3 Reasons Why Career Branding is Critical to Your Restaurant
- By Harri Insider Team | August 25, 2021
Restaurant hiring has changed dramatically. As the labor shortage puts more power in the hands of jobseekers, brands are taking new measures to attract and retain talent. The most successful approaches that we’ve seen take a people-focused approach to talent acquisition.
Why?
To a candidate, your restaurant is no different than the one down the street. If they want a job as a server, they’re going to pick the opportunities with the best offering.
But career branding is a way to change that and convince them that your brand is the best offering. By focusing on the people aspect of hiring and engagement through authentic career branding, hospitality businesses can position themselves as a desirable place to work and a supportive step in a candidate’s career ladder.
Below, we’ll cover 3 reasons why career branding is critical to restaurant operations, as well as how our Talent Acquisition Suite can be used to execute meaningful recruitment marketing strategies.
A major reason why hospitality stands out to potential employees is because there’s a huge social aspect to working in the industry. Compensation is important, but restaurant workers, especially younger ones, are drawn to hospitality for the social aspect that comes with the job and the opportunity to be part of a team.
Clear branding represents an opportunity for operators to showcase this in a genuine and appealing way.
Company events, friendly team competitions, community-building efforts, and more. There’s a million and one ways that brands engage with their employees that make for an excellent way to attract new talent.
What does your brand do to create an exciting employee experience? What are your competitors doing and how do your efforts compare?
Once you have your value props, shout them from the rooftops — because candidates won’t go out of their way to investigate your company’s culture.
See how brands like Lettuce Entertain You and 50 Eggs Hospitality Group use Harri to create compelling career stories and showcase company values to potential talent, or learn more about how to build a career branding strategy to attract talent here.
Stronger branding decreases turnover
While recruitment marketing starts at the candidate experience, it shouldn’t end there. Career branding must continue through the entire employee experience to not just attract, but retain top talent. Because if your actual employee experience differs from what was promised during the interview process, you’re going to create a lot of dissatisfied employees.
A two-way, open line of communication is necessary to ensure all career branding efforts are not only received, but optimized based on your employee experience.
We always recommend pushing out messages to employees at the timeclock and through a scheduling app integrated with employee messaging. There’s two reasons for that.
First, employees clock in and out of work every day. They need to do that to get paid, after all. That means that sending promotional messages about new events, like your next Employee Appreciation Day, through the timeclock is guaranteed to be seen.
The second place that employees are guaranteed to see? Their schedule. Integrating employee communications, such as group messages or team notifications, within your scheduling app is another surefire way to ensure you get eyes on your messages. Not to mention it gives employees an outlet to easily provide feedback to their managers.
Stronger culture, happier employees
Happy employees bring a wealth of benefits to your brand.
They work harder, are more inclined to climb the ladder within your company, and are likely to go the extra mile in helping customers and teammates alike. They’ll stay longer, and that stay will be worthwhile. Happier employees also tend to bring in more referrals to your company.
All in all, your team members should be proud to work at your company.
That’s why our career branding tools encompass more than just a careers site, we give you the tools you need to display and centralize information for all to see. From benefits and events to team testimonials and brand core values, career branding brings this to life for your employees.
Display and centralize information regarding job openings, organizational values, culture, employee testimonials, and benefits.
Career branding for restaurants is the new “must-have”
While career branding is critical to restaurant people operations, your efforts don’t need to be rushed.
Take a step back to evaluate what you already have and what’s missing. Does your brand know who it is and what it wants to be? Is there an internal and external culture? Is there strong, consistent engagement with candidates and existing employees?
Team Harri is here to help you every step of the way. Learn how we can help boost your career branding efforts to attract talent, retain star team members, and improve operational success.
