A Quick Study | by Dr. Jerry Newman
My fascination with quick-serves dates back to my undergraduate days at the University of Michigan. Over a two-year period I worked first as a crew member then later as a night shift supervisor at Crazy Jim’s Blimpy Burgers. Lest you think this is a fictional name, Blimpy’s was featured on the Food Network show, Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. For the past decade I’ve been the volunteer supervisor of a concession stand that does $2,000 traffic every weekend day during the heart of the summer for Aunt Rosie’s Fast Pitch Softball Tournament.
These experiences prepared me, I thought, to work undercover in seven fast-food restaurants over a 14-month period. One of the outcomes was a book, My Secret Life on the McJob. More importantly, though, the experience transformed my life and gave me a mission that stirs my passion. While working undercover as a crew member I met hundreds of hard working, intelligent people. Three things you can say about fast-food workers who survive six months:
They are reliable. If not, they’re gone quickly!
They handle pressure. Lunch rush is the most pressure I’ve ever faced.
They’re team players. Try assembling a burger in 25 seconds without working together. Not going to happen!
I’ve retold these truths to appreciative audiences’ dozens of times over the past two years. Sometimes I’m preaching to a choir that gives me a solid “Amen” in support. Other times I awaken long held but dormant beliefs that endorse these three statements. Most often, though, I face a discouraged majority who has been so buffeted by negative stereotypes that they have lost sight of a final important truth: The quick-serve industry is responsible for launching about 10 million careers globally every year.
Do the math yourself. I have. Or rather, I had a statistical wiz here at the State University of New York at Buffalo do the math for me. Maybe 10 million folks don’t stay in fast-food jobs every year, but you give them the life skills to succeed at almost any future job they encounter. If that doesn’t make you feel proud, check your pulse!
Much lower on the pride meter, though, is our track record for turnover. When I talk with brand execs at annual meetings they inevitably talk about efforts to reduce turnover. Some have made amazing strides. But it’s still common to see turnover rates hovering higher than 200 percent.
Think about this. In a store with 40 employees and a $1,750 replacement cost for each lost crew member (the average of rates I’ve heard across many such discussions), that represents $140,000 in costs. A beleaguered franchisee with a 10 percent profit on sales would have to do $1.4 million in sales just to absorb this cost! Yeah, yeah, I know your turnover is lower than this. And you are more efficient at taking on new crew members. But still, the cost ought to make you uncomfortable.
That’s why everyone I talk to wants advice on reducing turnover. Mostly the conversation runs like this: “Hey Jer, we’re putting in an online training program that replaces our DVDs. This should streamline our training process and we hope cut turnover. What do you think?” These questions almost always are asked in a hopeful tone. The sad truth, though, is turnover is not an easily solved problem. There are dozens of reasons people leave: bad on-boarding experiences; aloof coworkers; bad managers; rude customers; poor advancement opportunities; too few hours; too many hours. I think you get the point.
Over the next year I’m going to talk about factors that cause turnover and suggestions on how to reduce it. My advice will come from three sources. First, I’ve got 35 years as a fast-food worker, fast-food manager, consultant to the industry, and consultant to hundreds of firms outside the industry. I’m coauthor on a book about pay and rewards that is in its tenth edition and still widely used by HR people across the country and globe. Second, I hope to be your bridge to scientific information about turnover. Academics speak a language almost no one understands. But they are an amazing source of rigorous research about the industry. It’s a curious fact that academics love to do studies using quick-serve workers, yet if you ask execs if they know about this research, most often the answer is no. I will alert you to advances on this front and tell you what science has to say about turnover. Third, I would be honored if you would share ideas with me that I can relay to the broader foodservice community.
For example, I recently talked with a regional manager at a Southern burger chain. Faced with turnover around 210 percent, he asked store managers to do three things differently. Only hire one new person per week—make the experience special, at least on this small scale. Start the crew member at 7 a.m. so that the first lunch rush is midway through the first day. (In most of my seven jobs I started at either 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. Lunch rush totally intimidated me!). Finally, this experiment had the store manager as the primary agent for training. For the first days of training the manager acted as a main source of information and feedback. This is a very different model for on boarding new crew members. The process is designed to make the introduction less stressful and more consistent. The result: Turnover in the stores with these new procedures dropped to 160 percent. The stores without changes continued to be plagued by much higher turnover.
Stories like this admittedly lack scientific precision. But if we can tell these stories, get brands interested in trying and sharing new ideas, maybe we can fight turnover together.