Charitable Giving: Restaurant Employees Get into the Act

Supporting a charity or becoming involved in charitable events isn’t always an easy decision for business owners. Balancing the financial needs of the business with the desire to give to a local or national charity can be difficult.

The People Report is an organization that monitors human resource practices within the foodservice industry. Recently, The People Report released the results of a study they conducted which discovered that restaurants who give to charity and also offer flexible schedules for employees who participate in charitable activities experience significantly lower turnover among their staff.

Reducing Rate of Employee Turnover
Restaurants can do a number of things to encourage their employees to support local charities and to help make it easy for them to participate in charitable activities.

• Offer flexible schedules
• Allow for time off for charitable activities
• Invite suggestions on which charities to support

These methods show employees that their lives and interests beyond the restaurant matter and are important. And those employees who believe the company places value on them as individuals tend to develop a level of loyalty to the workplace and thereby reduce the rate of turnover.

Building Teamwork into Employees
Offering employees opportunities to volunteer in teams for a worthy cause creates a sense of camaraderie and develops teamwork naturally. These bonds make for happy employees who work well together.

The team-building experiences that occur while volunteering to support a worthy cause also establish the restaurants commitment to the community.  A study recently conducted by the Boston College Center for Corporate Community Relations discovered that 80% of employees believe it is important for a company to establish a good image in the community.

Attracting Employees in the Hospitality Industry
Cone Inc. sponsored a poll which found that 76% of Americans would accept the job offer from a company that supports charitable causes over a similar offer from a company who does not support charities. This means that supporting charities not only helps the business retain employees, but it also helps attract them.