With the holiday season often comes a surge in dining out: shoppers are grabbing quick bites between stores, families are reconnecting over dinner at their favorite hometown restaurants, and people are seeking professionally-prepared meals for their various holiday gatherings. Restaurants added nearly 70,000 jobs this September, a sign of hope that demand will grow despite inflation-weary consumers’ pullback on restaurant spending.
Seasonal hires can have an outsized impact on how a restaurant fares during a busy period. Whether the business has just staffed up for the holidays or experiences their busy period at a different time of the year, investing in seasonal talent is a crucial part of labor strategy year-round.
To facilitate a successful seasonal hiring process, restaurant operators must understand the full lifecycle of a seasonal hire – from recruitment to onboarding to retention – and how each stage presents an opportunity for restaurants to enhance their business and cultivate stronger teams.
Hiring and Recruitment: Making a Strong First Impression
As the competition for skilled food service employees remains fierce, restaurants should be boosting their employee engagement strategies well in advance of their busy season. According to a new survey, 61 percent of frontline retail and restaurant managers say this year’s talent isn’t as skilled and experienced as in previous years – but there could be operational barriers at play, keeping the best workers from even clicking ‘apply.’
The first step to hiring a successful crop of seasonal talent is to listen to the needs of full-time staff. Restaurant operators should have an ongoing dialogue with employees about where they need support during normal and lull periods, then proactively plan for how a busy period could impact those challenges. While some restaurants may need more employees with a certain skillset, like management, others may need to focus seasonal hiring on a specific area of the restaurant, be it the kitchen, the dining room or both.
Restaurants also need to make sure they’re hiring seasonal talent well before their busy period hits, even if those employees don’t come aboard right away. For example, a restaurant at a ski resort should start hiring for the winter peak in early September. This way, non-local employees can secure housing, managers have adequate time for training, and the business has ample runway to find the best employees for their needs.
Perhaps the most important factor in attracting strong seasonal talent is creating a positive employee experience. Paying a living wage is a baseline, but today’s hourly employees need more from a seasonal job (or any job, for that matter). Recent data shows that hourly workers’ top factors for loving their job are their coworkers and flexible schedules. Restaurants that create a culture where employees can forge meaningful connections with their teammates and enjoy a healthy work-life balance – even amid the busy season – will be more competitive in the battle for strong seasonal talent.
Opportunities and Challenges of Onboarding Seasonal Talent
Once teams are solidified for the season, the next phase is onboarding, which may be the most critical moment in the seasonal employee lifecycle. During onboarding, restaurants give employees their first real taste of the job experience, from the culture to the pace of the workflow, while also equipping them with the skills and knowledge they need to be successful. It’s a lot for employers to balance, especially on the accelerated timeline associated with seasonal hiring. But it’s a balance they have to master. Employees who have a poor onboarding experience are twice as likely to start looking for another job, and if they quit as the season nears its peak, it can have a serious impact on the business.
Successfully onboarding seasonal employees requires treating the process as more than just a list of “to-dos” to cover off on with new employees. Instead, restaurants should view onboarding as a series of opportunities, both for strengthening their current full-time workforce and giving new hires a meaningful head start.
For one, an influx of seasonal talent is a chance for restaurants to get meaningful feedback and improve their operations. Seasonal hires, no matter how long they end up staying, enrich their employers with new skills and fresh perspectives, whether they’re bringing a specialization from their previous job, or simply have great ideas about how to make operations run smoother.
However, this diversity of experience can also cause challenges. Seasonal workers may be coming from another industry or a different region, or this may be their first hourly job entirely. All of these can contribute to a learning curve in onboarding. Effective, inclusive training should be a part of the onboarding process for all employees, but especially those who are new to the restaurant work environment. Proper training ensures that seasonal employees are productive and provide customers with great service quality – all the more reason to hire early.
The introduction of seasonal hires can also provide flexibility for full-time staff. With more hands on deck to cover shifts, employees will feel more empowered to take time off, ask to swap shifts and be more assertive about their schedule preferences. A busy period may seem incompatible with increased flexibility, but that doesn’t have to be the case. If they haven’t already, restaurants should employ modern scheduling technology and better communications systems to break down barriers to flexibility.
By preparing for the challenges of onboarding new staff while prioritizing workers’ needs, restaurants can solidify a more successful labor operations strategy for the long term, leading to better business outcomes overall.
Engagement and Retention
Seasonal employees can provide a rich pool of potential full-time talent. The temporary nature of their employment gives restaurants the opportunities to test the waters; they give employees the chance to acclimate to their roles and demonstrate their best skills without committing to a permanent hiring decision. This is the time to look out for “green flags”: traits like a strong work ethic, good relationships with coworkers and customers, and a sense of loyalty to the business, even though they don’t expect to be there for very long. At the same time, it’s also an opportunity for restaurants to catch “red flags,” such as constant tardiness or an unwillingness to support teammates.
Even if strong seasonal hires can’t join the staff permanently, keeping them engaged and supported throughout their temporary employment can encourage them to come back in the next year. These returning employees lower the number of new hires employers need to interview, hire, and onboard in the next season, providing an already successful and loyal seasonal staff. They also save restaurants time and money on additional hiring and onboarding costs.
A single busy season can impact a restaurant’s success for all the seasons to come, and nowhere is this more true than in the workforce. Labor budget permitting, restaurants have a unique opportunity to convert their star seasonal hires into permanent staff – but it requires deep investments in the employee experience year-round.
