People are eating out once more, however eating places aren’t at all times ready to serve them properly. Like many different service companies, they face two operational challenges: attracting and retaining sufficient staff, and dealing with extremely variable demand. One lever for bettering on each counts is cross-training — that’s, coaching staff for a wide range of duties.
Cross-training is a strong instrument, however it’s removed from a brand new thought: One of us (Zeynep) first noticed cross-training as a part of a “good jobs system” that enabled low-cost retailers like Costco and Trader Joe’s to pay greater than their rivals whereas driving higher worth for patrons. Beyond the service business, producers like Toyota have lengthy practiced cross-training to enhance motivation and contain the frontlines in steady enchancment. And of their landmark 1976 examine, J. Richard Hackman and Greg R. Oldham recognized process selection as a driver of worker motivation throughout a wide range of industries.
When staff are cross-trained to carry out a wide range of each customer-facing and non-customer-facing duties, they’ll regulate their work relying on demand and enterprise wants. Of course, that’s good for the enterprise, but it surely additionally makes the job a higher job for staff. For one factor, when staff are extra productive and contribute extra, firms will pay them extra; increased productiveness is what permits a typical Costco employee to earn virtually $10 an hour greater than a typical retail employee. Cross-training helps staff construct capabilities that they’ll leverage of their profession development and profession paths. Cross-training additionally permits extra steady schedules; as an alternative of fixing the variety of staff all through the day or week, firms can hold extra constant groups and simply change what they do, as an alternative of fixing who is scheduled to work.
But these advantages must be balanced with a attainable draw back: an absence of specialization and possession. At the Good Jobs Institute, our work with a wide range of small meals companies has proven us how they’ll make the finest use of cross-training to enhance service and job high quality. Any business can be taught from these approaches to design flexibility into their job design and operations.
Approaches to Cross-Training at Three Small Food Businesses
Employees don’t have to be cross-trained to do all the pieces, however a bit of little bit of cross-training can go a good distance. Three small meals companies we’ve labored with have every discovered their very own method to steadiness flexibility with specialization and possession:
Counter service
At two franchised areas of the Moe’s Original BBQ chain, there was a strict boundary between front-of-house and kitchen groups, making it troublesome to regulate to demand peaks. Owner Dewey Hasbrouck launched cross-training between the two specialised groups in order that they might cowl one another on typical bottleneck duties. For occasion, when there have been lengthy strains at the counter, kitchen workers may now step in to reply the telephones, deliver meals out to tables, and bag to-go orders. If it was the kitchen that was backlogged, the front-of-house crew may fill sauce cups, restock the line, and put together primary sides.
Bakery
At She Wolf Bakery, the manufacturing crew baked bread in the bakery and the gross sales crew bought it at New York City Greenmarkets, seldom interacting. The groups have been typically busy at totally different occasions: the manufacturing crew can be overwhelmed making ready bread on Fridays, whereas the gross sales crew was busiest on Saturdays.
Head of operations Kim Vallejo realized there was a possibility to higher combine the two groups. While bakers have been already being skilled on a few of the packing duties, She Wolf additionally began providing a four-hour paid bakery orientation for brand new gross sales crew members, throughout which they might participate in the bread-making course of. They discovered primary bakery aspect work like operating the dish pit and oiling pans, which have been very useful to bakers throughout a rush, and the two groups additionally bought to know one another higher, which made them extra motivated to assist one another out.
Full service
Tacombi, a Mexican restaurant chain with areas in New York City, launched cross-training whereas navigating the metropolis’s strict tipping rules, which don’t enable staff in non-tipped roles to carry out customer-facing duties. The workers of their full-service ideas included many extremely specialised roles, akin to hosts, runners, bussers, and servers in the entrance, and dishwashers, prep cooks, high quality management leaders (who handle the kitchen stream and test high quality), and cooks in the again.
Operations chief Jose De La Campa observed that scheduling these specialists was very complicated and created service points when somebody known as out sick. The work wasn’t evenly distributed over time; at any given second, the prep cooks might need nothing to do whereas the dish washers have been swamped. But they have been neither skilled nor anticipated to assist one another. De La Campa determined to cut back the variety of specialist job codes; for instance, in most eating places, he mixed the tasks of prep cooks and dishwashers, mixed the roles of head chef and high quality management chief, and eliminated the host position, redistributing that work to the different front-of-house positions, akin to servers.
