How To Attract and Retain Talented People

In this article, I want to give you actionable tips to help you with attracting and retaining talented people in the food industry today.

Todays Recruiting Market

Yes, post Covid-19 is one of the hardest recruiting markets I’ve ever experienced. But let’s not forget that for over a decade it's been challenging to find talented people who align with the goals of the business.

Today, it means doing things differently...

We used to fill positions by asking existing employees if they knew anyone or posting a quick ad on social media to attract people. It was easy to get applications but still tough to find the gems.

These days with covid

• The great resignation

• The great migration

• Limited international workforce and 

• Hardly any Uni students

The food industry is struggling to find people to do work that cannot wait.

We're even seeing sign-on bonuses for new employees to companies such as McDonald's.

But see, small businesses are underdogs. 

And it’s our job as leaders of them to look for hidden opportunities when the rest of the world is living in fear.

Rewind to the beginning of Covid

At the beginning of covid, the same fear existed.

Three Mills Bakery was no different to any other food business that had a steady flow of customers. We watched our client base vanish over a week and our wholesale revenue decrease by 77% in 6 days.

Survival at that time meant putting aside the enormous fear for just a moment to look for hidden opportunities. It also meant taking rapid positive action.

What we discovered was the same number of clients still existed in the market except they could no longer purchase our products through our stores, or other cafes we supplied. If we were to survive, we would have to meet them at their front doors.

So in only two days, we stood up an e-commerce website on Shopify, took photos of our products, bought some packaging and ice packs, and began our own home delivery service delivering frozen pastries that people could bake in their home ovens. Something we'd never done before.

Now apply that same thinking to our challenges around attraction and retention. 

Here are two topics that have been pumped up by the media and used to promote fear instead of revealing a huge opportunity.

The great resignation was about people leaving shitty jobs working for crappy bosses in search of a better future.

Think about that, thousands of people you now have access to if you own a computer and a phone, who are all of a sudden actively seeking out a change of scenery. 

The question then becomes…

• How do we attract them to our business?

• How do we keep them once they’re here?

With the great migration, thousands more people actively looking to leave huge metro areas in search of a better life often in regional towns or different cities.

Both of these represent huge opportunities underneath the fear.

What You Can Do About It

The recruitment process starts way before you recruit anyone. It's about becoming the type of company insanely talented people want to work for.

Step One: Attraction

It’s about becoming the type of company that excellent people want to work for. 

Ask yourself if you or your management team have the leadership skills to offer seriously talented people a great career pathway.

• What do they get out of working for you - other than a low salary in hospitality...?

• What’s your company’s mission, do you even have one?

• What are your future goals and how do they align with your team’s goals?

Without becoming the type of company people want to work for, it’s impossible to attract or retain top people.

Step Two: Retention

Once you’ve attracted these wonderful humans to your business, how will you hang onto them?

It starts by accepting that what got you here, won't get you there.

You might have started with particular values or behaviours but often they’re no longer relevant. Consider changing tightly held beliefs that aren't serving you well any longer.

• Schedule monthly and yearly reminders on your phone to act as a trigger to look at your company’s habits and behaviours, each team, leaders, industry pressures and goals.

Involve your team by asking them:

Are you doing things the right way today or are you just doing things you’ve always done?

The Juicy Bit

Here are 5 things you can do right now to attract and retain top talent:

1. Look outside hospitality for a workforce.

Stop looking for people with the perfect skills and start hiring for attitudes.

2. Build in training and career pathways

Simple, structured, on-the-job training that builds a culture of learning and sets people up for success in future jobs is crucial. 

The reality is lots of people think they have nothing to learn from hospitality while they're waiting for their real job.

Show them otherwise, show them what there is to learn and how to apply it to their future real job and they’ll stay longer and be more productive. 

3. Create brilliant onboarding

This will pay back 10 - 50X

Make new hires feel special and part of the team early on. 

Set automated reminders or email sequences to send them all of the necessary information they need to succeed in your business over the first three months.

People like to learn in tiny snippets so break it down instead of bombarding them.

4. Get your managers on board

Don’t assume your management team are onboard with training new hires. 

The industry standard is to “throw them in the deep end”.

Your job as a leader is to sell your managers on the idea of helping to train new hires.

Reframe their role not as a Manager, but as a Mentor or coach so that they see the value in recruiting for attitude, and then training the skills. 

5. Business is a long game.

Anyone who applies for a job is clearly a fan, future customer or future employee. This database is another opportunity to build your network by giving them a great experience during the recruitment process and keeping them in your pipeline for later. 

Every person you don’t hire goes on to learn and develop skills with other employers. It’s important to reach out occasionally and check in with them.

SUMMARY

1. Start becoming the type of business talented people want to work for

As a leader, become excellent at connecting big goals with tiny daily habits of your team.

2. Build in simple practical training

Even if people are only there for a short time.

 3. Create brilliant onboarding procedures 

Assure people that they’ve made the right choice when they join you and they’re likely to stay.

4. Get your managers on board with hiring for attitude and training the skills

Reframe their role as a coach or mentor.

5. Play the long game - Every person you don’t hire is a huge opportunity for the future

Stay in touch as they develop.

That it.

I hope this helps you build excellent teams and wonderful companies.

Good Luck.