Hospitality Turnover: Why It’s High and How to Fix It

From the outside, it might seem to many that high turnover in the hospitality industry is annoying. You have to constantly recruit, interview, hire, and train people.

But more than that, it’s expensive.

Every time you lose another employee, you’re losing the money you put into interviewing, hiring, and training. And the cycle repeats itself again and again.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though.

In this article, we’ll walk you through the real reasons hospitality turnover stays so high. And, of course, we’ll give you practical fixes to actually cut your rate way down.

Key Takeaways

1. Unpredictable schedules are the biggest driver of high turnover, much more so than pay.

2. Turnover is a systems problem rather than a people or individual problem.

3. To fix turnover, address schedule predictability and add flexible staffing to your system.

Why is hospitality turnover so high?

The most critical factor in turnover is scheduling. It’s hard on anyone to have an unpredictable schedule and inconsistent hours. It makes it virtually impossible to plan anything around a schedule that’s always moving. And it’s even more difficult to plan and budget when you’re getting inconsistent income.

To add to the scheduling issue, many restaurant, bar, and hotel workers, especially the most loyal ones, find themselves burnt out. The high turnover causes short staffing, which leads to overtime for staff on the clock, and then the whole business is constantly putting out fires.

This then leads to more staff leaving, which repeats the cycle.

Two other elements that are closely related are management friction and weak onboarding. Any staff member who comes on board and doesn’t receive proper training and development is going to feel like they’re playing catch-up. Then, if managers deliver unclear expectations and provide inconsistent feedback, the staff member never knows where they stand.

A business with this environment is not tough to walk away from.

Finally, pay is obviously going to be a top priority for any worker in this industry. If they can find much better pay at a competitor or in another industry altogether, they won’t stick around for long.

The hidden costs of turnover

Now, why does turnover cost so much? A few reasons:

• Hiring costs: Just to start, you’ll spend money on advertising, agencies, and the time it takes your manager to organize applications, read through them, and interview candidates.
• Training time: While your employee is still new, they’ll likely cost you a pretty penny as they get their feet under them. This comes in the form of mistakes they make, meals you have to comp, and lower table turnover because of slower ticket times.
• Operational instability: You’ll also lose money as your restaurant deals with turnover due to issues like call-outs, short staffing, and last-minute shifts.
• Culture impact: Finally, you’ll lose a lot of money when your top performers leave because they feel like they’re always carrying the team. If you don’t give your leaders a core crew to lead, they’ll burn out and find another job that will.

The turnover loop you must break (and how)

So, here’s what your turnover loop looks like:

1. Short staffing leads to burnout.
2. Burnout leads to call-outs and quits.
3. Quits increase the load on whoever stays.
4. Those become burnt out as well.

Your solution is a system that will protect coverage and consistency:

Fix 1: Build schedule stability and predictability

Stop making your employees guess how many hours they’ll have each week, which nights they’ll get off, and whether they can expect more of the same next week and the week after.

Instead, build a predictable schedule your staff can commit to, ensuring everyone gets the hours they want and need. This is the first step to building a core crew.

Fix 2: Create a manager-friendly onboarding system

Onboard every single new employee with the same, consistent system:

• Provide 30 to 60 minutes of role-specific training before the first shift.
• During the first shift, have a checklist ready, so the training remains consistent for every staff member.
• Pair all new hires with a mentor who can lead them through their first two shifts. This person will act as a guide who can answer questions, redirect when mistakes occur, and help smooth out any issues.
• Have a clear set of standards for all of your staff for pace, cleanliness, and guest communication.

Fix 3: Improve job fit and hiring signal

What does your hiring process look like? Is it consistent? Probably not.

For all hiring, make sure you’re screening applications and interviews for reliability, pace, and coachability. Be careful not to hire someone based on their personality. You don’t want the nicest bartender who can’t make drinks.

Use the same scorecard in interviews and phone screens, complete with a point system, and hire based on points, not your gut feeling.

Consider using an app like shiftNOW to get potential candidates in for a paid trial shift. These staff members can both cover your gaps when you’re short-staffed and give you insight into how well they work during an actual shift.

Fix 4: Reduce burnout without overstaffing

You don’t have to have a packed house of staff to reduce burnout. Instead, create schedules that avoid overtime and long shifts.

Also, make sure you rotate any high-stress stations, so you don’t have the same employee always taking the most demanding tasks on.

Make sure your employees take all of their mandated breaks, no skipping because you’re busy.

