TURNOVER AT A MEXICAN RESTAURANT

Conducted by Karyna Mangusheva, Lizzie Merrill, Adam Minahan and Roshi Patel

Background

Tlayuda Querida (a pseudonym) is a traditional Mexican restaurant that employs approximately 13 staff, including an assistant manager, a chef, cooks, bartenders, baristas, servers, a shopper and a host. The restaurant is located in a popular tourist city in southern Mexico that attracts visitors from all over the world. The restaurant industry in the area is very competitive and several political and economic factors negatively impact the restaurant’s operations.

Retaining good staff has been a pain point for the restaurant since opening in December 2022. For this reason, the owner of the restaurant sought support of the needs assessment team (the NA team) to better understand the causes of willing turnover at the restaurant.

Challenge

Due to the high turnover rate, the restaurant frequently suffers from staff shortages, leading to remaining staff having to work double shifts and customer complaints. The restaurant did not have records on turnover, so the NA team collected lists of employees and calculated turnover rates since the opening of the restaurant.

Current performance
The current willing turnover rate, monthly, is 8.62%. Annually, it is 103.47% (extrapolated from the past nine months).

Desired performance
The owner stated that the desired annual willing turnover rate is 15-20%. The performance gap is 83.47-88.47%.

One of the limitations in this project was lack of data, both about Tlayuda Querida and other restaurants in the area. The NA team was not able to compare the calculated turnover rates to similar restaurants in Mexico or border towns in the US. Consequently, it was not possible to confirm that the restaurant’s turnover rate was unusually high for restaurants in this area.

Methods

The NA team conducted a systemic and systematic needs assessment to make recommendations to help the restaurant improve its turnover rate.

The team used four performance improvement models and tools to aid in the assessment as outlined in Table 1.

Data Collection

The NA team chose two data collection methods.

Semi-structured interviews

Interviews with the owner and assistant manager: one at the beginning to understand restaurant goals, problems and current processes and one at the end to help prioritize interventions
Interviews with five current and two former employees to understand their current level of satisfaction and barriers to performance

Online survey

Distributed to all current and former employees
Consisted of two demographic questions, two questions using a Lickert scale, one factor ranking question and two open-response questions.
The survey respondents included seven current and two former employees, with a 77.78% response rate.

We adhered to ethical and professional standards at all times through the data collection process by obtaining informed consent from all participants and maintaining their confidentiality.

Analysis

A codebook was created based on the performance improvement frameworks mentioned previously. After the interviews were complete, the team worked on transcribing and coding the data. Interview and survey data revealed the following:

Current employees:

100% (n=5) interviewed were satisfied working at the restaurant.
100% (n=5) interviewed said that the working environment is respectful and/or has a family atmosphere.
75% (n=3) interviewed who worked while the former manager was in charge mentioned that the manager created a bad work environment.

Former employees:

100% (n=2) interviewed mentioned the former manager as one of the reasons for leaving.

Both:

100% (n=7) surveyed said they were given regular feedback on their performance.
43% (n=3) interviewed said that the working schedule impacts their personal life negatively.
Some employees mentioned that they needed more tools and resources, such as: an assistant, a food runner, an extractor fan for the kitchen, tools to make preparation of food and drinks more efficient.

Our systematic and systemic analysis of the organization, its environment, and the individuals within uncovered several contributing factors to low employee satisfaction and therefore the high turnover rate. The most impactful factors include: a former manager who created a toxic work environment, a lack of employee guidance during downtime, a lack of pre-training and onboarding for new hires, poor communication across departments, and a lack of knowledge about how employees can obtain raises and/or bonuses.

Findings and Interventions Considered

We used a SWOT Analysis to categorize our findings into strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities (see Table 2). This helped us identify areas in need of interventions and possible interventions. After discussion, we arrived at a list of possible interventions.

We used a Multicriteria Analysis to rate each intervention in terms of their necessity, potential efficacy, affordability, and feasibility. The survey data and the final interview with the owner and his right hand supervisor helped us accurately rate the interventions per the listed criteria. We ranked the interventions based on their final ratings.

Recommendations

The NA team recommended that the following three interventions should be given the highest priority:

A team lead or a checklist (that must be initialed as tasks are completed) during downtime to make sure people know what they should be doing
New approach to hiring/monitoring managers (behavioral interview techniques and/or hiring from within, 360 feedback system on manager performance) so that managers maintain a healthy work environment
Onboarding and/or periodic training (includes disaster/safety, roles and expectations, a guided tour, introductions) so employees have the opportunity for improvement and know that the restaurant is investing in them

Based on the results from the Multicriteria Analysis, these interventions are the most necessary, effective, affordable and feasible ways to improve the turnover rate and help the restaurant meets its business objectives.

References

Boise State OPWL. (2020, October 6). Useful questions for starting a project and conducting an environmental scan [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMHT5U9HwmE

Chevalier, R. (2003). Updating the behavior engineering model. Performance Improvement, 42(5), 8–14.

Harless, J. H. (1973). An Analysis of Front-End Analysis. Harless Performance Guild, Inc.

Mind Tools. (2022). SWOT Analysis. Mindtools. https://www.mindtools.com/amtbj63/swot-analysis

National Restaurant Association. (2023, September 1). Restaurants added nearly 15k jobs in August. Retrieved December 5, 2023, from https://restaurant.org/research-and-media/research/economists-notebook/analysis-commentary/restaurants-added-nearly-15k-jobs-in-august

The Nine boxes model. (2020, October 15). RummlerBrache.com. https://www.rummlerbrache.com/nine-boxes-model

Van Tiem, D., Moseley, J. L., & Dessinger, J. C. (2012). Fundamentals of performance improvement: Optimizing Results through People, Process, and Organizations. John Wiley & Sons.

Watkins, R., Meiers, M. W., & Visser, Y. (2012). A guide to assessing needs: Essential Tools for Collecting Information, Making Decisions, and Achieving Development Results. World Bank Publications.

KARYNA MANGUSHEVA