Paylocity Shares Retention Insights for Restaurants and Hospitality.

With the restaurant and hospitality industries continuing to fight back from the pandemic and the Great Resignation, Calvin Sun, Paylocity’s Senior Director of Compensation, Benefits, and Talent Analytics, recently shared learnings with the readers of Hospitality Technology to recruit and retain talent on the way to building better workplaces.

Fresh off another in-depth interview to discuss the restaurant labor crunch, Calvin summarized several factors making this a challenging time for the service industry. Restaurant and hospitality workers are leaving their jobs at twice the national resignation rate, and millions of workers left the industry entirely after being furloughed during the height of the pandemic. Other challenges include diminishing wage growth, frustrated customers, and longer hours for remaining staff.

“Employers have to work harder and faster to solve workers’ issues, or lose customers and talent to competition that can,” Sun wrote. “Considering the numerous challenges HR is already handling, like the ongoing pandemic and worsening employee mental and physical health, many people leaders don’t have the time or resources to solve the staffing shortage problem,” he added.

While HR leaders continue to look for ways to automate manual processes, Paylocity also offers interactive, consumer-oriented experiences that help clients to achieve better results attracting and retaining talent and driving business success. Our expert shared five tips to help service businesses recruit and retain top talent:

1. Offer financial security: With so much uncertainty facing the industry, offering On Demand Payment gives employees more flexibility and control, providing access to earned wages before the next payday. It also allows employers to differentiate from competitors. In addition, he recommended using an automated platform to benchmark pay against market averages and identify employees due for raises.
2. Modernize recruiting: Recognizing the need to move quickly to attract, interview and secure top talent in a competitive market, Calvin recommended more modern tools and tactics, such as using video in job postings or texting during the recruitment process to engage candidates and provide a preview of company culture.
3. Provide flexible communication and scheduling: Today’s communications should be available when and where an employee wants to access them, just like the apps and programs that workers use in their personal lives. Paylocity’s employee engagement hub, Community, is ideal for providing transparency and connections between employees.
4. Enable learning and development opportunities: Employees are more likely to stay with an employer that invests in their development. Restaurant and hospitality workers should have access to a modern Learning Management System to guide their growth.
5. Apply data-based insights: With over 200 dashboard templates, including the Modern Workforce Index, Paylocity provides new ways for HR leaders to monitor the needs of a changing workforce, and receive tailored recommendations for improving their businesses.

Paylocity clients are putting these strategies to work for improved business impact. Upward Projects is a restaurant group serving an eclectic mix of casual dining favorites. Known best for its flagship restaurant, Postino, Upward Projects’ culture centers around its mission statement: ‘We make people feel good.’ With Paylocity, Upward found a scalable solution that streamlined and improved every stage of the employee journey. Automated recruiting and onboarding significantly speeds up talent acquisition to deliver 800+ new hires annually, which has contributed to the 30% year-over-year company growth rate. And streamlining other tasks like performance management and benefits leaves time for leadership to build a strong culture that makes employees feel good, too.