Employee Retention Strategies: 6 Practical Ways to Cut Turnover

You hire and train a new server at your restaurant. They learn the menu and understand customer service. They even start building relationships with regulars. 

But just as they master their role, do they quit? And suddenly, you’re back to square one—hiring, training, and hoping the next employee stays.

This is the harsh reality of the hospitality industry. Turnover rates are among the highest in any industry every year. So, let’s break down the best employee retention strategies to keep your best employees and build a loyal, happy team.

Why You Must Fix Employee Retention

Hiring and training new staff is frustrating and expensive. Every time an employee quits, you lose money in recruitment, training, and lost productivity. Here’s how high turnover harms hospitality businesses:

• Frequent staff turnover disrupts service quality—and guests will notice.
• Constant hiring and training add up. This cuts into profits.
• Negative word-of-mouth from ex-employees makes hiring harder.

But retention is such a challenge! Here’s why:

• Long, unpredictable hours make maintaining a healthy work-life balance difficult.
• Low wages and inconsistent pay force employees to look for better-paying jobs.
• Limited career growth opportunities make employees feel stuck.
• Stressful working conditions lead to burnout and job dissatisfaction.

So, execute the best employee retention strategies to reduce staff turnover, increase employee engagement, and ensure business continuity and stability.

6 Key Strategies to Retain Your Employees

Want your employees to stay longer, feel appreciated, and enjoy their work? That’s what employee retention will do for you. It starts with a few key employee retention strategies. Here they are:

1. Competitive Wages: Pay Them What They Deserve

Nobody sticks around for a job that doesn’t pay well. Low wages are one of the top reasons hospitality employees leave. They work for long hours under high stress. At times, they also deal with difficult customers. So, if they’re not paid fairly, they’ll find a better-paying gig elsewhere.

How to Decide Wages?

The key is to offer competitive wages while ensuring sustainability. Here’s how:

Salary of a waiter in California, as shown on Glassdoor

• Regularly check salary benchmarks using tools like Glassdoor or PayScale to ensure you’re offering industry-standard pay.

• Encourage loyalty with:
  
  • Retention bonuses after 1, 3, and 5 years
  • Stock options or profit-sharing for senior staff
  • Health & wellness stipends for full-time employees

2. Better Scheduling and Time Management: Respect Their Time

Suppose one day your employees are working a late-night shift, and the next, they’re expected to be back at sunrise. The result: burnout and frustration. Eventually, they quit. A well-structured schedule enhances job satisfaction and boosts retention.

How to Improve Scheduling?

• Do not assign shifts randomly every week. Instead, create fixed weekly rotations.
• Employees should be able to trade shifts without manager approval, as long as both parties agree. 
• Cap weekly working hours to prevent exhaustion and ensure equal work distribution.
• Have a backup pool of part-time staff who can step in when needed, reducing pressure on full-time employees.

An advanced POS system with clock-in and clock-out tracking simplifies scheduling. Its detailed POS analytics reports give managers real-time insights into attendance, shift changes, and overtime. Consequently, employees benefit from fair payroll and better work-life balance. They can enjoy a more organized work environment, even on special days like Valentine's day and holidays or during peak hours and special events.

3. Growth Opportunities: Give Them a Future

You’ve probably heard the saying, “People don’t quit jobs; they quit bosses.” Well, in hospitality, people also quit when they don’t see a future. No one wants to stay in a dead-end job. If employees know they can grow within your business, they’ll be much more likely to stick around.

How to Provide Growth?

• Mentorship & Leadership Training
  
  • Cross-training, like servers learning front-desk operations
  • Supervisor skills, like conflict resolution, customer service excellence
  • Financial literacy, like helping staff understand tips, wages, and savings
  • Hospitality management basics, like inventory, scheduling, compliance, cash flow management strategies

• Internal Promotions Instead of External Hiring
  
  • Train servers to become shift supervisors.

• Promote front desk agents to guest relations managers.
• Develop kitchen staff into head chefs through mentorship.
• Move housekeepers into inventory or room inspection roles.
• Offer bartenders leadership training for bar manager positions.

You can also invest in online hospitality-specific training platforms for your employees:

• Some popular courses on Coursera are "Mastering Hotel Financials," "Food & Beverage Management," and “The Manager's Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Managing People at Work”
• Typsy has many courses related to beverage, culinary, business, management, service, and compliance, such as "The Art of Menu Engineering," "Improving Hospitality Business Operations," “Fire Safety Essentials,” “Food Plating Fundamentals,” and “Housekeeping Principles.”

