Following a year of turbulent hiring trends, inflated expenses, and uncertain demand, 2025 could be the “year of retention” for restaurants. As labor costs rise and compliance becomes trickier to navigate, keeping high-performing employees on staff will prove a vital cost-saving measure. A staff of skilled, experienced team members keeps dining rooms running smoothly, boosts efficiency in the kitchen, builds goodwill with customers, and pushes restaurants to innovate – all of which contribute to business success and sustainability.
Heading into 2025, restaurants can take advantage of a particular class of workers to bolster their retention efforts: seasonal hires.
Many have hired more hands for the holiday season, as holiday shopping often coincides with a rise in dining out. Meanwhile, other establishments might experience their busy period during the summer, or in response to a more business-specific demand boost, like Chipotle’s “burrito season.”
Regardless of the time of year, restaurant leaders can turn their best seasonal hires into permanent team members with the right employee experience strategy.
1 – Give Them Flexibility
Whether they’re on staff for a few months or a few years, employees want to work for businesses that value them. However, recent research from Legion found that half of hourly workers believe their employer doesn’t care about creating a good work experience. A little added pressure during a busy season is normal, but if seasonal workers have an overly stressful experience, they’re bound to burn out, deterring them from staying on full-time.
Flexible scheduling is a highly effective method of combating burnout and disengagement. However, restaurant operators may fear they can’t deliver true flexibility during a period of heightened demand, even with the addition of seasonal help. But with the right combination of strategy, technology, and cultural reinforcement, it’s more than possible. Employees want work schedules conducive to their definition of work/life balance, and operators need to create schedules that meet the needs of their restaurants and control labor costs. You can achieve both and provide an exceptional level of service to your guests and a positive work experience for your employees.
Strategy
Flexible workplaces are built on future-focused, employee-centric labor strategies. Restaurant operators and managers will benefit from increased access to key business data – such as labor demand and sales projections – to budget their seasonal labor needs. They’ll also gain insight into how many seasonal employees they can keep on staff full-time.
Technology
The continued adoption and scale of AI in the workplace are making it easier for restaurants to offer flexibility. Workforce management technology that enables the intelligent automation of scheduling can automatically align open shifts with available workers and their schedule preferences, allow employees to pick up additional shifts, and swap shifts. This enables employers to create schedules that meet their business and employee needs. .
Cultural Reinforcement
Managers and operators should encourage employees to avail themselves of flexible scheduling and other related benefits. When employees see that leadership wants them to take breaks and have a life outside of work, they will feel more comfortable expressing their preferences, creating a positive ripple effect across the team.
Also, flexibility isn’t limited to scheduling. Enabling employees to be paid early gives them more flexibility with their finances, which has been found to improve retention rates by up to 63%.
2 – Invest in their Professional Development
Ensuring seasonal employees have meaningful training experiences can pay dividends. Employees want to work in an environment where they feel valued and set up for success. They should not only have the proper skills and resources to do their jobs but also the opportunity to develop a strong coach-trainee relationship with their managers.
However, restaurant managers often have very little time to coach their employees due to a heavy administrative burden. By automating routine tasks like schedule creation, management, and payroll, restaurant owners will allow managers to leave the back office and spend more time developing their teams and interacting with their customers. And when seasonal employees feel their managers are actually invested in them and their success, they’ll be more keen to stick around. As research shows, workers who feel that they belong at their employer are far less likely to leave it.
3 – Help them Adapt to Demand Challenges
Seasonal hiring itself is an adaptation to demand challenges, but with restaurant demand in flux, both temporary and permanent staff need extra support to promote a successful season.
Advanced demand forecasting solutions powered by artificial intelligence can provide highly accurate projections, helping restaurants prevent both costly overstaffing and stressful understaffing. These same solutions can also help restaurants plan their labor needs for the next season, with data refreshing regularly to ensure flexible planning.
A seasonal rush is a unique opportunity for restaurants to attract new, highly skilled employees to their workforce. Whether restaurants are locking in their extra staff for the holidays or looking at a busy period further down the road, converting seasonal standouts into permanent team members should be a part of their annual labor strategy.
