There are those key players in your hospitality business that you cannot do without.

According to The Courier Mail, in an article posted on August 7th, 2016:

“Tourism crying out for workers as visitor numbers climb” they said that Hospitality operators are using 457 visas to bring in workers to come from away to fill the shortages.”

This is due mainly in part because of the 12% increase in visitors to Queensland in 2016.

Therefore, in lieu of worker shortages, understanding how to retain star employees is key to operating your business.

So, how do we retain star employees?

Understanding What Employees Think About Their Jobs

The first step to identifying how you can develop processes, incentives, and motivation to retain star employees is to get real with yourself on how these employees look at their jobs.

Star employees generally don’t look at their job in your company and in the hospitality industry overall as a career job.

Meeting Employees Where They Are

According to most recent interview with Damian Doyle, owner of 3 cafes in Queensland, he said most think of their job in his cafes as a stepping stone that’s either helping pay their way through college, or to gain experiences that will lead them into other careers.

Offering Education Incentives

Being that most employees, yes, even those star players in your business that have passion for their jobs, will eventually move on to other careers you have to work on incentives that will help them do that.

Being that a large portion of your staff are at the age for post-secondary and university, offering education incentives can be an effective way to retain staff.

Paying Their Tuition

Knowing that your staff are not looking at the job with their company as a career and offering incentives to help them train for the career that they truly want, is powerful.

Maybe you can offer to pay a percentage of their tuition if they work with you for 6 months or a year.

There are many different incentives you can offer, however, the key element here is that you understand that they are using this job as a stepping stone into their future careers.

Offering incentives will help you build trust because it shows that you genuinely care about your star employees well being, not just your businesses bottom line but ultimately this will help with employee retention and will improve your bottom line.

Developing Processes Catered To High Turnover

Workers are going to leave your business for all kinds of reasons; unsociable hours, low pay, and overall lack of frustration with opportunities, etc.

However, identifying how your employees are feeling about their jobs, and instead of focusing on the factors you cannot change, focus on what you can.

One example is developing rock-solid training and management processes that are efficient, effective, and low-cost to run. That way if you lose a star employee that your business doesn’t go under because of it.

Face The Reality

The reality is people are going to leave, the better off you are prepared for that reality is going to dictate success and enable you to survive worker shortages in the industry.

To re-iterate the original ideas behind this blog post, meet your employees where they are. Knowing that the majority of your employees, including the star players are going to leave.

The better you face this reality of what your employees think about their jobs and prepare by offering incentives to retain employees, and build rock-solid processes to weather the storm, the better off you will be.