• On-boarding – Some of the highest turnover occurs within the first few months of employment. A new employee’s first impression of your company can greatly affect their willingness to stay with you. Your on-boarding process should include efficient completion of the necessary forms to set-up payroll, access passwords and personal introductions to the management team and co-workers.

• Orientation – Making a new employee feel at home and confident as quickly as possible has a direct correlation to the likelihood they will stay with your company. Ensure that you map out a standardized orientation for all new hires that includes a tour of the overall facility (location of employee change rooms, washrooms, break area), a review of what employees can expect from you (i.e. when schedules will be posted, employee meal discounts, etc.) and what you expect from them specific to performance and behaviour.

• Mandatory training – Before an employee can start in his/her new position, there is some legislated mandatory training that needs to take place, primarily to ensure the health and safety of employees performing new tasks and using equipment. Some key areas of mandatory training include:

• Basic health and safety training – i.e., introduction to safe use of equipment, including the development and use of Safe Operating Practice (SOP) documents and a Workplace Hazard Assessment.

• WHMIS – The Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS) is the national hazard communication standard for Canada, and includes cautionary labelling of containers of WHMIS controlled products, Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) and worker education and training programs.

• Regional and municipal certification requirements – Many provinces/municipalities also have mandatory topic-specific training certification. These could include Responsible Alcohol Service, Food Handler’s training, Workplace Violence training and position-specific training (i.e. Security Guard training and Health and Safety certification). 
   
• Initial position training – A structured initial training package is critical to getting employees effectively performing their duties as quickly as possible. In addition to the potential of employees leaving if they are frustrated due to lack of initial training, there are costly effects of not providing thorough initial training including the impact to your business of poor customer service, potential for employee injury and waste of product and productivity.

• On-going training and performance feedback – Ensure that mechanisms such as objective-specific training (i.e. new product/menu roll-out, up-selling etc.) are part of your fiscal plan. Formalized feedback in the form of annual reviews are helpful in building a performance based culture and in helping to continuously raise the performance bar of your operation.

About the author:

Patricia Csapo is an associate with fsSTRATEGY Inc, a consulting firm specializing in business strategy in the foodservice industry. Patricia provides extensive consulting support to the foodservice industry in the area of Human Resources. For more information, visit www.fsSTRATEGY.com or contact us at 416-229-2290