Finally, identify any gaps coming up and cover them well in advance with an on-demand app like shiftNOW.

Fix 5: Use flexible staffing as a pressure-release valve

While it’s important to have a core crew and some powerful leaders on every shift, you also always want to have a backup bench. These are staff members who don’t work for you full-time. Instead, they come from an on-demand app, where they can pick up your shifts at the last minute.

An app like shiftNOW can give you access to role-ready workers you can rebook to build a bench for coverage gaps.

Then, you can rebook your best temporary workers. This is the beginning of your backup bench.

As a bonus, you can also call upon your bench during your peak seasons and busy weekends.

Fix 6: Keep great people by running a simple retention system

Now, once you have a core crew, solid leaders, and a backup bench, it’s time to make sure you have a strong retention system in place.

This includes strategies like:

• Checking in with your top performers during peak periods to be sure they’re not getting burnt out.
• Recognizing specific positive actions taken by your staff members as soon as you see or hear about them.
• Providing clear growth paths for your staff members who want to progress in your business. These could include pathways to become a trainer, a lead, a shift supervisor, or a cross-trainer.
• Making “staying” easier than leaving by ensuring any friction during shifts is eliminated.

KPIs to track if you want turnover to actually drop

To be sure your turnover is actually dropping, you’ll want to track a few key performance indicators (KPIs).

These include:

• Turnover rate by role (FOH vs BOH) and by manager
• Call-outs per week and last-minute coverage rate
• Overtime hours and consecutive long shifts
• Time-to-fill open shifts and no-show rate
• Training completion rate and 30-day retention

As each of these metrics unfolds, you’ll be able to tell if your business is improving its turnover rate.

Common mistakes that keep turnover high

Of course, you’re going to make mistakes. Everyone does. But there are common turnover mistakes that many hospitality owners and managers have made so many times that it’s worth learning from them. After all, there’s no reason for you to make them, too.

Don’t wait too long to hire. This leads to your business being short-staffed and you relying on overtime from your employees. Before you know it, your best people are burnt out and on their way out the door.

Don’t forget to put a strong onboarding process into place. Just having a new employee shadow one of your leaders and hoping for the best is not a strategy. It’s a recipe for disaster.

Don’t let your managers be inconsistent when it comes to expectations. Everyone should be on the same page, all the time. Your staff will respect that.

Don’t treat turnover as normal. It’s not a good sign of a healthy, thriving business. But it is measurable, which means it’s fixable.

Don’t wait until people quit before asking what’s wrong. It’s important to check in with your employees regularly and really listen to their feedback. They’re on the frontlines, after all.

30-day action plan to reduce hospitality turnover

You can reduce your turnover within the next 30 days. All you have to do is take a step-by-step, weekly approach to improving your system, keeping your best people, and hiring good fits.

• Week 1: Identify top turnover roles and root causes. This helps you create a plan of attack and prioritize which problems to address first.
• Week 2: Standardize hiring screens and onboarding checklists. You’ll be able to figure out which applicants will be the best fits for the roles you need filled. And you won’t make the mistake of “trusting your gut.”
• Week 3: Add schedule guardrails and burnout controls. Your leaders and your core team will appreciate the predictability and consistency.
• Week 4: Build a flexible staffing bench and measure results. Having backup will ensure that even when you do have a shift that will run short, you can get last-minute coverage from staff you trust.

Within 30 days, you’ll have a business that runs smoothly, happy employees, and, in the best-case scenario, rising revenues.

Closing

In the end, turnover drops when staffing becomes predictable, and managers stop firefighting.

When you get better hiring signals, consistent onboarding, and a flexible bench, you’ll hang onto

Book a demo today with shiftNOW and get the hiring process started.

FAQs

What is the biggest cause of hospitality turnover?

One of the biggest causes of hospitality turnover is unpredictable scheduling and inconsistent hours, especially when it creates income instability. Burnout, management quality, onboarding, and pay also play major roles.

How do I reduce restaurant turnover quickly without raising wages much?

You can quickly reduce restaurant turnover by putting a firm, stable, and predictable system in place that prevents burnout and sets clear expectations.

What should a strong onboarding process include?

Great onboarding is clear about expectations for cleanliness, guest communication, and pace. It should also include a mentor for the first two shifts and options for escalating any issues to the right supervisor or lead.

How can on-demand staffing help reduce burnout and turnover?

On-demand staffing will help you reduce burnout and turnover by providing you with a strong permanent core team and a reliable backup bench for when you need last-minute help.

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