3 Cost Cuts Restaurant Customers Won’t Notice

With margins that can sometimes be paper-thin, restaurateurs are always looking for ways to cut costs and save some of that hard-earned cash. Unfortunately, those cost cuts aren’t always perceived positively in the eyes of the public—especially if the attempt to increase the bottom line comes in the form of menu price increases, lack of adequate staffing or use of inferior ingredients. Fortunately, there are a number of behind-the-scene ways to tighten up your restaurant’s budget and make cost cuts that your guests won’t notice.

Be Smart About Restaurant Supply Delivery and Proportions

There are several ways that you can make better use of your supplies to save money. For instance, if you are currently receiving multiple deliveries per week from several different vendors, consider consolidating vendors and deliveries down to one or two a week. Less-frequent deliveries equates to better bulk savings. Ordering larger quantities from the vendors you stick with may enable you to negotiate better prices as well.

Furthermore, make better use of the inventory you have on hand. Keep careful track of what is coming in and what is going out; build specials around surplus ingredients and make a point of utilizing all of your currently available inventory before the next shipment of new supplies is delivered.

Last, but not least, be consistent about your portion sizes. Consistently sized portions keep guests from feeling cheated if they get a smaller portion one time and a larger portion the next. They also help to control costs and improve inventory tracking. Extra scoops add up over time and a lack of standardized portioning makes it difficult to know exactly how much each dish is costing the business to produce, in comparison to the amount of product sold.

Leverage Restaurant Beverage Sales

Another smart way to improve profit margins is to leverage beverage sales that are cheaply produced. Iced tea, for example, can cost as little as five cents a glass to provide. Rather than providing water automatically, notify guests that it is available upon request as a conservation strategy. Not only does this save on water, but it also increases the odds that they will order other beverages off the menu instead. Lastly, build your drink specials around surplus inventory to further make use of everything you already have on hand.

Make Best Use of Restaurant Staff Scheduling

Striking a balance between over-staffing and having adequate staff on hand to handle the amount of customer traffic is always a tricky business in the restaurant industry. Yet, making best use of your restaurant staff scheduling is another way to cut costs. Obviously, you want to schedule fewer people on days you anticipate will be slow, but you also want to make sure that you have your most skilled and efficient employees scheduled on your busier days. Furthermore, it’s smart to try to pair servers who have established rapport and have demonstrated the ability to work well together. Servers who get along are going to be far better at working together and covering a room more efficiently. Talk with your staff and observe them in action to figure out how to best put their unique skill combinations to use.

Identifying areas where you are spending more money than you need to be can be challenging. Looking for opportunities to save money without sacrificing the quality of service is critical to any restaurant’s success. Sometimes a little experimentation is required in order to strike the perfect balance for your restaurant business, but the cost-saving effort is worth the while.

5 Savvy Ways to Drive More Restaurant Sales

Driving restaurant sales is an art-form that takes practice and creativity to perfect. Nonetheless, there are a number of things that you can do to greatly improve your chances of success. Here are five time-proven ways to build more sales in your restaurant business.

#1. Make Selling More Fun for Staff

Your staff are the hands that make the sales happen. Getting them enthused about boosting sales is key to the success of your plan. Set goals for shift sales and share them with your staff. Try instituting fun and fair shift sales contests for servers and kitchen teams alike.

#2. Utilize Suggestive Selling Techniques

Recognize and reinforce suggestive selling efforts often during a shift and let servers know how they did goal-wise before you release them. Instruct your servers in the psychological aspects of sales, such as how someone will often choose one of two options you present (ex: this high end beer, or that) or how they will often take your suggestion of making their order larger or adding something extra if you simply smile and nod slowly while you ask them if they want it. There is a ton of information on how to be more effective at sales through simple changes in body language, or the words you use, and it’s worthwhile to the restaurateur to train their employees in the art thoroughly.

#3. Encourage Slow Day Restaurant Traffic

Look for ways to bring people in on slower days to help boost sales. For example, if you have a frequent diner program, you could offer double points for orders placed on a slow day or a free piece of pie for orders over $40. Get creative about how to entice people into your establishment.

#4. Build Your Restaurant’s “Social Capital”

One of the best ways to drive restaurant sales is to be better at local store marketing than the competition. Make a point of visiting every single school, business, charity and organization within a three mile radius of your restaurant at least once a month. Focus on building positive relationships with the people in your trading area and look for ways to either bring them into your restaurant or cater to them directly. Have your managers adopt specific local businesses and come up with marketing plans to drive more sales to each one. A hyper-local community focus is an incredibly effective sales and traffic building technique. Factor in these visits as part of your weekly marketing plans and efforts.

