Another Employee Tool in the HR Shed

In all my years in the restaurant/bar/hospitality industry, I have never run into the hiring situation that we are in today. I don’t have one customer in any state who has all the employees that they need. Some clients have 90 percent of the staff they need, but most are closer to 50 or 60 percent.

As I have written in the past, the most important thing you can do is to hold on to the staff you have.  You have given raises and days off and have overlooked staff coming in late or calling out at the last minute. All of these are Band-Aids. The question is: How can I determine what is important to my team and what will make them more dedicated to my operation?

The answer is to give each individual employee what they need and not necessarily what they tell you they want.

Distinguishing the “need” from the “want”There have been great employees in the past few years who have left positions, many of them without a new position to go to, even after we offered them raises of 20 or…