Train Restaurant Staff with Employee Video Training Platform

With turnover rates often soaring to around 75% annually, restaurants face a continuous cycle of hiring, training, and re-training employees.
This high turnover disrupts daily operations and strains resources, making restaurant staff training a challenge that directly impacts customer service quality.

As far as restaurant staff training is concerned, research reveals that around 70% of restaurants use an employee handbook for training their staff. However, traditional training methods like this are not enough.

Traditional training methods rely heavily on in-person sessions and printed materials and can struggle to keep up with the rapid turnover and varying training needs. As a result, maintaining consistency and ensuring that all staff members are well-trained becomes increasingly complex and costly. Recent studies suggest that the average cost per hire can go up to $1070.

The good news is that you can use an employee video training platform to navigate the above challenges and ensure that your restaurant staff remains up-to-date with the knowledge and skills necessary to do their jobs efficiently.

In this blog, we will explore how adopting an employee video training tool can transform restaurant staff training, making it more efficient, cost-effective, and adaptable to the fast-moving dynamics of the food industry. Discover how this technology can help you tackle high turnover challenges and ensure every team member has the knowledge and skills needed to deliver exceptional service while saving time, reducing costs, and maintaining consistency.

Let's start with understanding an employee video training platform.

What is an Employee Video Training Platform?

An employee video training platform is a dedicated application for training and upskilling your workforce. It hosts interactive videos that maximize knowledge retention and offer a better understanding to the staff. Using a video training tool ensures that all your proprietary knowledge remains protected in a secure video training platform.

Employee video training platforms offer a well-integrated solution that leverages the power of digital video content to streamline the training process. By providing a centralized repository for training materials, enabling easy access and distribution, and offering tools for tracking progress and analyzing results, employee video training tools empower restaurants to deliver consistent, high-quality training regardless of how frequently their staff changes.

Key Features of Employee Video Training Platform

The following are some of the critical features of an employee video training platform for restaurant staff training:

Centralized Content Repository

One significant advantage of an employee video training platform is that it centralizes all training materials in a single, easily accessible location. For restaurants, this means onboarding videos, procedural tutorials, and customer service training modules can all be housed in one place, streamlining content management.

Easy Access and Distribution

An employee video training software makes content distribution efficient by enabling easy sharing of training materials with staff. Employees can access videos and resources at their convenience, whether they are at the restaurant or on the go. This flexibility is crucial for a fast-paced industry where staff schedules vary widely. The system's ability to distribute content quickly and seamlessly means that training can be delivered uniformly across different shifts and locations.

Tracking and Analytics

Another key feature is the tracking and analytics capability of a specialized interactive video platform for employee training and learning. This allows managers to monitor training progress, track completion rates, and assess employee engagement with the training content. By analyzing this data, restaurants can identify areas where staff need additional support or where the training materials could be improved. This level of insight helps ensure that the training program is effective and that employees acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to perform their roles effectively.

Interactivity and Engagement

Video training platforms for employees offer interactive features such as quizzes, handouts, and forms that engage employees more deeply with the content. For example, you can test knowledge retention with quizzes and include mid-video handouts to add supporting material in the content context. This engagement not only makes the training more fun to learn but also helps reinforce learning by providing immediate feedback and opportunities for practical application.

Third-party Integration

An employee video training platform for training restaurant staff often supports integration with various other systems to create a seamless training ecosystem. Key integrations include:

Video Conferencing Platforms: Integrating platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Cisco Webex allows you to conduct live training sessions, webinars, and virtual meetings to support the learning and development (L&D) of the restaurant training staff.

This integration fits seamlessly within the interactive video platform framework. Consequently, restaurants can combine pre-recorded content with real-time interactions. As a result, this approach offers a more comprehensive training experience for staff members, including kitchen managers, waiters, baristas, and more.

Content Management Systems (CMS): Integration with a CMS enables the employee video training platform to leverage existing content and resources from the restaurant’s website or internal knowledge base. This can streamline content updates and ensure consistency across different training platforms.

Comparing Restaurant Staff Training Methods

Several channels can be used to train restaurant staff, each with its own set of advantages and limitations. Understanding how these methods compare can help you make an informed decision about the best approach for your establishment.

In-person Training

In-person training has traditionally been the standard for staff development, especially when it comes to developing a personal connection with the staff, which helps with learning. However, with high attrition, a connection becomes difficult to form, along with an additional set of challenges:

Inconsistencies: The effectiveness of in-person training can vary greatly depending on the trainer's expertise, teaching methodology, and presentation style. This variability can lead to inconsistencies in the training experience and outcomes for different employees.

Resource-intensive: In-person training requires significant time and resources, including scheduling, venue arrangements, and trainer fees. This method can be labor-intensive and may not be feasible for frequent or large-scale training needs.

Limited Reach: Training sessions are limited by the number of participants who can attend at one time and may require additional sessions to accommodate all staff, including chefs, kitchen managers, servers, and others. This can be incredibly challenging in a high-turnover environment where timely training is essential.

