Retention: All-Inclusive at Sea Island

Sea Island creates an environment that favors diversity and culture over rapid expansion.

By Margaret Littman, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 4/1/2006

When Barclay Anthony took the helm of the company his parents founded, it was 27-years-old and had just one unit.

“They wanted to maintain laser focus on execution of that one store. I wanted to expand, in part so employees who wanted to could advance and make a career with us,” says Anthony, now president of San Antonio-based Sea Island Shrimp House.

He also wanted new stores to operate as efficiently as store No. 1 from the start. So he crafted a hiring strategy that both leveraged the veterans’ experience and welcomed the right kind of new hires.

It included a written diversity statement that says, “decisions affecting employment, compensation, job assignments and promotions [will be made] without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age or disability.”

“It is not very elaborate, but it reflects our core beliefs,” Director of Human Resources Steve Parma says.

Numbers Game
Today the 41-year-old concept reports that 61 percent of its hourly employees and 54 percent of assistant managers are Hispanic. All of the corporate, non-exempt employees for the 373-person company are female, and African-Americans make up nearly 10 percent of the work force.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, San Antonio has a population that is 59 percent Hispanic, 32 percent Caucasian and 6 percent African-American. Working from that pool, Sea Island seems like it would have an easy time building a diverse work force. But, as Barbara Ankamah, vice president of business development for the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, says, “You can hire a diverse work force, but it is how the company is structured to sustain that work force that matters.” In 2005 the chamber gave Anthony its annual Business Achievement Award.

“Sea Island has been careful about how many restaurants they’ve opened and how they’ve grown so that they’ve created an environment that is diverse, values its employees and has low turnover,” she says.

Sea Island’s hourly turnover decreased from 195 percent in 2001 to 110 percent in 2005. Managerial turnover decreased from 24.1 percent to 14.1 percent in the same period.

Human Nature
Anthony attributes this success to both his parents’ values and his own experience outside the foodservice industry. He says that even decades ago, when other employers paid illegal immigrants pennies on the dollar, his father always paid everyone at least minimum wage. “That [reputation] got out in the community,” he says.

Before rejoining the family business in 1992, Anthony worked in investment banking. “When I came back, I felt strongly that I did not want to fill the corporate office with book-smart, degreed people. I thought if we brought in people from the restaurant level who made their decisions with the guests and their fellow employees in mind, then we could teach them the book smarts,” he explains.

As seven-unit Sea Island expands slowly outside its San Antonio base, the seafood chain plans to search for “more than just numbers of females and minorities, but employees who work together in harmony,” Anthony says. “I want to make sure we maintain this culture.”

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