4. Automating Operations to Reduce Work Stress

Your hospitality staff juggle multiple tasks, deal with endless guest inquiries, and manage daily operations. All while trying to keep customers happy! Repetitive tasks like these can drain employees. When stress piles up, job satisfaction drops. Subsequently, employees leave. 

But what if some of that workload could be automated? Using smart tech, hospitality businesses can:

• Decrease workload for employees.
• Improve efficiency and prevent burnout.
• Improve guest experience by offering faster service.

What Key Areas to Automate

• Invest in self-ordering kiosks to decrease pressure on front-desk staff by letting guests check in, order food, or make reservations themselves.

• With Kitchen Display Systems, organize order processing, cut down on manual errors, and speed up service in the kitchen.

• Let guests use contactless payment methods so that they order and pay using cards, mobile, QR codes, speeding up guest payments and not making your staff handle cash.

With HiJiffy, guests can make reservations through their favorite social media and messaging apps.

• With HiJiffy & ChatBot.com, handle routine guest inquiries about room availability, restaurant hours, or amenities, freeing up staff for more complex requests.

Pro Tip: An advanced cloud-based POS system can let you manage shift tracking, inventory monitoring, and transactions across multiple locations from a single system. You can also automate order management, mobile ordering, combo deals, and menu management to keep things running smoothly and efficiently. Just make sure your team is aware of must-knows and hacks to use the POS system efficiently.

5. Performance Tracking and Rewards: Recognize Their Efforts

Ever worked hard on something and felt like no one noticed? It’s frustrating, right? That’s exactly how many hospitality employees feel when their efforts go unrecognized. And when people don’t feel valued, they start looking for jobs where they will be.

Conversely, employees who feel appreciated are:

• More motivated to do their best.
• Less likely to quit.
• More engaged with customers, which improves service quality!

How to Track & Reward Performance

• Reward employees for their performances, such as:
  
  • Customer satisfaction based on reviews or feedback
  • Upselling skills for restaurants, bars, or hotels
  • Punctuality & reliability, reducing last-minute no-shows
  • Teamwork & leadership while mentoring new staff or handling rush hours smoothly
• Offer bonuses, extra paid time off, free meals, or even a “Star Employee” award.
• Gather employee feedback on what challenges they face and what kind of recognition matters to them. Even a simple “thank you” from management can go a long way.

Apart from this, simplify performance tracking and rewards using a POS system’s employee shiftwise report and employee payroll report. Analyze hours worked, order count, and net sales to identify top performers and those needing support. Link sales performance to bonuses or incentives to increase employee engagement and productivity. 

6. Employee Benefits: Make Life Easier

Prioritize employee well-being to make them more likely to stay. After all, long hours, high-pressure environments, and unpredictable shifts can take a toll. That’s why good benefits matter. 

How to Offer Better Benefits?

• Offer medical coverage, dental insurance, or mental health support. Retirement plans like 401(k) contributions or pension options help employees plan for the future.
• Think wellness programs like gym memberships, stress management workshops, or free therapy sessions. A healthy employee is a happy, productive one!
• Many hospitality workers commute long distances or rely on restaurant meals. Offer travel stipends, free staff meals, or meal discounts to ease their financial burden.

Platforms like Perkbox provide discounts, wellness perks, and financial benefits for hospitality employees. Also, Benify helps manage employee benefits.

Final Thoughts: Happy Employees, Thriving Business

Retaining your employees involves paying them well, respecting their time, valuing their work, and giving them reasons to stay. By implementing retention strategies—like competitive wages, better scheduling, career growth opportunities, automation, and thoughtful benefits—you can keep your hospitality team motivated, engaged, and loyal.

But managing all of this manually is a nightmare. OneHubPOS eases off that burden. From smooth payroll integration to smart scheduling tools, automated reports, and performance tracking, OneHubPOS makes executing employee retention strategies and managing your workforce easier. 

No more last-minute shift confusion, delayed payments, or messy spreadsheets. A smooth, stress-free system designed to keep both you and your team happy.

Book a demo today with OneHubPOS and discover how it can help you build a happier, more loyal, and highly motivated team.