Online Courses

Online courses offer a standardized approach to training but lack some of the customization benefits of an employee video training platform:

Standardization: Online courses provide a uniform learning experience but often fail to tailor to your restaurant's specific needs or operational procedures. This can result in generic training that might not address unique organizational requirements.

Lack of Customization: Unlike interactive video training software that tailors content to your restaurant's needs, online courses often lack customization. This means you may be unable to include your restaurant's unique procedures, branding, or specific scenarios.

Employee Video Training Platform

An employee video training platform for restaurant staff addresses the challenges of the training methods above and provides additional features that make it an optimal solution. It allows your brand to customize content according to your unique value proposition and test employees with interactivity features. In addition, it lets you make the training video content available consistently to all employees.

Benefits of Using Employee Video Training Platform for Restaurant Staff Training

Having established the foundational aspects of an employee video training platform and its key features, it's essential to delve into its tangible benefits for restaurant staff training. An interactive video training platform is not merely a tool for storing and distributing content. It is a transformative asset that can address many challenges the hospitality industry faces. With regular attrition affecting restaurants, it helps ensure consistency in training.

By leveraging the centralized repository, easy access, tracking capabilities, and interactive elements of a specialized platform, restaurants can overcome common training hurdles and foster a more skilled, cohesive team. Let’s explore how these benefits can change how restaurants approach staff training and contribute to a more streamlined and effective training process.

Consistency and Standardization

Ensuring consistency and standardization in restaurant staff training is vital for maintaining quality and operational excellence. An interactive video training tool ensures that every employee receives uniform training and adheres to established brand standards, creating a cohesive and high-performing team across all shifts and locations.

Uniform Training

One significant advantage of a video platform for staff training is its ability to provide uniform training across different shifts and locations. It centralizes training materials in one accessible location, allowing all staff members to access the same content regardless of their shift or restaurant location. This consistency in training is particularly important for addressing the issues caused by frequent employee attrition.

By standardizing the training process, an employee video training platform bridges the gaps that often arise when bringing on new staff members, ensuring they acquire the same foundational knowledge and skills as their predecessors. This uniform approach reduces variability in service quality and operational procedures, helping maintain a cohesive team despite ongoing staff changes.

Adherence to Brand Standards

In addition to providing uniform training, an interactive video platform plays a critical role in upholding brand standards and ensuring adherence to operational procedures. Restaurants need to consistently apply specific service protocols, safety guidelines, and brand values across all locations. An enterprise video platform makes distributing training materials that reflect these standards easy, ensuring all employees receive training according to the restaurant's established guidelines.

This consistent adherence to brand standards helps maintain high service quality, reinforces the restaurant’s brand identity, and ensures that every guest receives a uniform experience, which is essential for building and sustaining a solid brand reputation.

Efficiency and Time Savings

Maximizing efficiency and significant time savings in restaurant staff training is essential for maintaining operational smoothness and reducing costs. An employee video training platform provides on-demand access to training materials and streamlines the training process, making it easier to onboard new employees and develop their skills effectively.

On-Demand Access

One key benefit of employee video training tools is that they provide training materials that are available 24/7. This means employees can access videos, tutorials, and other educational content at their convenience, whether on duty, between shifts, or even off-hours. As a result, this flexibility allows staff members to learn at their own pace, revisit materials as needed, and fit training into their schedules without disrupting daily operations.

On-demand access is particularly valuable in a fast-paced restaurant environment, where employees may have varying schedules and need to accommodate training around their work commitments.

Reduced Training Time

A training video platform also significantly reduces the time required for training and onboarding. By offering streamlined processes for delivering and updating training content, it helps expedite the training process. New hires can quickly get up to speed with standardized training modules while existing employees can complete refresher courses more efficiently.

This reduction in training time accelerates the integration of new staff and minimizes disruptions to restaurant operations. The restaurant maintains productivity and equips all employees with the necessary skills and knowledge to perform their roles effectively, ultimately saving time and reducing the overall cost of training.

Cost-Effectiveness

Implementing an employee video training platform for restaurant staff training can lead to significant cost savings and offer scalable training solutions, making it a valuable investment for restaurants looking to optimize their training processes. This way, you don't have to bear the high costs of conducting in-person employee training sessions.

Lower Training Costs

One of the primary advantages of an enterprise video platform is its ability to reduce traditional training expenses. By centralizing training materials in a digital format, restaurants can eliminate the need for printed manuals, reduce the costs associated with travel for in-person training sessions, and avoid fees for external instructors. Moreover, by making all training content available online, you eliminate costs related to printing and distributing physical materials and minimize the need for travel and accommodation for trainers.

Additionally, using pre-recorded video content means that training can be delivered without ongoing instructor costs, further driving down expenses. This reduction in training costs allows restaurants to allocate their resources more effectively and invest in other areas of their operations.

Scalability

A training video platform also offers significant scalability benefits as a restaurant grows or expands. As new locations open or the team size increases, the video platform can easily accommodate additional users and locations without requiring substantial training infrastructure changes. New employees can quickly access the same training materials as their colleagues, regardless of where they are, ensuring consistent training across all sites.