#5. Offer a Consistently High Quality Experience Every Time

All of the previous efforts will go to waste if you’re not ensuring that your restaurant is able to provide a consistent, high-quality experience to your guests every time they visit. Cleanliness, food, quality of service and even how your employees do their suggestive selling needs to be consistent, and of high-quality, in order to ensure that sales continue to grow. Managers should seek out strangers and do table visits every shift, touching every table with hospitality and ensuring that guests are enjoying their experiences.

In sum, utilize sales data to set goals, project upcoming sales and beat sales targets at every shift. Look for creative ways to network with, and tap into, your local community, and brush up on your suggestive selling techniques to make those sales soar.

Standards of Success for Modern Restaurants

The standards that created success for restaurants in the past are not the same as those that will create success for restaurants now and in the future. As a restaurant owner, it’s important to review your current standards for success and update them according to the demands of the modern age. Here are a few areas to consider.

Competition Is No Longer Confined to Foodservice Segments

It used to be that you didn’t need to worry about what Joe Schmo was doing in his restaurant down the street, unless his business belonged to the same foodservice category as yours did. These days, competition for the dining dollar spans across all segments. Knowing that, it’s important to benchmark best practices and outstanding behavior across all segments as well, not just your own. Doing so puts your restaurant in a position of achieving the best practices and standards across the industry, giving your business a far more viable chance of attracting its share of the consumer dollar.

Today’s Restaurant Consumer Wants a Specific Type of Service

Every business since the beginning of time is (or should have been) based around providing quality service. The difference in the modern age is that the consumer has gone from expecting “service in general”to expecting “service in specific.”The modern customer wants speed, accuracy, cleanliness, hospitality and no complaint-generating experiences. In other words, they don’t ever want to have to ask for anything and want an easy experience with your restaurant that demonstrates your respect for their patronage and time-constraints. What this means in terms of setting standards for your restaurant is that you must put a premium on getting the order right as well as providing exemplary service that covers all of your customers’ specific needs. Asking for feedback and insight on what you could do better before there is a problem is another marker for success.

Much of Your Restaurant’s Success Lies in the Hands of Your Employees

It used to be that adequate staffing, supplemented with a little training, was enough to give a restaurant success. Turnover was expected and the focus was more on the business and less on the people who ran it. In today’s world, restaurant owner’s have begun to realize that it is far more cost-effective, and ultimately helpful to the overall success of the business, to choose your employees carefully, invest in their development and encourage their tenure.

Look for low-drama, high-value players who share your company’s values, have a penchant for service and an aversion to creating conflict. Once you’ve chosen the right people, invest in their development. You should have a program that successfully develops people at least one level above where you’re currently hiring. Teach them something new every day!

Last but not least, look for opportunities to create tenure rather than turnover. Examine your restaurant’s employment history and notice how long people typically stick around in their positions. If you can find out why they left, do so and if it has to do with the quality of experience they had with your restaurant, do everything in your power to fix it. Consider offering pay raises, bonuses or other incentives to keep people around about the time that they typically quit. For example, if your cooks usually quit within 36 months, what can you do to keep them around for at least 44?

The bottom line here is that in order to be successful as a restaurant business in the modern era, you can’t keep operating on outdated standards of success. The restaurants that make it now, and in the future, will be those that are able to anticipate what is coming and take measures to adapt ahead of the curve.

Better Compensation for Your Restaurant Employees Through Training, Perks and Rewards

The on-going debate over minimum-wage for restaurant workers hasn’t moved much over the last several months. Many protestors want to see the minimum wage raised to $15 an hour—a sum which would be difficult for restaurants to achieve without raising menu prices, reducing staff and taking other less-than-desirable measures to compensate for the increased minimum wage. While the debate is likely to go on for some time, the underlying message is clear: restaurant workers want better compensation. Minimum wage may or may not be increased, but many restaurant owners are taking the message to heart and looking for other ways to better compensate their employees, for example, through providing better training, perks and rewards.

