By: Earl E. Sullivan
In the hospitality industry employees come and go. If you are lucky, you will have them for several years. Employees staying in the hospitality sector can often bounce from place to place making training more difficult as well as more important. With new employees their training is your opportunity to break any bad habits from previous employers and set the standard at the very start of your new relationship. How your employees treat your customers, their team mates and the business will be a direct reflection on the business and corelate directly to profits. With that, employee training starts at the interview.
First, are you on time? It sets the expectations that they should be on time. If you do not set the standard, how will they know the true measure of your expectations. Are you prepared? If you are not, why would they try to be prepared in the future? Are you professionally dressed? I fully understand that sometimes you have a new hire come in to interview after you just finished with some hard work and you are a little on the purple side. Take them in the back and show them where you were working and why your attire is relevant to the job you are doing and important for the role that they are seeking.
Next, all the same questions apply to the candidate. Are they on time? There are reasons why people can be late. New location that is unfamiliar, traffic or general lack of attention to detail. For us, late is a red flag. It indicates that the person did not think through the details of the job interview beforehand and that you are just another job and not a sought-out destination to work. Are they prepared? Again, is this just a job or are they passionate about wine or your brand or the industry? Have they looked at the website? Do they know what type of beverage you produce? Do they know some of the common events you do or traits of your business, like being pet friendly? Did they visit your space prior to the interview to see how your business operates.
With social media and websites, it is not unreasonable to expect that a candidate would come in knowing something about your business. It is hard to find the right person but putting the wrong person into the culture with both your existing staff and your customers is worse than being shorthanded. Someone should want to know where they are interviewing, come prepared and be able to see if it is as much a fit for them as for you. Unprepared equals not invited back at our facility. Finally, are they dressed appropriate for your brand.
Every brand has a style – some are casual, some are edgy, some are old-school. Trying to fit someone into your brand that does not naturally fit will be a long-term problem for both your team and your customers. They do not have to have on the trendiest clothes in the business or the most expensive shoes. However, if you are an edgy brand and they show up in khakis and a button down, you might want to ask some additional questions.
When you are first looking at candidates, you will get a sense of how well versed they are in customer service and in the trade. But you will also be setting the standards that your company will have if you conduct the interview with the same attention to detail that you provide your customers during service. In addition, how you treat the prospective employees as well as your main staff will determine how they treat the customers. They learn by seeing and experiencing the way the current team works. If you or your team do not smile, do not greet guests, or do not take an interest – why should they?
In our business, once we pass the interview stage we put the prospective employee into a trial shift. This allows them to see the pace of the workplace, engage with the team and see what type of clientele we have. Many a candidate have not made it past the trial shift because of lack of empathy, unwillingness, or inability to pitch in, (even if they are new) or just a general attitude that does not mesh with the team. You never want to throw a curveball at your team with personalities unless they are looking for something to add to their current group dynamic. It is an easy, safe, and cost-effective way to see if this person is going to be a good fit for your team.
The next step in how you conduct your training is what you type of benefits you provide to the new staff member. Remember, it takes time and money to train someone. You want them to stay with you for as long as they can, and to do that they need the prospect for a living wage.
Food insecurity and housing insecurity are the two biggest issues facing employees in the hospitality sector. When they walk into your tasting room or bar and see that it is not busy, they instantly wonder if they will be able to pay rent or buy food. If they do this enough, they will either need to leave to find more secure wages or get a second or third job. When an employee has multiple jobs, by nature, they will be split on their loyalties and focus. Lack of passion for what you are doing or not attending to the details of service lead to compounding problems with the guests.
Not everyone can afford full time or salaried employees but what can you do as an owner or manager to make sure that when things are slow the employee has an opportunity to earn or when things are busy, they can bank a little extra money to tide them over during the lean times? In our facility, our employees have full benefits which come with additional responsibilities. Not every facility is the same but the cost of training employees and the cost of losing customers from poorly trained employees is real across the board.
Moral of the Story
The right employee can make or break you. It is your responsibility to set the tone from the beginning. Invest time in bringing people on so that you add the right dynamic and personality to your team and your brand. You can train wine; you cannot train attitude. And it all starts with you at the interview. So, take it seriously and use the time wisely.
Contact the author at earl@telayawine.com
