Back of House

A Guide to HR and Staffing Solutions for Restaurant Operators

Written by Back of House Team | Mar 1, 2023 5:00:00 AM

HR and staffing software lets restaurateurs automate tasks around hiring, record-keeping, and compliance, so they can focus on core restaurant operations. The solutions in this category help restaurateurs connect to job candidates, onboard new hires, and stay within the law as they do so. Over the lifetime of an employee’s stint at your restaurant, these softwares also help track their progress reports, their job evaluations, and their discipline records. These softwares may also include training videos or modules to get new hires up to speed and to help managers and employees alike stay current on best practices. 

Benefits of HR / Staffing solutions

  • Quality of hiring: Staffing solutions can include myriad options, including AI-driven questionnaires and proprietary pre-screening, but they all strive to get you the best workers possible in the least amount of time, and to reduce turnover.

  • Speed of onboarding: New hires can fill out forms online before they arrive, saving them hassle and saving you hours on the clock.

  • Uniformity of training: Especially for restaurants with multiple locations, it can be difficult to ensure that every new hire is getting a standardized introduction to their duties, requirements, and certifications. A staffing software can address that.

  • Legal compliance: Federal, state, and city laws for restaurant labor and payroll are a thicket for anyone to keep track of, and ever-changing at that. A good hiring software will also help you stay inside the law by asking questions that don’t cross boundaries meant to protect people’s privacy.

  • Automation of administrative tasks: This is just a fact of life: Recordkeeping, compliance, and recruiting are not why most professionals get into hospitality. Outsourcing those functions to a software will free up the hours you have to do more creative, personal, hands-on parts of your job.

Why use HR / Staffing solutions

Hiring and staff retention have always been two of the quiet drains on the restaurant industry. The old adage that it’s tough to find good help these days has always been true, but never more so than in the aftermath of the 2020-2021 pandemic. Especially as workers find themselves in high demand, commanding higher wages and more job options than in the past, restaurant owners and managers have to move swiftly to make a hire when the chance presents itself. That raises the stakes for being confident that person will be a culture fit and bring the right skills to the position. HR / Staffing softwares aim to make that decision as fast, simple, and certain as possible.

What kinds of software are included in HR / Staffing solutions

Recruiting and hiring. You might find solutions that help with outreach, or others that maintain their own pre-vetted marketplace of talent that you can browse for gig work or for long-term employment.

  • Pre-screening software: This can help ensure that a candidate has the proper experience and skills to fit the job, or it might test more subjective traits that will help predict whether a person is likely to succeed within your company culture.

  • Orientation and training: What are the key tasks and duties you need a new hire to accomplish while on the job? A software that enables you to control the content and pace of that information will help ensure that new hires know what’s what as soon as they arrive.

  • Maintaining compliance: This may be a feature of your HR software, or it may be included in a solution that tracks payroll and scheduling. In either event, it should help you stay on the right side of regulations and laws that dictate how you can run your business.

  • Benefits management: This also may be nested within your payroll platform or your HR solution (which could exist within one software). This will help your employees track their health and other benefits, to maintain simplicity and transparency.

[Photo by Vanna Phon on Unsplash]