2016 Issue 3 | GearedUp
THE NEW BASICS OF BUILDING HIGH-PERFORMING TEAMS
50
T
he marketplace for retail and foodservice labor is
both highly competitive and very crowded.
Statistics offer hope: The current millennial
generation is some 80 million strong, surpassing
even the vaunted 72 million Baby Boomers of
1946-1962, and colleges expected their enrollment to swell to historic levels in 2016 as the largest number of
Americans who are aged 18 hit university age simultaneously.
But just because the numbers offer hope, remember that“hope”
is not a strategy. All those millennials may be of job age, but that
doesn’t mean they’ll choose retail over foodservice, Home Depot
or even choosing to stay unemployed. We need to make a strong
case for our industry in terms of what we teach and develop if we
are to stock our talent pipeline and bench
strength with future leaders. Otherwise
we’re endless victims of economic cycles
predicated on variable birth rates and
driven by job-seeking supply and demand.
Here are a few ideas on finding keepers and
turning them into long-term assets:
Grow your own. Reassess and
by Jim Sullivan
re-evaluate everything – all of your crew and
manager development tools, from your onboarding process to the
training materials to your pre-shift meetings (which should be
mandatory, not optional every single shift). Find a way to make