In the wake of labor shortages and rising labor costs, employee engagement is becoming one of the most important pieces to the puzzle for success—particularly for the restaurant industry, which continues to suffer turnover rates as high as 70%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Access to training and development continues to be one of the main precursors to happier staff and lower turnovers. In fact, according to Udemy, 51% of employees would quit their job if training was not offered, and this is especially the case among younger generation employees.
Leveraging mobile training is an important step to not only enhance training in general, but to keep employees regularly engaged with the company as well as motivated and excited about where they work.
Brand and training consistency
Those heavy binders with outdated information and messy papers are becoming a thing of the past. Restaurant employees, especially younger ones, learn better when they have access to demos and videos that are the same for all employees no matter the location.
Mobile training, therefore, helps ensure greater consistency across the board, not only in training, but in communicating brand messages. In addition, when restaurants have a one-stop-shop for videos, quizzes, communication and more, training time is reduced and new hires are more productive faster. This saves on training costs and helps take the strain off trainers so they can focus less on the nitty gritty and more on the bigger picture that is employee engagement and increase retention.
Digital recipe cards
With mobile training, recipes can be collected, stored and updated all in one place and accessible from anywhere. This is especially important in the case of LTO promotions, seasonal menu roll outs or other menu updates when changes need to be made across multiple locations and in real-time.
Video-enabled recipe cards help keep employees engaged by offering them opportunities to constantly learn more as well as refresh and fine-tune their skills. These “cards” are also great for corporate chefs, managers and other company trainers who are often on the road. They have one less thing to lug around, and all of the information they need at their fingertips in order to engage better with employees.
New hire training, cross-training stations and schedules
Mobile training improves the employee experience by offering more opportunities for training. By leveraging new technology, restaurants can cross-train their employees on various stations and teach them how to perform more duties. This enhances scheduling efficiencies by offering managers more flexibility in terms of daily and weekly staffing.
With mobile training, employees do not need to physically attend scheduled training sessions because they can access the information on-demand, from anywhere. This creates a much more seamless, user-friendly onboarding and learning experience, not only for new employees, but long-term ones as well.
Bringing communication to the front line
Forget about disjointed emails or old school bulletin boards. Using modern technology, restaurant managers can proactively push content (such as new menu items, dish demos, store openings, and other news) to their staff as well as open up the lines of communication between employees. This helps bring communication to the front line in order to share best practices and promote feedback and collaboration, all in real time.
Once traditionally behind closed doors, mobile learning platforms can also be used for sharing brand messaging, marketing collateral and business operations with employees to keep them excited about and engaged in the company.
Investing in modern technologies remains important for all business, but especially in the fiercely competitive food one. By leveraging new technologies to train and engage employees, restaurants not only up their chances of hiring strong team members, but also keeping them happy.
This post is sponsored by PlayerLync