Invest in Recruiting and Retaining General Managers

A low-cost yet effective recruiting and retention strategy requires proper planning and communication.

By Harry Bond, Guest Columnist -- Chain Leader, 6/30/2008 12:09:00 PM

One of the most important and profitable steps any restaurant should take to maximize performance is effective labor management. No matter the size of the chain or how fast it is growing, controlling labor is key to success. This becomes more crucial during growth and new-store openings. Monical’s has been very successful in using education and leadership to reduce turnover, build trained leaders for new restaurants, and, most importantly, help control labor usage and offset significant increases in minimum wages.

1. Be realistic in your expectations and in how your current structure supports those expectations.

When you look to grow your concept, one of the most critical constraints is your ability to add people effectively into your culture. Determine how many people you need for each new location and what positions they will fill. Set realistic timelines to train them.

Also consider how you will assimilate them into your culture and how long that will take. For example, if it takes two months to train a new team in each new restaurant, take that into consideration when your organization expects to open 10 new restaurants in the next 12 months. With a training team of three people, you will already be short at least one trainer. As a result, your new restaurant openings could be delayed by months or be forced to open with untrained or undertrained managers and staff.

2. Build your story, then tell it well and tell it often.

Recruitment is about marketing to future employees. If you have a great story to tell, share it with your recruits just as you would with financial analysts or future franchisees. At Monical’s we always begin our story with our mission, “The Family Pleaser--People Pleasing People.” This simple phrase builds a solid foundation about how we value people and work to please our team and our guests. This makes a powerful first impression in any interview. Remember, not only are you interviewing the candidate, but they are also interviewing your company!

If you don’t have your story written yet, NOW is the time. If you cannot effectively communicate your mission and vision to future hires, they will find it hard to jump on board and commit to the brand. Usually your marketing team has many of these materials or resources already on hand.

Realize where your pool of new talent comes from, and make certain your materials speak to them. At Monical’s, for example, with internal promotions, we emphasize quality of life in management (less than 48 hours per week), flexible scheduling and the ability to grow into certified trainer positions for hourly team members. Internal employees readily accept these promises and important career attributes having seen the culture already.

For external recruits, Monical’s emphasizes its training program and how we will help build their skill sets for areas they may never have worked in before such as serving and dining-room management or bakery dough-making operations.

Each group has skill sets to build on but different challenges and fears to overcome in their new positions.

3. Recruit from the inside out first, then from the outside in.

The most efficient way to fill new positions is by looking at your pool of existing team members. If you build a sound evaluation process to first determine skills and then development plans for your team, they will amaze you with progress and a desire for more responsibility.

As they move up the leadership ladder, you won’t need to spend valuable training time on hard skills--they attained those in earlier positions with your team. You can spend their training time on the softer skills of leadership such as interpersonal relations. The National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation, with its Harvard Business School Publishing ManageMentor program, and the Elliott Leadership Institute have focused, inexpensive training materials to develop the necessary leadership and management skills.

4. Have an effective on-boarding strategy and follow-up plan.

Once you hire or promote an individual to a leadership or management position, be aware of the challenges and performance of the new team member. Let them know what to expect weekly for the next few months as they progress in their new positions. Don’t allow them to feel abandoned or unable to do the job. Planning for the new team is a very low-cost tool with a very high return in retention. Everyone wants to feel valued and included as part of the organization.

None of us are perfect, and we all have bad days. If you have a support system that is trained to monitor and evaluate everyone’s performance, then you can help them get past the bad days or weeks. A simple smile, “thank you,” “good morning,” or “how are you today” can go a long way toward keeping team members engaged for the long term. More importantly, words cost NOTHING!

5. Have a lifetime career path that people appreciate and understand.

If you want people to stay long term, make sure they know where their career path leads. At Monical’s, we have nine increasingly challenging levels of restaurant management/leadership. Each of these steps has growing responsibilities and higher levels of pay. We also have several modules of training and development for each of these levels.

When Monical’s hires new people, we work hard to assure that they see the lifetime picture of what their career will become if they work hard, continuously learn and assimilate as part of the team. Everyone has a chance to meet people who began as hourly employees and advanced to higher recognition and higher paying career positions, many with 30 years of experience.

Recruiting and retaining great people in this competitive environment is not an easy task, but it does not have to be an impossible task. Setting expectations, planning, proper communications and follow up will all drastically enhance your outcomes for the long term. The costs of poor recruiting and high turnover are HUGE. Invest in your new team members and set high expectations. You will be amazed at what they will achieve.

Harry Bond is the chairman of Monical’s Pizza, a 59-unit full-service chain based in Bradley, Ill.

Check out some of the tactics upstart operators use to recruit and retain managers. Read "Management Systems."