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Supportive culture holds key to a successful team: 3 experts weigh in

Attracting and retaining good employees is especially critical as convenience services operators try to recover COVID losses, and it revolves around having a culture that maximizes employee opportunity, according to three experts.

Image courtesy of iStock.

May 12, 2021 by Elliot Maras — Editor, Kiosk Marketplace & Vending Times

As anxious as companies are to spring into action and recover their COVID losses, one factor snags their efforts: the unusual difficulty finding good employees, as noted in a recent article in The Wall Street Journal.

For convenience services operators, attracting and retaining good employees revolves around having a culture that maximizes employee opportunity.

Creating such a culture was the focus of a recent National Automatic Merchandising Association webinar.

What is culture?

Larry Hake, senior vice president of sales at G & J Marketing and Sales Inc., the Palm Harbor, Florida based product brokerage for convenience services, began the webinar by defining culture as the values, beliefs and behaviors inside a company.

He noted that Jeff Bezos said Amazon did well when he got the culture right.

How to attract good people

Keys to attracting people include recruiting, hiring/interviewing, onboarding, training, retaining, performance and behavioral coaching, incentive packages aligned with employee values and motivations, and succession planning that allows people to hope for advancement.

"Hiring and interviewing is absolutely critical," Hake said. Oftentimes, there is no plan for doing this. The right questions are not asked. It's important to know a prospective employee's habits and to test for their skill sets and learn what motivates them.

Onboarding, which Hake said is underutilized, refers to what happens on the first day on the job, which he said is the most important day. The general manager should greet the person with the materials they need.

"Coaching is critical," he said. "Coaching is a lot about listening. Coaching is about asking the right questions."

Succession planning that allows people to hope for advancement is also important, as well as ensuring that they have a clear idea what they are expected to do.

Are they coachable?

"Coachable is very important," Hake said. "Are they coachable? Are they willing to learn?"

It's easier to teach someone a skill set than to change a behavioral style.

If the employee's behavioral style does not align with the company's needs, Hake said it is important to consider whether it is worth the time and effort to change their behavior style.

Hake then turned the program over to Tammy Stokes, a vice president of the Central Region of Five Star Food Service's Refreshment Services Division, and John Demos who recently retired as vice president of field sales from Aramark North America' refreshment services division.

Stokes said the hiring environment now is extremely competitive, as many people are still scared to return to work or don't feel they need to work when they get government funding.

Have you tried non-profits and inner cities?

Her company, Five Star Food Service Inc. based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, has reached out to non-profit organizations and other groups to recruit. The company has also tried to recruit in inner cities and has had great success since they are able to change people's lives from these areas.

Demos said the entire company team has to be involved in recruiting, not just the hiring manager. He encouraged companies to have a dedicated talent acquisition department.

"If you're only relying on that front line manager for recruiting people, that makes it really, really tough," Demos said.

What's your selling proposition for employees?

It is important to understand what it is about the company that will make someone want to work there.

"If you don't have that, you better get some things," Demos said. Consider the culture, the compensation, the training, the benefits and career opportunities.

"You need to be able to articulate that to attract people to want to work for your company," he said. "Just to have a job these days, yeah, that's really important, but that's not enough."

During the interview process, Stokes said it is important to begin the conversation with what you know about the person. If the interviewee is not from a reference, there are assessment tools available to learn about the person. The company needs to know about their goals to determine where they may best fit into the organization.

Demos was adamant that a process is needed.

"You have to have an interview process, and questions that elicit responses that measure whether the person has the skill set that you're looking for," he said.

Five Star Food Service's approach to training includes spending time with every department in the branch, including spending time with management.

"Employees can't visualize what the future looks like," Demos said. "You have to show them the different paths immediately."

There must be a training curriculum and evaluation, he said, and it is important to have other managers involved.

For an update on how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting convenience services, click here.

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