Study: Restaurant e-learning on the rise

Restaurant and other hospitality companies are shifting training functions from the operations divisions and increasingly incorporating e-learning into their development programs, new research indicates.

Those were among early results of a new “Trends in Hospitality Training Study,” conducted by the Council of Hotel & Restaurant Trainers, or CHART, and TDn2K, parent to analytics companies People Report and Black Box Intelligence. The findings were released July 29 during the CHART conference in Atlanta.

The move to having training departments report to the president or chief executive, rather than the human resources or operations departments that predominated in the past, poses some challenges, said John Isbell, director of training for Logan’s Roadhouse Inc., the Nashville, Tenn.-based casual-dining chain.

“When reporting to a president or CEO, they are so big picture that they don’t want to hear the details,” said Isbell, after a CHART member discussion. “Also, in some cases, you lose some of that connection with your operations group and your HR group, so you’re sort of in a No Man’s Land. You have to be much better at building relationships at that point.”

About 25 percent of training departments now report directly to the chief executive or president, said Victor Fernandez, TDn2K’s executive director of insights and knowledge, who presented the findings with Isabell.

Fernandez said e-learning training is on the increase in restaurant and hotel training departments. About 80 percent of limited-service restaurants are offering it and 48 percent of full-service restaurants, he said. In hotel and lodging establishments, 73 percent of operators are using e-learning training.

Isabell said e-learning is crucial for younger hires and becoming more important for older employees as well.

“Especially in full-service restaurants, we have got some older employees, and a lot of times our operators are very nervous about them doing e-learning,” said Isabell. “Five years ago, you probably could have made that case. … The one thing out there that has changed older people using the Internet is Facebook. Facebook is the greatest thing that has ever happened to trainers who want to push e-learning. My grandma has a Facebook account so she can see her grandkids.”

And for smartphone-savvy entry-level employees, e-learning is imperative, Isabell added. “We are hiring a lot of young people, and they don’t want to sit and read manuals.”

About 25 percent of new hires are 21 years or younger, Fernandez said. “There are a lot of skills missing because of the lack of experience,” Fernandez said.

Restaurants spending more on training

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Thorough training at orientation can help decrease expensive turnover for restaurants, which is rising.  

“It dropped like a rock through the recession; people didn’t want to go out and try to find a new job,” Fernandez said. “But since then, it’s been creeping up steadily.”

Certified trainers can reduce turnover by an average of 25 percent, Fernandez said. The median length for new hourly employee orientations is 3.5 hours, the CHART-TDn2K survey found, and 20 percent of companies offer two hours.

“That may be an area of opportunity,” Fernandez said. “We took the companies that were providing four hours or more of orientation, and we found they have turnover 20 percent lower, on average, than those that spent four hours or less.”

Budgets for training, without salaries, are about 1 percent of a brand’s systemwide sales, and that number is rising for many companies.

Fernandez said the research revealed that 43 percent of restaurant respondents indicated they have recently increased their training spending. Fernandez said limited-service restaurants are increasing training more than more than casual- and upscale-dining restaurants.

The training tends to focus on rudimentary skills. Based on the percentage of training time for hourly employees, 46 percent of training was for basic job skills, 20 percent for customer service, nine percent for culinary skills, five percent for food-safety and sanitation training, and four percent for workplace safety instruction.

About 70 percent of limited service restaurants were also offering bilingual training, matching the 70 percent in hotel and lodging. A lower percentage of full-service restaurants were providing training in both languages, logging in at 53 percent, Fernandez said.

On a panel of hospitality executives, Anthony Wedo, chief executive of Eagan, Minn.-based Ovation Brands, parent to such brands as Ryan’s Old Country Buffet and Hometown Buffet, told CHART attendees that “we need you as our training leadership to help us create a culture where everyone has ‘trainer’ in their job description.

“Help create the environment where employees not only demand training, but also demand that everyone around them look for ways to build training and performance metrics into every aspect of the guest experience,” Wedo said.
 
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