to favour the work-life balance of the worker and value his or her free time and that of his or her family. But not only that: implementing a corporate welfare plan increases the purchasing power of families without increasing their taxable income. With corporate welfare, one can decide to reimburse expenses already incurred by the worker or to provide services in advance. And this is in addition to the better known corporate benefits such as meal vouchers, incentives for home-work travel and sustainable mobility, supplementary healthcare and so on. In addition, the smart working is now increasingly considered a benefit within corporate welfare.

 

Marta Chessa

Human resources manager for CiPASSO Bistrot.