The Impact of Cross-Training on Performance and Jobs
When staff can contribute to totally different elements of the enterprise, it could possibly enhance service, improve manufacturing capability, and make jobs higher for the folks doing them.
Better service
At She Wolf, cross-training helped groups take extra possession to hold manufacturing operating when confronted with the surprising variability of name outs, so they might at all times be there for his or her prospects with high quality bread. According to Vallejo, “If we are in the weeds and down three people and it’s a Friday and all hands on deck, my delivery driver knows how to run the dish pit and they can jump back there and help us get ahead.” Training market crew members on primary prep duties additionally freed up bakers’ time to deal with higher-value duties, guaranteeing bread high quality didn’t undergo due to surprising variability.
When Tacombi relied on extremely specialised roles, an absent dishwasher may paralyze operations. With fewer specialist roles and acceptable cross-training, an surprising sick day may extra simply be absorbed by the remainder of the crew. De La Campa additionally mentioned that it improved the meals and repair: The head chef now had extra possession over high quality management, motivating them to establish points and supply correct suggestions to the remainder of the crew.
Higher manufacturing capability
At Moe’s Original BBQ, as a result of crew members may flex into totally different customer-facing and non-customer-facing duties, that they had sufficient slack to cope with demand peaks. This translated to higher-quality meals and repair. More considerably, the cross-trained crew had the experience to tackle extra catering orders. Catering gross sales elevated by 60% in the first 12 months, with out Moe’s having to considerably change its staffing ranges.
Better jobs
All three companies ended up elevating pay. Their cross-trained staff have been extra productive and will contribute to extra areas of the operation, making increased pay a superb funding. Cross-training created a brand new expertise pipeline for She Wolf: By permitting the market workers to get manufacturing expertise, administration may establish potential new bakers and assist them make the transition onto the bakery crew once they wanted to rent. For these staff, this meant profession development and better wages. Cross-training additionally helped these companies give their folks higher — that’s, extra common — schedules, since staffing didn’t essentially have to lurch up and down with the variety of prospects.
Cross-training helped make the work extra significant. At Moe’s Original BBQ, cross-training contributed to higher communication and a way of belonging: The workers began insisting that they be referred to as “one team,” not “front-of-house” and “back-of-house.”
The mixture of upper pay, higher schedules, and higher work helped Moe’s Original BBQ cut back worker turnover by 30%, which then helped them enhance their efficiency much more.
Why Cross-Training Isn’t More Common
Many firm leaders like the thought of cross-training, however aren’t satisfied it’ll work for them. Some assume their staff can’t deal with — or aren’t motivated to be taught — a wide range of roles.
One real threat is that introducing cross-training in isolation may create operational issues; if staff are already overloaded or have low tenure, or if the firm can’t set and implement excessive expectations, introducing cross-training may lead to extra errors and frustration. The secret’s creating a system that allows cross-training. At the small meals companies, this concerned some complementary selections:
- Simplifying operations to take away non-value-add work in order that staff solely spend their time studying duties that enhance the buyer expertise.
- Simplifying operations to cut back self-inflicted variability — that’s, to clean the workload and make the peaks extra manageable.
- Setting clear requirements to be sure that staff may be constant in numerous roles.
- Empowering staff to use their judgment to resolve which duties to do when.
- Staffing with slack so that individuals have sufficient time to be taught new duties.
- Investing in folks to appeal to and retain nice workers and maintain groups accountable to excessive expectations.
Moe’s Original BBQ had been making an attempt to introduce cross-training for a number of years, however due to excessive turnover, it was a battle simply to get staff via primary coaching. So, as well as to cross-training, proprietor Hasbrouck made different operational adjustments to set his crew up for fulfillment, akin to simplifying the menu and smoothing the workload by shifting specials from weekends to weekdays. He additionally made vital investments in his folks, rising full-time pay from $15 an hour to $20 an hour in Maine, plus ideas. Higher pay got here, nonetheless, with increased expectations: Hasbrouck modified the job description to state, “We want employees capable of doing it all.” Adding cross-training made the job price extra to the enterprise and the increased pay made the extra duty and better expectations price it for workers.
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Changes like these don’t occur in a single day, however a greater system can drive operational excellence and let groups stay up to their potential. Food companies and different service industries are going through headwinds, however cross-training can be sure that they’re up for the problem, offering higher service whereas additionally bettering the lives of their staff and preserving vibrant companies of their communities.
