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DQ, Mazzio's and Rave roll out the tech to roll in the employees

At the Restaurant Franchising and Innovation Summit in Dallas this week, three big restaurant companies discussed how tech is changing the way they hire and retain employees.

April 3, 2017 by S.A. Whitehead — Food Editor, Net World Media Group

The restaurant industry has been struggling to find and keep employees — especially over the past four years. It's among the top five business sectors reporting extreme difficulties in hiring adequately for operational needs, according to Manpower Group's 2016-2017 survey of hiring managers. And it's not just a growing problem in the U.S., but worldwide.

Wednesday's session on staffing strategies in a tech-savvy world, at the Restaurant Franchising and Innovation Summit this week in Dallas, addressed many of those issues and how technology has helped them meet staffing needs. Speakers included:

• David Cantu, co-founder and chief customer officer of Hot Schedules
• Mazzio's President and CEO Sheri Miksa
• Dairy Queen's Global Curriculum and Training Director Kimberly Brastad
• Rave Restaurant Group Vice President of Human Resources Mary Barker

The resulting hour-long forum produced plenty of insights for attendees, including a little empathy from fellow restaurant leaders, who have undertaken the massive task of converting the volumes of printed training information each brand had into a digitally engaging format.

Each brand has been employing a variety of technologies to make this complex task easier, as shared here with a selection of the session's discussions.

Q: What kinds of technology is your chain using to recruit, hire and retain topnotch employees at both the corporate and restaurant level?

Mazzio's Miksa: We're using social media more than ever before for recruiting and Facebook has performed really great for us. ... We also use E-Verify for background checks. We also (disseminate hiring information) both on individual restaurant pages and ... even general managers' personal pages. We've even used (technology) to help have 'in-house recruiting' day where applicants can come the same day to apply for a job.

DQ's Brastad:In our corporate stores, we have a team to recruit and hire... and our franchisees have all kinds of other tools, like Dairy Queen in Texas, they have a whole group that handles this. ,

Rave's Barker:With Pie Five from a recruiting standpoint, we've been sticking with Snagajob, and then Indeed for supervisor-level positions and Linkedin for positions like general manager and district manager. We've had good traction with those. But we still do a lot of ... face-to-face connection and we just started an applicant tracking system which will be live in a few weeks.
 

Q: What kinds of training technology are you using to onboard employees, as well as develop them ongoing?

Mazzio's Mizka:We are evolving a lot of hands-on training ... which lends itself more to video training through the (in-house) intranet and web.

DQ/Brastad: We put our crew members in (real-life video-recorded situations) to manage those situations. So we give them real-life experiences in an environment where they can make mistakes so that when they do go into the kitchen they really know how to handle things.It's called micro-learning and it involves taking (longer) volume sessions and putting them into bite-size chunks. .. It follows the EDOCA method ... for Explain, Demonstrate, Observe, Coach and Assess. These are videos of three minutes or less we provide on their phones ...

So we use that micro-learning to introduce subjects, and then longer e-learning to really teach it and then, don't forget the hands-on training because it's so important and finally we have a skills assessment that allows them to graduate (that skill) and move on.
 

Q: Have you seen any relationship between those efforts in onboarding and training and overall worker retention?

DQ/Brastad:Through our orientation and training, we really try to make employees feel special ... and the goal is to get them to stay. For team members, there is about seven hours of online training and then the experiential learning is spread over five to 10 days.

All our managers must be food safety-certified and we have a very in-depth program with the first 14 days focused on product, followed by a certification exam, then a second 14-day session on service management and the third phase of (core principles) of people, pride and profit. ... We also have a coarse for multi-location management and we've really seen that the further they go in training, the more longevity is there.
 

Q: All three of you said you create your training content in-house, but when you transitioned your training from print to digital did you use a third party or do you use third-party onboarding or background verification?

Mazzio's Mizka:We are evolving (background checks, etc). Payroll does most of that now, but we intend to go as digital as we can. We also use an outside company to give us informed, data-driven answers to how many people we need to hire for a specific need. That works better than a manager saying "I just know" how many people I need at my location.

And one other tool we're using puts all the information into a performance management system to identify those with management potential or those who need specific coaching. It's what I call 'racking and stacking' and its the use of data to manage performance.

DQ/Brastad:We use a learning management system that tracks all (employees') training and certifications. So globally, we can actually do reporting on who takes training and how many people are certified in a particular area and that type of thing.

About S.A. Whitehead

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Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb editor Shelly Whitehead is a former newspaper and TV reporter with an affinity for telling stories about the people and innovative thinking behind great brands.