Better Compensation for Restaurant Workers Through Rewarding Performance

One tactic that some restaurant owners are using to better compensate their employees is to reward staff for achieving certain sales goals through the use of tracking software. There are a number of analytics software programs available designed to help restaurants keep track of employee performance. Such software can be very valuable in identifying and rewarding the employees who are bringing your restaurant the most business.

These types of programs serve multiple purposes. They help employees build their skills, make better tips (through increased sales) and get the chance to receive extra monetary rewards for their service. Of course, this type of program also serves the most important purpose of making your restaurant more profitable as well.

Better Compensation for Restaurant Workers Through Education & Training

Another method that some restaurant owners are using to better compensate their employees is to provide them with better education and training. In some ways, the worst thing a restaurant can do is “dumb down”the jobs of their workers into something that is rote and process-oriented. The point is to help employees grow and to make the workforce progress. The best way this can be done is through education and training.

This additional education can come in a number of forms—everything from cross-training employees in different positions within your restaurant, to sending them to external training and enhancement conferences. You can also simply educate them more about the products you serve and ethics you would like to uphold in your restaurant and transmit to your customers. Education transforms your employees into more valuable assets for you and any future employer they may have. It also makes them better able to do their jobs for you, which in turn means better sales and profitability for your restaurant.

Better Compensation for Restaurant Workers Through Staff Incentive Programs

Staff incentive programs have been around for a coon’s age, but restaurants of all types are re-examining such programs as a feasible means of better educating and motivating their people. For example, if you have new menu items you’d like to promote, why not run a contest with a reward for the server who can sell the most orders of that item? While the reward can be monetary, it can also be in the form of a nifty gadget, a gift certificate, bill pay, extra vacation time, late arrival, etc.

The point of all of this is that there are a number of ways to provide additional compensation to your people without necessarily increasing their hourly wages. Investing in your workforce by providing them with additional opportunities for education, perks and rewards makes them feel that their jobs with you are more valuable. In turn, this creates a scenario where your employees are invested in and happy with their work, which translates to a more successful restaurant business for you.

3 Advantages to Developing Your Own Restaurant Operations Manual

It is neither easy nor quick to develop a system or operations manual for your restaurant. That said, taking the time to do so has a number of advantages and can be a critical factor in the long-term success and profitability of your restaurant. Here are three of the main areas in which the development of an operational manual will assist your overall efforts to grow a thriving restaurant business.

Developing an Operational Manual Helps Your Restaurant Get Out of the Unprofitable Start-Up Phase

Developing a system of checklists, forms and procedures early on in your business drastically reduces the amount of disorganization and chaos that occurs during the start-up phase of any restaurant. It also has the added benefit of allowing you to evaluate virtually every task and activity that takes place in your restaurant. Many find that documenting their systems and operating procedures sheds light on hidden errors and redundancies, as well as provides opportunities for increased productivity and profitability. The sooner you can put a system in place that will allow the average person to duplicate your desired result, the sooner your restaurant can grow from a struggling start-up into a successful business.

Solid Operational Systems Attract and Keep Quality People

One of the primary benefits of implementing operational systems in your restaurant is the ability to create consistency and predictability for both your employees and your customers. Having procedures and systems in place helps to attract and retain customers because they create a predictable and consistent experience that customers can count on having time and again.

Systems, procedures and policies help attract and keep quality employees because they let staff know what to expect from the get-go. If done correctly, these systems provide employees with the information and training they need to be successful at their jobs and achieve the standard of service quality you have set. Even better, when your employees are able to run your restaurant successfully by following the systems you have created, you have now ensured that your restaurant can run without you. This means more free time to focus on growing other aspects of your business and more time for a life outside the restaurant!

Having a Restaurant System in Place Enhances Value and Ability to Obtain Capital

An additional benefit of developing a system and operational manual for your restaurant is that it enhances both the value of your business to a prospective buyer (a buyer’s first question is often “What’s going to happen when the owner is gone?”) as well as your ability to obtain capital for your restaurant. For instance, if you want to expand your concept, having systems will enhance your ability to get money, manage growth and explore new opportunities while ensuring that your existing endeavors continue to function smoothly.

The development of a comprehensive operational plan for your restaurant is no small undertaking and will be an on-going process that you will continually refine over the course of your ownership of a restaurant business. There are many categories in this operational plan for which you will have to develop checklists, policies and procedures and the thought of documenting all of your restaurant’s functions can feel overwhelming. Start by working on the categories that have the most direct impact on your guests’ experiences and work your way along from there. By developing and documenting your unique business system, you increase your opportunity to take your business to the next level, expand your concept and ensure the long-term success of your restaurant. If you need help, there are a number of resources available.

