Restaurant Employee Onboarding Checklist

Effective restaurant employee onboarding is a way to increase retention, necessary for companies without money to burn because new hires are a big drain on company money if they churn out.

According to Evergreen Business Weekly, the cost of replacing an employee is $65,510.

With this in mind, a good onboarding process is priceless, especially when standardized, perfected and implemented efficiently.

Our checklist software, Process Street, aims to help businesses create and run recurring processes like onboarding.

Assign this checklist to yourself, the new hire's mentor and the hiring manager to get a piece-by-piece detailed overview on progress.

Learn more about employee onboarding with Process Street.

Before the onboarding process can begin, you’re required to prepare any necessary paperwork and information before your new hire’s first day. You can start preparing this paperwork by recording the following information in the form field below

When hiring a new employee you need to remember the basics - all forms must be intact and passed on to the HR department. Save copies of these vital forms using the form fields below.

If you require some examples of the necessary forms, see below.

1. Intellectual property and assignment agreement (Customizable example)
2. Non-Disclosure agreement (Customizable example)

You can also edit what paperwork you want to upload during this onboarding process by adding the workflow to your library and clicking 'Edit.' 

Send an email welcoming the new employee and reminding them of the state date that was selected upon accepting the offer. 

Send an email to your existing team to inform them of the new hire. 

These are tasks that should be completed within the employee’s first week of employment.

Next up in the restaurant employee onboarding checklist, you need to get the employee up to speed on who everyone they'll be working with is.

Record the details of these people with the form fields below - feel free to add more if necessary.

Aim to include bios and job titles to help the new hire familiarize them with who they'll be supervised by and reporting to.

You can add more contact form fields by clicking the 'Edit' button in this workflow. 

Arrange a meeting with the new hire using Google Calendar, and go over the job description, discussing and expanding on any unclear areas. Record the date and time of this meeting with the form field below.

By the end of the meeting, your new hire should be clear on their responsibilities and goals, and you should be clear on their understanding of your expectations.

A mentor (an established employee who is familiar with how your restaurant operates) should be assigned to the new hire so they can shadow and learn from them. Record this mentor in the form field below.

According to Chron:

"Shadowing is an interpersonal form of demonstration. The method involves trainees following around a mentor while the mentor performs his regular job duties. This gives the trainee a feel for the job before she attempts to perform her responsibilities. They also can observe how seasoned employees handle a variety of real-life scenarios."

(Source: chron.com)

On their first day, you need to ensure that the new hire is familiar with the layout of your restaurant. To this end, make sure that the new hire is familiar with all items of the sub-checklist below

An employee handbook is an excellent way to help your new hire understand your company culture and the relevant information for their role.

If you have a handbook, you can include it into Pages and provide the link in this workflow to help provide the new employee with easy access. 

Once you've read through each of the employee handbook sections outlined below, you can tick it off. 

Next up, you need to give guidance to the new hire on recommendations and up-selling.

The waiting staff should be able to interpret the menu, explain what items taste like, and recommend dishes that go together. They should learn the 'popular choices', whether these are dishes you want to sell or dishes that are actually popular.

If your menu has food with obscure ingredients, it's essential the waiting staff is well informed as to what it is, or other more common names.

For more guidance on restaurant upselling, check out this guide.

(Source: foodservicewarehouse.com)

Once you've assigned a mentor to your new hire, the best way both parties can benefit from it is shadowing.

Shadowing is the practice of a new employee watching and following their mentor throughout the day, to naturally see the challenges and solutions that arise.

(Source: humanresources.about.com)

This is where the mentor can give feedback about the new hire's performance. 

These task should be completed within the new hire’s first month of employment.

At this point in the onboarding process, you should take an in-depth look into your new hire's performance. Consider the following form fields and record your responses in the appropriate field.

Based on your private notes you made in the last task, draft a meeting agenda and schedule a good time for your new hire to discuss how they think their first week has been. Record the date of the meeting and a copy of the agenda with the form fields below.

Below are some tips for what to assess the new hire on, and what to base the meeting off of.

General performance

Job-specific performance

Want to personalise your performance guidelines and OKRs for your specific restaurant? Pages is the perfect place to do this. Take a look now!

The restaurant employee onboarding process is one that cannot always be generalized since each business has a different way of doing things.

Using this guide as a template, expand upon it by adding it to your Process Street account and editing the tasks/descriptions as you feel fit.

Take into consideration how you've onboarded hires in the past, and any successes/failures you might have had.

From that basis, you can start to form your own restaurant's standard operating procedure for onboarding new hires and become a more productive, efficient operation. Pages is a great place to do this!

• Eric Jorgenson - How Employee Onboarding can increase Productivity and decrease Turnover to create Profits
• Shaun Fowler - Methods for Training Restaurant Employees
• Eleanor Frisch - Top 10 Tips for Successful Restaurant Upselling
• SusanHeathfield - Job Shadowing Is Effective On-the-Job Training
• Process Street blog - Pages (Beta)

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