5 Common Onboarding Mistakes You Must Avoid as a Restaurant Owner

Employee onboarding is certainly not our favorite thing to do, and rarely something we prioritize. The truth is, most restaurant owners and managers are tired of it— exhausted, even! Employees seem to come and go as fast as clients these days, making turnovers a habit and fast onboarding a necessity.

Nevertheless, the desperation for a quick onboarding process could be truly detrimental for your staff’s satisfaction and, therefore, your restaurant’s customer service. According to a study by Zippia, 21% of employees quit after 6 months because of ineffective onboarding, saying they lacked clear guidelines and proper supervision. Here are the 5 most common onboarding mistakes you should avoid at all costs within your restaurant’s management:

1. Incomplete staff training

The hospitality industry is famous for their express training trials. New hires for waiting, hosting, and bartending jobs sometimes receive trainings from their managers that barely last for 30 minutes.

Staff training shouldn’t be a one-time show & tell. Employees should be granted with all the information necessary for them to complete their job, allowing them to examine everything accordingly, practice their new procedures, memorize menus, and completely understand their functions, schedules, and goals.

Surely, this is a lot for many restaurants, specially if they lack the time and resources to implement it properly. Luckily, there are affordable training methods that allow restaurants to minimize their training efforts. Mr. Tomato, for example, offers digital training modules with AI-customized learning paths for your employees to access from their phones for a fair price.

2. Loading them with all the information at once

Learning is progressive and shouldn’t be overwhelming. Pouring piles of information into a new employee is hardly ever effective. Honestly, we can almost guarantee they won’t remember a thing! Make sure you have a properly structured learning path for your employees to go through gradually as they integrate themselves into the workplace.

Mr. Tomato’s lessons and practices are a perfect technique for this, with customizable templates and a standardized flow, it creates interactive and gamified questions from your uploaded documents, a style that ensures engagement and memory retention.

3. Putting new hires to work immediately

We understand you want your new employee to fill in a vacant position immediately, but that can bring you way more problems than solutions. A restaurant’s reputation depends on the quality of its service, so it’s highly important that all your active employees are qualified to serve.

You must do constant evaluations before deciding when your new hire is ready to work. The best way to do this is testing them on their knowledge with exams. Mr. Tomato offers a testing software that creates random questions based on the uploaded materials, allowing you to set a date, measure the durations, and analyze the final results.

4. Not sharing vital information about the company

It’s vital that your entire team knows your restaurant’s mission, vision, values, and policies. Make sure you define your company properly for you to share it with each and every employee right from the start.

You don’t have to make a whole fuzz about it, though! No paper manuals, bulletin boards, or Power Point presentations necessary. You can always upload it on the Mr. Tomato app for your whole staff to access anytime, with the option to test them on it whenever you want.

5. Not establishing a clear hierarchy

Many new employees spend days in a job without knowing who their superior is. Everyone in your team must understand your company’s structure: everyone’s roles, the different departments, and who is in charge of each of them.

With an app like Mr. Tomato, you don’t even have to waste your time explaining this in person. The platform allows you to register every employee with a profile that specifies their position, their duties, their team, and their superior. Everyone can view this list anytime, as well as connect with each other, ask questions, and create fulfilling work relationships.