A Look at Restaurant Employment in 2014

The restaurant industry lost a lot of jobs when the recession hit. It took until September of 2011 for it to surpass its pre-recession peak. It now stands above the previous high at nearly 900,000 jobs, or 9.2% of the U.S. job market. Job growth in the industry is expected to remain positive, and it could prove more difficult for employers to hire new staff in 2014 than it has been in the last few years, thanks to an increasingly competitive job market.

The Restaurant Industry Contributes Significantly to Job Growth

The U.S. added a total of 2.2 million new jobs in 2013. Over 306,000 of these jobs were in foodservice. That figures out to be about 1 in every 7 new jobs being attributed to the foodservice industry. In March of this year alone, the restaurant industry has added a total of 30,000 more jobs to the economy. Some critics, however, say that this contribution isn’t as significant as it would appear due to the fact that foodservice workers tend to make much lower wages than the average U.S. worker. Nonetheless, the restaurant industry is expected to continue adding jobs to the economy in 2014, though the competition to hire good employees may get stiffer.

Turnover Rates Are Higher; More Difficulty in Hiring Waitstaff Expected

While the overall U.S. unemployment rate dropped to a five-year low of 6.7 percent last December, the turnover rates for all segments rose. Some are calling the dropping unemployment rates, increased turnover and abundance of new companies looking to hire, a recipe for recruiting difficulty. The labor market is nowhere near as flooded as it was a few years ago, and restaurant operators should be aware that it may be increasingly difficult to hire for some time to come.

Restaurant Operators Should Invest in Employees They Want to Keep

Knowing the possibility that hiring could become more difficult, it makes sense for restaurant operators to put measures in place to retain the good employees they already have. Whether this means more benefits, higher pay or better perks, restaurants around the country are recognizing the value of investing in an already trained and tested staff member over the amount of effort and money required to attract and train someone new.

Better pay and benefits isn’t the only thing that keeps good employees around, either. In fact, an employee’s decision to stay with your restaurant business often has more to do with the work environment they experience with you than any other factor. Creating a supportive, fun, team-oriented environment is critical to the success of any business; but especially so for restaurants.

Your waitstaff is the representation of your business to the public and your staff is the oil that makes the gears go around. Taking the time to listen to employee feedback and concerns, giving regular positive feedback on the work an employee does and fostering an environment of openness and support will go a long way toward demonstrating your commitment and interest in the well-being of your employees. Sincere concern fosters loyalty in your staff that shines through in their work with your customers.

The restaurant industry is expected to continue its steady upward growth, and operators should be aware of an increasingly competitive hiring environment in 2014 and beyond. In the face of such difficulty, it makes a lot of sense for restaurant operators to do what they can to retain and foster the exceptional people already in their employ.

How the New IRS Rules Regarding Group Gratuities Could Impact Restaurants

For years it has been common practice for restaurants to add a fixed gratuity to parties of five or more. As of the beginning of this year, however, how restaurants handle tips for large parties is going to have to change. The IRS came out with a new ruling this year that draws a more distinct division between what are considered tips and what are considered service charges. From here on out, it will no longer be legal to require a tip and still call it a tip. If it’s a mandatory fee, it is now called a service charge, which changes how restaurants can handle payouts for bonuses.

It used to be that cash tips generally went unreported, though both tips and wages are technically taxable. Those days are mostly gone now, what with credit cards and more stringent reporting and tracking requirements. This change in what constitutes service charges vs. tips comes on the heels of a larger effort by the IRS to crack down on tip reporting in general, though many feel that this added ruling isn’t going to turn up much in terms of unreported income.

What Restaurants Can Call Tips Versus What Can Be Called Service Charges 

In order for something to be considered a tip, it must be voluntary. The customer has to decide who gets the money. It must also be for an amount entirely set by the customer, not dictated by a company policy. If it is a mandatory fee such as a fixed gratuity, it is considered a service charge, not a tip, and therefore must be processed through payroll rather than being paid out to the server that day.

The Biggest Effects of the New IRS Ruling on Restaurant Operations

The biggest effect of the new IRS ruling is that it will complicate payroll accounting. Larger restaurants may already have the infrastructure to deal with the additional accounting, but smaller establishments may not. Employees who are used to cashing out their tips each day will also be affected, since they will now have to wait until payday to get their bonuses for the larger tables they served.