This scalability means the training system can grow alongside the restaurant, adapting to increasing demands without requiring significant additional investments. By providing a flexible and scalable solution, a video training platform helps ensure that training remains effective and efficient even as the business evolves.

Enhanced Engagement

Fostering enhanced engagement in restaurant staff training is crucial for ensuring that employees not only absorb information but also retain and apply it effectively. An interactive video platform leverages engaging content to create a more engaging and impactful training experience.

Interactive Content

A training video platform offers interactive features that encourage active participation rather than passive viewing. As a result, the learning process becomes more dynamic and memorable. For example, after watching a video on "Proper Food Handling and Hygiene Practices," your staff members would complete a quiz. The quiz tests their knowledge on topics such as cross-contamination prevention, correct handwashing techniques, and safe food storage temperatures.

This approach reinforces learning, makes the experience more engaging, and helps maintain attention throughout the training process.

Data-Driven Insights

Harnessing data-driven insights through an enterprise video platform can significantly enhance the effectiveness of restaurant staff training. By leveraging analytics and performance metrics, restaurants can continuously refine their training programs to meet their needs and improve operational outcomes.

Analytics

The platform allows managers to track training progress, monitor completion rates, and assess employee engagement with the training content. Detailed analytics can provide valuable insights into how well employees progress through their training modules, which areas they might struggle with, and how engaged they are with the material.

By analyzing this data, restaurants can identify trends, pinpoint gaps in knowledge, and make informed decisions about where to focus additional training efforts. A data-driven approach helps ensure that training programs are continually optimized to address the evolving needs of the staff and enhance overall effectiveness.

How a Florida-based Restaurant Uses Video Training Platform to Train Staff

A restaurant group based in Florida operating in two locations faced a significant challenge with high staff turnover, which affected managers, chefs, and servers alike. This high attrition rate led to frequent disruptions in training, impacting the consistency of service and culinary standards. Specifically, the group struggled with continually onboarding new chefs, who needed to master intricate recipes and dish presentations, and training servers on essential brand guidelines, including greeting guests, proper attire, and phone etiquette.

To address these issues, the group sought a comprehensive solution in the form of an employee video training platform. They envisioned a centralized platform where training materials could be easily stored and accessed on-demand, eliminating the need for repetitive, time-consuming training sessions. The interactive video platform was designed to host approximately 60 videos—30 for each restaurant—covering everything from recipes and dish presentations to cocktail preparation, salads, desserts, and entrees.

The restaurant group integrated interactive quizzes within the videos to improve the training process further. These quizzes were designed to assess employees' understanding of the material in real time, helping management gauge learning progress effectively. This ensured that the training was not only engaging but also provided valuable insights into each employee’s comprehension and performance.

Results

The implementation of the video training platform yielded significant improvements for the restaurant. Training efficiency dramatically increased, with new hires quickly accessing and learning from the available videos, reducing the time required for onboarding. Staff feedback indicated a positive reception of the interactive elements, which not only made the training process more engaging but also facilitated better information retention.

Operational consistency improved as all employees were trained to the same high standards regardless of their shift or location. Moreover, the restaurant group also noticed a reduction in the time spent on manual training efforts, allowing managers to focus on other critical aspects of their roles.

Overall, the video platform proved to be an asset for the company, streamlining its training processes and providing a scalable solution that could adapt to its dynamic staffing needs.

Conclusion

Employee video training platforms offer a transformative solution for restaurant staff training in an industry marked by high turnover and demanding standards. Training video platforms address the key challenges of consistency, efficiency, and scalability by centralizing training materials, enhancing engagement with interactive content, and providing valuable data-driven insights.

Compared to traditional in-person training and standardized online courses, a video training platform stands out for its ability to deliver uniform, adaptable, and cost-effective training tailored to your restaurant’s needs. Embracing a specialized platform not only streamlines the training process but also ensures that every staff member, regardless of their shift or location, is equipped with the knowledge and skills needed to uphold your brand’s standards and deliver exceptional service.

People Also Ask

What is an employee video training platform?

An employee video training platform is a dedicated tool to record, upload, host, and share interactive video content that increases the efficiency of the training program. In the context of restaurant staff training, it centralizes training materials, enabling easy access, tracking progress, and engaging employees through interactive features.

How does a video training platform benefit restaurant staff training?

It provides a centralized repository for training materials, ensures consistent training across different shifts and locations, and offers interactive features like quizzes. This approach effectively manages high staff turnover, saving time and reducing training costs.

What are the key features of an employee video training platform for restaurants?

Key features include a centralized content repository, easy access and distribution, tracking and analytics, interactive elements, and integration with other systems like video conferencing platforms and learning management systems.

How does an employee video training platform compare to traditional training methods?

Unlike traditional in-person training, an employee video training platform offers greater consistency, cost-effectiveness, and scalability. It also provides on-demand access and interactive content, addressing challenges associated with high staff turnover and resource-intensive training sessions.

Can an employee video training platform integrate with other systems?

It can integrate with various systems, including video conferencing platforms, content management systems (CMS), tracking apps, and more. This integration helps create a seamless training ecosystem and ensures consistent content delivery and tracking.