Back to Basics: Training your staff

By the very nature of our industry we should be service oriented. As a group of professionals we spend many arduous hours dreaming up new ways to get the customers in - exciting new products, themed evenings and maybe a great makeover - so why is it we spend so little time and money on our staff?

Staffing can account for as much as 30 per cent of a pub's turnover yet licensees often neglect to look after that investment.

The independent publican can sometimes feel that staff training and development is the luxury of bigger companies. They can make the assumption that taking the effort to train staff is a never-ending and unproductive exercise. There are the usual excuses:

• "I can't find the time"

• "I train staff, then they leave"

• "I'm not qualified to train people"

• "It would be too disruptive to my business."

But trying to find excuses rather than finding solutions is not the way forward.

Bar and waiting staff are in the frontline and will always be ambassadors for your business. You wouldn't let someone you had just met drive your car, but many people let untrained staff drive their business.

The excuses are a way of not accepting control and management of your team. A well-trained and motivated team will not only help drive the business but also make you stand out from your competitors.

It's no coincidence that all the major companies in our industry run comprehensive training. They know the rewards this approach can bring.

Of course, you can't possibly have the same size training budget they have, but with a little planning, right attitude and some outside help you to can reap the rewards a well-trained and happy workforce can bring.

Like any other facet of your business, planning the way you are going to train your people is crucial. The step-by-step guide here will help you pinpoint your problem areas and suggest how you can solve them.

The importance of good staff

To meet customers' needs licensees must be willing to listen to them and make sure the pub's offer meets their requirements.

If you speak to your customers you'll find that the most important things to them are service, value for money and quality of product. The fact that publicans' own opinions contradict this is quite worrying.

In The Publican Market Report 2007​ licensees were asked to rate different facets of their business according to whether they are growing in importance for them.

The rating for staff shows a bigger drop between 2006 to 2007 than any other area - only 61 per cent of those surveyed said staff were of increasing performance compared to 79 per cent the previous year.

When publicans were asked in the same survey what they wanted advice on, the top four answers were maximising profitability; marketing; training staff and customer service.

How to reduce staff churn

The disruption to business and the financial cost as well as the time cost when staff leave is a very real concern for publicans.What generally happens when someone leaves is that in the short term their duties and responsibilities get put squarely on the shoulders of someone else. This may appear to be lucrative to the publican as he sees a drop in his wage bill, but the unseen consequences are a lot more costly:

• A drop in standards

• A rise in complaints

• Key staff being expected to work more

• A feeling of not being appreciated

• An increase in staff turnover.

The way to prevent this is by training and motivating your staff.

I have heard all too many times that "there just aren't enough hours in the day to spend training staff". Have faith in your own capabilities. You may not feel that you could hold a training session yourself but the array of different skills and experiences you possess are the fundamental foundations for the development of your staff.

By being proactive in this way not only do you save all that time and money you spend trying to employ new staff, you can see an increase in turnover due to happier staff and customers who receive better service.

Carl May, through his company Catered4, is one of The Publican's Sell More, Save More project champions. For more information go to www.thepublican.com/sellmore​