Some restaurants will deal with the additional accounting and maintain their fixed gratuity policy. Others will do away with a fixed gratuity entirely in favor of a gentle reminder encouraging patrons to tip by putting a “suggested amount” for the tip on the receipt instead.

How Restaurant Operators Should Handle the Policy Change

The best thing you can do to handle this new IRS ruling is to simply talk to your employees. Let them know about the details of the new rule and that it’s coming from the government, not you. Ask for their feedback about what might be the best way to handle gratuities for large parties, now that fixed gratuities are no longer allowed to be considered tips. The choices are to either keep letting servers take home large party tips that same night (but let them risk getting under-tipped), or to keep the fixed gratuity as a service charge that then doesn’t allow employees to take home the bonuses until their next paychecks. Talk over the options with your staff and see how they feel about both choices before making a decision.

Are Private Exchanges the Solution For Restaurant Healthcare Coverage?

There’s been a lot of uncertainty around the Affordable Care Act (ACA), what with shaky website rollouts and patchy state-led networks.  In an effort to be prepared for the upcoming healthcare coverage mandate, many restaurant businesses are looking into private exchange marketplaces as a viable alternative for healthcare insurance coverage. Some well known chains have already made the move. Here are the pros and cons for choosing private over public healthcare exchanges.

The Pros of Restaurants Using Private Exchanges for Healthcare Coverage

Private healthcare exchanges run independently from the federal government. In theory, they represent a way to decrease risk, improve predictability and save money when offering employees coverage. From the employer perspective, a private exchange is appealing because you can know exactly how much you are going to spend per employee. In addition, some employers feel that the design of many private exchanges is laid out in such a way as to make employees’ options very clear, thereby limiting confusion and facilitating clear communication between employee and employer. Early reports from restaurants who have switched to a private exchange are positive, encouraging others to consider the potential cost savings found there.

The Cons of Restaurants Using Private Exchanges for Healthcare Coverage

While private exchanges may help employers limit their costs, not all employees are convinced that the benefits are in their favor. There seems to be some confusion in the sentiment, with 50% of employees surveyed last fall saying that they thought a private exchange would “give them greater choice and flexibility to choose benefits” while the other half said that going to a private exchange is, “merely my employer trying to cut costs.”

Public appearances aside, the biggest downside for employees using a private healthcare exchange is that they will then be excluded from eligibility for an insurance subsidy on the federal public exchange. Since many restaurant employee incomes are low, they would likely pay less for subsidized healthcare coverage on the federal exchange than they would on a private exchange.

Last but not least, private exchanges are only a good method of lowering costs if premiums don’t go up and up each year. If that happens, the employer will still end up increasing their cost of subsidy in order to give their workers access to an equivalent out-of-pocket expense.

Restaurants Turn to Private Exchange in Preparation for the 2015 Mandate

Starting January 1^st, 2015, any company with 50 or more full-time-equivalent employees must offer their workers affordable healthcare insurance or else face penalties. There have already been a number of well known chains who have made the move, including Darden Restaurants, Inc. (Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Longhorn Steakhouse brands) and DineEquity, Inc. (Applebee’s, IHOP, Bob Evan’s Farms).

Theoretically, a private exchange should cut costs for restaurant owners, but how much it does is highly dependent on a number of variable factors. The whole system is still in its experimental stages, and only time will tell whether choosing a private exchange over the public exchange is truly the most beneficial choice for restaurant businesses to make.

Why Paying Your Restaurant Employees More Now Saves You Cash Later

The restaurant industry has one of the highest employee turnover rates in the nation. A new study shows that low pay and benefits are the likely culprits. It also indicates that it would be beneficial to a restaurant operator to look for strategies in order to retain old employees rather than paying to hire and train new ones.

The study entitled “High Road 2.0: A National Study of Human Resource Practices, Turnover and Customer Service in the Restaurant Industry,” conducted a phone survey of managers from 1,150 restaurants around the country. The study examined management practices and outcomes across four customer segments; upscale fine dining, casual fine dining, moderately priced family restaurants and fast food/quick-service restaurants. The results were telling indeed.

Just How High Is the Turnover Rate in The Restaurant Industry?

