Staffing in the coffee shop business is complicated, in large part because the industry has very high turnover, yet it requires a high level of customer service skills. High turnover can make fostering high levels of customer service a challenge. The plan for the next three years is going to be oriented around having some high-end long-term baristas who can grow with the business, help train the younger ones, and foster a greater sense of permanence. This is important for a few reasons. The first is that there are high costs associated with having a revolving door as far as the staffing is concerned. There are training costs, issues with inefficiency and declines in customer service that are associated with a high level of turnover. This is true for a coffee shop because many customers are regulars, so having staff continuity is important. Our strategy will be to keep the turnover rate below 50%, in an industry where rates running well over 100% are the norm.
There are two critical components to the three-year staffing plan. The first is that the people we bring in initially have to the best people possible. There are two reasons for this. First, these people are going to be in the best position to grow with the company, and we want people who are going to be committed to that. A barista can be a fairly serious profession -- it is in Australia, for example (The Australian, 2006). Thus, the initial staffing plan needs to be focused on finding career-oriented people with strong leadership skills. There is need to bring in the people who can establish the company culture, pass that along to new hires and move into management roles when we expand into new locations. So it is critical that the early hires are the best possible people. In addition, whenever a company is new, there is often a need for people to take on tasks outside of their job description because the works needs to be done and there might not be anybody else to do it. It is important to hire people who are flexible, competent and proactive, in addition to the other traits. It is expected that a slightly higher than normal wage might need to be paid to attract such talent.
The long-term staffing profile will set this as the ideal, but we will entertain at least bringing in people more with a mind to being focused on great customer service, rather than bringing in the sort of people who can take ownership of the situation and move into higher roles. The long-run plan is mostly to offer great opportunities for people who want flexible employment. So there is a difference between the initial hires and the subsequent hires, and we expect that the subsequent hires will have a slightly higher turnover rate, due to the variability of the hours and things like that as well.
Communication Message
There is not going to be a specific communications strategy. Most job openings are filled through informal channels and with the high visibility of a coffee shop and the low number of expected openings there is no need to move beyond the hidden job market (Collamer, 2013). Word of mouth and internal referrals are expected to be the main sources of new hires for the company. With no firm channel for communication, the message needs to be very simple. We want to convey that this is the best coffee shop in which to work, where we have low turnover, a high rate of employee commitment and that this is a long-term opportunity.
The idea with this message is that we want to build a great employer brand. We want, when there is an open position, to have already been hearing from talented people who are expressing an interest in joining our company. An employer with a great brand attracts employees, and as a high visibility company this is something we believe we can achieve. In order to build an employer brand outside the firm, we need to build a great atmosphere in the public eye, but we also need to cultivate a great employer brand inside the company, since we want our good people to deliver referrals to us of other good people that they know (Maxwell, Knox, 2009). With a great employer brand, our starting point in recruiting should be higher, with more candidates and higher-quality candidates, something that will help us in the long run and negate the need for paying to advertise open positions. If need be, at worst, we will post for openings...
This will allow people who are fans of what we do to be aware of the opportunity and could bring in some outside talent to the candidate pool.
Communication Medium
As noted, we are not likely going to need to take out ads in the newspaper or anything like that. The objective is that low turnover combined with high visibility and a great employer brand will put us in the position of having our pick of good candidates for any open positions. The primary communication medium for new openings will actually be word of mouth, and we expect most openings will remain hidden.
Word of mouth is an interesting communication medium, because there is no real control over the message. It has been noted that the message is going to be simple and therefore not too difficult to convey even through this informal channel. When we hear from good people, we will have another message that is far more specific. This will be conveyed in person by one of the principles. It is important that we are able to control the message once a candidate is interested enough to contact us. Furthermore, this initial contact is essentially a part of the screening process. Van Hoye (n.d.) notes that word of mouth also relies on the personal credibility of the speaker in order to work, so we want this to start with our own people, who as employee will have a high level of credibility on this issue.
Where there is need to use our own social media presence, the message will be clear, succinct and it will be positive. It will highlight the long-term nature of the job but that is about all. We only want people to self-exclude on that basis to keep the number of applicants reasonable.
Selection Process
There are two components to a selection process. The first is the legal component and the second is the company component. Legally, we must follow the Civil Rights Act and other anti-discrimination acts in ensuring that our company provides equal employment opportunity to everybody. This is critical once we pass the 15 FTE mark because then we will be liable to the law. However, it is good to get in the habit from the outset.
The second element of the selection component is to select for personality. The skills we need for this job can be taught, very easily in fact. What we need are great people. It is difficult to judge even from interviews how serious a person is about loyalty, so we need to look for clues there, but we should not hire anybody we are unsure about with that. It is more important to be certain that the people we are going to hire fit well with the corporate culture, have a high level of professionalism, have a very high commitment to customer service and that they have sufficiently strong personalities that they may be able to evolve into leadership positions. These will be important criteria going forward. For the initial hiring, it will not be enough to have people who are part-timers, though later on that might become more acceptable. So people who have the traits above and our committed to full-time employment. Otherwise, this is a small company so personality fit is very important. It will help with flexibility, with dedication and with maintaining the best possible work atmosphere. All other training will be provided. Not that hiring for personality does not imply using Briggs-Meyers or those sorts of personality tests, just for personality fit with the business owners.
The advantages of this process are obvious -- we get the right person with the right personality for the job. The disadvantage is that we are relying on the management to correctly identify these good fits. The lack of formality is not necessarily an asset when biases come into play -- that is something were objective criteria can help. However, objective criteria are a bad way to evaluate employees when they are to emphasize the service element. So while this method of selection is by no means perfect, it is good for the roles available at this time, and can be very appropriate for customer service positions, along with positions where you are looking for some sort of loyalty to the company.
The assessment methods have just been explained -- we assess them as part of the selection process. Not sure why anybody would assess somebody…
