Members' Blog

How many of you are experiencing growing pains? Moving from a small to mid-size company to rapidly building out multiple locations each year? My current growing pain is capturing never ending “tribal knowledge,” information passed down from person to person, which gets diluted over time. My department’s job is to dig into “what do our team members know in our Legacy locations” (that is not found in ANY type of training material) versus “what our team members know in our newest locations.” We strive for what we call “One Habit, One Sound.”

The hospitality industry has faced many challenges in the past few years: a shortage of available workers and changing demands from consumers. But one of the biggest challenges has been from the barrage of new local and state laws (increases in minimum wages, scheduling requirements, ban the box, paid sick leave, etc.) that have forced substantial changes in pricing, operations and administration to accommodate these rules.

According to the 2017 Trends in Hospitality Training & Development Study conducted by TDN2K/People Report and the Council of Hotel and Restaurant Trainers, hospitality companies that spend 10% of their ongoing management training on human resources related topics tend to have much lower management turnover rates than those that spend little or no time on these topics. In this article, we’re going to dig into why that’s the case and what you can do to beef up your management training programs.

When searching for vendors to provide training programs and materials, most hospitality executives will ask standard questions about cost, content customization, and implementation timelines, all of which are needed to make an informed decision. I will follow this same path, but because the vetting process for external content can be a lot like a job interview, I’ll also include the same types of questions I would ask of a cook, cashier, or manager candidate.

When was the last time your restaurant was able to provide updated training for all of its staff members? How many of your employees are 100% prepared for any and all situations? If you don't like your current answers to the above questions, chances are your employees aren't happy about them either.

This topic scored a large and attentive audience in May at the 2018 National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago. QSR Web covered the highlights, which were brimming with good advice from three panelists, including Hostmark, Ivar's, and the MFHA, each lending itself to the betterment of the whole hospitality industry.

Your weekly agenda is probably filled with back-to-back meetings, conference calls with the operations team, to-do lists a mile long, and one-on-ones with your training teams. Sound about right? The weeks come and go and before you know it, and you haven’t made time to reflect on what matters most - your team and directives.

The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) interviews CHART's own Serah Morrissey about how experiential interviewing has the potential to create win-win outcomes for employers and candidates alike.

We do the best we can to provide great customer service for the most guests possible. But often, those who need the most support are left out. In this brief and insightful CHART Talks video, Adam shares how to educate staff to better serve all guests, including those with non-visible disabilities.

It’s happening! The robots are taking over. Earlier this year, the news was all a buzz over Flippy the Robot. Flippy is currently employed at a burger restaurant in Pasadena, CA and is capable of flipping 150 burgers per hour.

Like many of my CHART colleagues, I spend a good deal of time in our restaurants for events such as training sessions, product rollouts, and performance audits. Regardless of why I’m visiting, I strive to make it a quality experience that adds value to those Ivar’s locations, and I have found that there are 5 specific actions I can take that will greatly improve my chances of achieving that objective.

We’ve all been there. A reminder pops up on our computer for the interview we have in 15 minutes, and we spend the next 14 scrambling to find the application and remind ourselves what we’re hiring for. We may or may not have a job description, we may or may not have a place to sit and meet. When the candidate arrives, we ask about the best boss they’ve worked for (to make sure it’s someone like us) and have them describe why we should hire them instead of the other candidates. When that’s finished (phew!), we return to our desk feeling like we really accomplished something.