Do you invest in training for your employees? Your employees are your biggest asset and quite often your biggest cost. While allocating time to properly train your employees takes time and effort in the short-term, the long-term benefits are far greater. Regularly review your current employee training needs. As your coffee shop or cafe changes and grows, so might staff roles and training requirements.
Look after your most valuable asset
An employee who is unsure of what to do can cause problems with the workflow during service which in turn can cause tension between other members of the team. Your employee’s deserve to be given the chance to perform well and to feel valued in their place of work. Trained employees work with more confidence and are more likely to show interest and initiative in their role.
The more you invest in them, the more you will get out of them in terms of work ethic, commitment and loyalty.
Build a flexible workforce
Cross training staff and multi-skilling is crucially important, particularly for small-medium sized coffee shops. Don’t just teach your employee’s to carry out their regular tasks.
Get colleagues to mentor each other so that they can move around and fill in if somebody is sick or absent.
Supervisors can serve customers and kitchen staff can learn to cash up the till. Teamwork like this has many benefits. It helps every member of the team gain an understanding and appreciation for their colleagues and the job they do every day. It builds a sense of camaraderie and can create a positive atmosphere, which in turn will filter through to the ambience in your coffee shop and your customers coffee shop experience.
3 tips for training your staff
1. Choose your trainer wisely.
Make sure your trainer isn’t just good at their job, but that that they are good at teaching too. A teacher must have the ability to break each task down into smaller chunks so your employee can learn step by step. They must also have a good intuition and be able to move at the opace your employee can effectively learn.
2. Enlist more than one trainer.
Every member of your staff will have a different nugget of information for new staff members. Little tips and tricks like this can be the learning points that stick in your employees mind and prove invaluable in how they learn.
3. Choose your times wisely.
When busy periods hit, your trainer will not have the time or patience to teach. Choose a quiet times and choose quiet times over a number of days. As everyone in the cafe business knows, Monday’s are not the same as Friday’s. Each day will come with a new lesson.
