Staff retention in hospitality has long been a challenge for operators. Despite being one of the most popular sources of employment in the UK, the industry has one of the highest employee turnover rates at more than 70%.

What’s more, according to the CIPD, over a third of hospitality workers have been in their current role for less than a year. For restaurant owners, this presents an expensive problem that can also have serious repercussions for service quality and consistency.

“It’s the Industry We’re In”

Some of the reasons for high staff turnover can be put down to the challenges peculiar to the restaurant industry. Irregular shifts, long hours, low wages and high-pressure work environments are among the most well-documented.

It’s not only sector-specific pressures that cause hospitality workers to reconsider their career choices, though. As is the case with any business in any industry, in-house friction, operational inefficiencies and inadequate communication can all play a part in demotivating staff and compelling them to seek pastures new.

But these days, many such challenges can be overcome with the use of advanced management systems. Taking this into account, we’ll now identify five problem areas that often cause give rise high staff turnover and look at some the ways in which Syrve can help.

Problem 1 - Substandard POS Systems

The front-of-house environment can be particularly stressful for fairly obvious reasons, with the pressure of dealing with a constant flow of customers often taking a toll on customer-facing staff. And things are often made worse when a restaurant chooses to rely on obsolete or inadequate point of sale systems.

Whether unreliable, unintuitive or slow (or a wretched combination of all three), a substandard POS system will, more often than not, result in queues, confusion and ultimately frustrated customers. Even for the most battle-hardened staff, the daily fallout can prove overwhelming.

The Syrve Solution

The obvious solution is to have in place an easy to use restaurant POS system like Syrve that allows your FOH team to take orders efficiently. Our touch-screen terminals are fast and intuitive, enabling staff to easily process orders from multiple sources. Every order placed, be it on-site or externally, is injected into a single pipeline.

There’s absolutely no requirement for additional hardware. Everything is performed via a single system. The result is a more efficient and organised FOH environment which, in the long and short term, is going to make for satisfied customers and thus, happier employees.

Problem 2 - Server-Kitchen Friction

Friction between FOH and BOH teams is highly prevalent in the F&B industry, often manifesting as tension between servers and kitchen staff. This kind of friction plays out in countless restaurants every day and is usually the result of poor communication and/or traditional ordering procedures.

Typically, a server might fail to communicate special requests or modifications to kitchen staff, thus causing resentment among the chefs when the dish has to be remade. Facing pressure from customers, servers may also expect food to be prepared faster than the kitchen can manage.

The Syrve Solution

To encourage good communication between your serving and kitchen teams, Syrve features a built-in KDS screen that’s also accessible via our POS terminals, meaning that servers have access to the same order status information as your kitchen staff.

All of the production steps are clearly visible to order-takers, empowering them to keep guests updated. Kitchen chase-ups are therefore eliminated, allowing your chefs to focus on preparing dishes without interruption. Prep and production becomes transparent, service quality is enhanced and simmering tensions avoided.

Problem 3 - Lack of Personal Goals or Recognition

In such a high-pressure, time-restricted environment, restaurant managers often struggle to set personal goals and targets for their staff or recognise hard work. The impact on morale and productivity is predictable. Without incentives or constructive feedback, motivation levels drop, personal growth is stymied and service standards take a nosediveThe Syrve Solution

The Syrve platform includes a number of powerful staff management tools that allow you set personal goals for your team and then monitor their progress. It’s possible to create fixed percentage bonuses for selling certain dishes, set sales targets and create upselling competitions between staff.

To monitor progress while also keeping tabs and staff performance, Syrve also includes detailed, customisable reports that enable you to check the number of dishes served, speed of service, table turnover rates and much more. In other words, you have at your disposal all the information that you need to reward top-performing employees.

Problem 4 – Poor Communication

Poor communication is another common problem in the F&B sector that can have damaging repercussions in a whole host of areas, employee morale being one of them. For the sake of productivity and happiness, your team needs to feel invested in your restaurant and connected.

Ideally, this means having in place clear communication channels so that they can be kept informed about company updates, receive feedback and liaise with you. It should also be easy for them to access their work schedules so that they’re able to feel more in control of their work lives.

The Syrve Solution

Syrve features dedicated employee pages to help foster a sense of community and collaboration. Each page includes a feed that can be updated with company news that can also be sent via notifications and SMS. Personalised goals and targets are included too as well as work schedules.

Problem 5 - Long Hours, Inconsistent Shifts

Long hours are the bête noire for many a put-upon F&B employee. In fact, 12 hour days aren’t that uncommon in the industry. The demand for staff during peak times can extend shifts beyond regular hours as can the labour-intensive nature of the work – kitchen prep for instance requires a lot of hard graft. And in such as low-margin industry, a lot of restaurants are forced to employ a minimum number of staff to save on costs.

The Syrve Solution

Syrve can help alleviate this problem in a number of areas. First of all, our system automatically generates kitchen prep based on accurate sales forecasts, allowing your kitchen team to prepare everything on time.

Syrve's powerful restaurant employee scheduling software also enables you to plan shifts weeks in advance - thanks to AI-driven forecasting, it’s easy to see how many staff you’ll need for any given shift. Labour costs are also displayed in the scheduler which change as you make adjustments. Thus, the hitherto complex and time-consuming task of planning rotas is simplified and streamlined. Overlapping shifts and errors are therefore eliminated.

Final Thoughts

Unfortunately high staff turnover is a fact of life in the F&B sector. Some of its root causes, you simply have no control over. Instead, it’s about mitigating the causes that you can control. Ensuring a better work environment is the most obvious and important place to start. By harnessing the power of Syrve, you’ll be taking a significant step towards boosting staff morale and keeping your team intact for an extended period.