Amazingly, almost one in every two fast food workers quits or is fired each year, bringing the turnover rate for this segment to a whopping 47%. Moderately priced restaurants weren’t much better, with a typical year bringing around a 40% turnover rate. Casual fine dining and upscale fine dining clocked in at 28% and 26%, respectively. The average cost of that turnover rate is somewhere around $18,200 per year for a restaurant with 30 employees. In a chain restaurant of more than 100 locations, the cost of such a high turnover rate grows into the millions of dollars.

The Link Between Pay, Benefits and Restaurant Employee Turnover Rates

As you can see, the turnover rate for restaurant employees decreases as the customer segment moves up the ladder. The fact that quick-service workers get drastically less in terms of pay and benefits than their upscale counterparts is most certainly a major factor in the differential between turnover rates. Fast food workers take home an average of $255 a week, whereas moderate family restaurant workers bring in an average of $431, casual dining employees bring home $573 and upscale restaurant workers take home an average of $659 a week.

Workers’ benefits, such as paid vacation and paid sick time, are often limited since, in many instances, they are kept at just under full time hours. Approximately 32.4% of fast food workers get some form of paid vacation, whereas 52.3% of upscale workers get this benefit. Somewhere around 30% of fast food, and moderate and casual fine dining workers, get employer subsidized health insurance, while upscale employees average closer to 53.8%.

The Take Home Point About Restaurant Employee Turnover Rate

The point here is it would cost less in the long run for you to pay more to retain your employees now, rather than hire and retrain new ones later. The authors of this study concluded that through careful analyses and better HR practices, a restaurant’s turnover rate could be reduced by as much as half.

In an industry which employs 10 million people and brought in an estimated sales revenue of $660.5 billion last year alone,  it only makes sense to put the people that make it possible first. Sara Jayaraman, Co-Founder and Co-Director of ROC United, an organization committed to improving wages and working conditions for restaurant workers, says it best:

The restaurant industry is extraordinarily people-powered, yet one of the least worker friendly industries out there, which comes with a major financial cost to each restaurant. The bottom line can grow as a result of ethical, high road employment practices.

Potential Challenges to Restaurant Operators in 2014

Each year brings a new set of challenges to restaurant operators. While it’s impossible to predict every challenge a business might face, there are some that we can predict with a fair amount of certainty. Here’s the list of potential road bumps for 2014.

Health Care, Hourly Wages, and Garnering Valuable Knowledge Effect Restaurants

The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, popularly known as “Obamacare,” is set to take full effect in January, 2014. Most analysts are predicting that the act will create a two to four percent increase in costs to businesses with more than 50 employees. If your margin is more than 30 percent, this won’t have much effect, but since the foodservice industry’s average pretax profit is less than five percent, this could cause challenges and a focus on improving your profit margins is going to be critical to success.

The living wage debate flared up strongly in 2013, and is unlikely to go away any time soon. The odds that strikes, demonstrations, and discussions around increasing minimum wage will continue into 2014, is pretty good.

We have a ton of information at our disposal, but sorting what is valuable from what is not can be a major challenge. Vendors who can supply “Big Data” overviews and insights will surpass those who cannot garner such comprehensive information in 2014 and beyond. 

Restaurants must Deal with Increased Commodity Prices and New Consumer Trends

No one can predict how weather and climate change will affect growing conditions in 2014. Commodity prices are always an unpredictable, uncontrollable cost to restaurant operators. You can bet that the prices won’t be dropping though, so the best you can do is make certain that your controllable costs are optimized to give you the best leverage possible in the face of these uncertainties.

How diners are choosing and using foodservice is vastly different than it was even five years ago. There is a new set of expectations involving everything from what consumers want to see on the menu to which devices they can use to interact with your restaurant. Restaurant operators who wish to succeed in 2014 and beyond must keep a keen ear to these new trends and expectations and make regular judgment calls about whether or not to follow suit.

Building Leaders Rather than Employees for the New Age in Restaurants

You can’t predict your company’s future, but you can give it the best chance for success possible by hiring and developing people to be leaders rather than just employees. Picking people based on competencies that were valued ten years ago isn’t going to do much for you now or in the future. To best succeed in 2014, ask yourself what competencies are going to be needed now and in the future and start focusing on hiring and developing your employees into the leaders that they will need to be in this day and age.

Your company will have a better chance for success if you plan for contingencies and educate yourself to make the best choices for your business as possible. Being average is easy, but being awesome takes some work – so make a plan for how you are going to address upcoming challenges and get started now!