A foodservice director explains how her company retains the best people via on-site training and professional development plans.

One of the best ways to remain competitive in the marketplace is to become an employer of choice by recruiting and retaining the best people. The best people, in turn, create a customer-service-oriented culture that fosters bottom-line results.

But results only come when the best people are in the right positions. About 18 months ago, our foodservice company used Jim Collins' book, Good to Great, as a guide to determine whether the people on its "bus" were in the correct seats. Collins posits that if you have the right people in the correct seats, they will exude passion and service excellence with minimal coaching or direction on how to make guests feel appreciated.

In addition to adopting this new strategy, we identified the core values for the company as passion, integrity, excellence, commitment and innovation (PIE-CI). We also put other systems in place, most significantly, a training program called Crystal University and professional development plans (PDP) to help guide employees up the ladder.

Getting Started
With today's global economy, pensions and 30-year tenures have dissipated, and 401(k)s and job transitioning are the norms. With the belief that the best job security is "continual development and revitalization of self," my company began the process of creating new companywide policies and practices.

The company invited all unit-level managers to participate in strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analyses. Collectively, they arrived at non-negotiables for their managers and direct reports' positions. In other words, they narrowed down objectives that needed to be met to maintain excellence.

Non-negotiables for management includes ensuring continuous employee development occurs based on the individual's PDP, which is in concert with company goals. Specific task-oriented non-negotiables include conducing pre-meal meetings with wait staff to reinforce that the service standards are executed and to ensure that they have knowledge of the menu items being served for guests.

To the administrative department, non-negotiables include operating a profitable business, conducting weekly food inventory, listing revenue from weekly events, and market pricing of items from approved, quality vendors to ensure benchmark figures are attained.

All team members signed plaques that featured the non-negotiables. Today, these plaques are showcased in each unit to remind team members of their commitment levels. From the summits, voices were heard and changes were made. One outcome of the summits is a resource room to house books, computers and other learning aids to continue employees' professional development.

Using the PDP
Another system managers put into place is the PDP. These have led to a culture that furthers partnerships between employer and employee and where both parties have an obligation to assist the other.

Employees must be passionate and committed to the strategic goals of the company. But they also must remain career-resilient in the marketplace by keeping their skills updated using their PDP as a guide. Equally, the employer invests in educating the employees to ensure they are equipped to actualize the company's goals.

Crystal U
Crystal University was conceptualized as a vehicle to align corporate objectives with employee goals to help foster a partnership culture. As opposed to a traditional training department investing in a perceived need, Crystal University is proactive in offering development options and learning opportunities based on business units' requests.

Crystal University has sought the expertise of subject-matter experts in the community to outsource various training needs. The community vendors include local colleges, healthcare outreach programs for nutrition classes, Dale Carnegie Co., HR Dimensions and others. Employees are enriched by this partnership with educational institutes because they have access to multiple experts in a gamut of disciplines.

Crystal University also uses the strengths of internal team members by paying them to facilitate internal classes when they are identified as subject-matter experts in their fields. Employees can become Crystal University instructors after they demonstrate their expertise in a given area and complete the train-the-trainer program.

Defining Roles
For employees to advance in their careers, they must first have a clear understanding of where they stand in the company and what it takes for them to advance. After employee orientation, jobs are assigned based on skill levels. The skill level system means there are clearly defined pay expectations and experience requirements for each level.

For example, if one manager calls another manager to request a "level 2" employee, both managers know the expectations of the level 2 person. Another benefit of the program is employees know which skills they need to earn more money.

This comes into play when, for example, an employee meets with a manager to discuss salary or promotion. The manager can explain, "You currently have the skills of a level 1 person. In order to earn level 2 pay, you need to accomplish the following … " The employee can walk away from the conversation with a clear PDP in place. To help employees manage their career path, a Passports to Progress program tracks employees' success in accomplishing their PDPs. It is reviewed semiannually, and if employees meet predetermined benchmarks, they are eligible for incentive pay semiannually. The Bottom Line

Crystal University was created not only to keep employees' fingers on the pulse of the marketplace, but also to stay in touch with employees' educational needs as they work to rise in the ranks. Since the genesis of Crystal University, customer satisfaction surveys and increased job retention have shown upward trends.Â

By retaining ecstatic customers and employees, costs are reduced in searching for new ones. In this way, Crystal University has positively affected the bottom line. Likewise, PDP works hand-in-hand with the university as a map to each employee's specialized development path as he or she moves from level to level.  FAD

Anne Bowman, MVTE, is director of training and development for Indianapolis-based Crystal Food Services. She can be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .