Asking newly hired staff to read through an old, tattered manual is as motivating as reading through a dry rendition of how to use a new software product. What's worse, the information may be outdated. And if you have new hires trained by fellow servers, what happens if they're having an off day or have slightly modified a house policy for their own ends. Can you afford a restaurant full of wrongly trained staff?
It might surprise you how interested your staff is to learn more about the industry. They like to keep current with emerging trends, menu items, and serving techniques. What's more, how can they improve their skill set and knowledge base if they don't understand the industry at large?
There are many ways to increase the effectiveness of your training programs, beginning with the training manual.
- What kinds of magazines do you read? What does your staff read? Think about ways to incorporate the visual intrigue of popular magazines into your training manuals. Think about paper color, font, style and overall layout. Training manuals don't need to be dull. The goal is for them to be read, so make them readable and fun.
- Keep language in training manuals clear, concise, and grabbing. For example, Bennigans used catchy phrases, such as "Set 'em Up Joe" instead of "Preparing the Bar for the Evening's Customers" in their new training manuals.
- Be a little creative and use your imagination. Your property style and staff demographic may provide inspiration. If your staff is comprised of 18 to 25 year olds and the property is a hip, trendy club, the language and graphics will be a little different from a supper club with employees aged 30 years and up.
- When designing training programs, keep it simple and fun. Instead of a classroom atmosphere, successful training programs are highly interactive, repetitious and rely upon replicas of real life. Get out of the classroom and into the real setting.
- Waiting on other servers or staff can be intimidating. There are other resources you can utilize. For example, after newly hired staff has been thoroughly trained, why not have them work a mock shift: Instead of customers, use family or friends of the staff and management as the test group. You may even have a few regular customers who would be honored to participate.
- Keep it entertaining. For example, design simple games to teach various elements such as a scavenger hunt to learn the dining room layout, or bingo to learn menu items.
Servers are the sales force of a restaurant and when engaged in interesting, ongoing training, the results are many fold for operators.