Executive summary
- Universities face several challenges in recruiting and retaining staff, including staffing shortages, high turnover rates, and a unique work environment.
- Our easy-to-use template can assist you in streamlining and simplifying your hiring and staffing processes.
- Universities can also boost recruitment efforts by creating a positive employer brand, leveraging staffing and recruitment technologies, and measuring recruitment success.
- University dining facilities can reduce the burden on their recruitment efforts by taking steps to improve staff retention, such as promoting a positive work-life balance, developing employee engagement initiatives, and offering career development opportunities.
University recruitment strategies
Like other industries, universities face extremely high turnover in service roles. Many universities are struggling with staffing challenges, from open professor roles to hourly workers. However, front-line service staff, like foodservice workers and cleaning staff, is among the worst of it, facing open positions, high turnover, and skill shortages.
Facing shortages of this front-line staff, some universities have had to cut hours, reduce their menu offerings, and even close dining halls entirely. These staff members have a crucial part in shaping the student experience on campus, and without them, many students’ needs are not being met.
Given the value of workers filling these roles, it’s important for universities to have thoughtful strategies in place for recruiting, hiring, and retaining front-line foodservice and hospitality staff. Having a template that breaks down the steps to a successful recruitment and hiring process is valuable for universities looking to keep up with their hiring and recruitment efforts.
Understanding university recruiting
The hospitality industry as a whole has difficulty recruiting foodservice and general labor, but recruiting staff for a university comes with several unique challenges. For example, working in a university environment is different from traditional hospitality roles in that it includes parking challenges, stark seasonal variations, and daily periods of high demand.
With these challenges, professionals with skills in foodservice and hospitality often choose different sectors within the industry, meaning that university managers must navigate a small talent pool and skills shortages to fill necessary roles. In an industry with turnover rates approaching 80%, recruiting this talent is a consistent challenge.
The most common university foodservice and hospitality roles include:
- Dining hall workers
- Banquet servers
- Catering staff
- Stadium concessions workers
- Custodial staff
- Dishwashers
- Event chefs
- General cleaning staff
- Line cooks
This front-line staff is integral to keeping students and faculty fed, carrying out fulfilling events, and ensuring the campus is clean and ready for instruction. Universities must have creative and thoughtful methods for filling these roles so they can overcome staffing challenges and keep their operations running smoothly.
Template: Foodservice and hospitality staff recruitment template
Staffing the frontlines of a university with skilled staff requires a thorough strategy and approach. Explore our foodservice and hospitality staff recruitment template to revitalize your hiring efforts:
How to use the template effectively
This template should be used as a reference for hiring, recruiting, and retaining candidates. University managers can use the template as a standard against which to measure their hiring practices. Throughout the process of searching for new candidates, managers can consider whether they are taking all appropriate steps, like searching for candidates across several avenues and using tools to assist in recruitment.
Then, once new hires are in place, managers should use the template to consider the strength of their retention efforts. The template highlights steps you can implement to keep employees engaged, boost morale, and enhance employee retention. It will be important to reference this part of the template regularly so you can maintain consistency in your retention strategies.
Additional hiring strategies for universities
This template should boost your recruiting and hiring efforts, but that’s just one part of your overall strategy. In addition to using our hiring template, universities should take additional steps to boost their efforts, as recruiting the right talent can sometimes require casting a wide net.
Some hiring strategies that universities can lean on include:
- Utilizing employee referrals – Managers can look to their current staff to recommend candidates who would be a good fit for open roles.
- Holding campus recruitment events – Events can attract potential candidates to learn about the role and provide universities with a chance to meet strong prospects.
- Sourcing talent through platforms like Qwick – Each shift posted on Qwick is carefully matched with top-rated talent, and when you meet a professional you love working with, you can offer them a full-time role with no hiring fees.
- Offering internships and student employment opportunities – Hiring interns and students who have an interest in the industry can help create a pipeline for new talent to enter the workforce and fill open roles.
- Promoting a positive employer brand – Establishing a reputation as a positive place to work can attract more employees. Universities can use social media and other channels to highlight the benefits of working with them and post testimonials from satisfied employees.
Training and development programs
Offering training and development programs is an investment in the present and future of the university’s facilities. Well-trained employees are empowered to meet the demands of the job and equipped with tools they can carry forward into future career opportunities. Together, these programs can help employees feel more fulfilled.
Training and development programs can have all the following positive impacts:
- Improving workplace efficiency as staff is better equipped to handle daily tasks with ease
- Positioning a job environment as a positive, beneficial place to work
- Attracting new talent
- Boosting employee morale
- Enhancing employee engagement
Leveraging technology in recruitment
The advancement of technology has made connecting with talent easier, so employers should be prepared to utilize it. Some technologies can make the screening and hiring process easier. For example, using AI technologies can narrow down prospective employees from the applicant pool by highlighting resumes that include a target keyword. Applicant tracking systems can also support you in building a list of candidates, keeping candidates engaged, and updating them on their progress.
Other technologies can connect you to talent directly. For example, Qwick is a platform specifically designed for hospitality staffing, allowing you to fill open shifts with skilled professionals fast. The platform helps connect you with experienced professionals, whether you need to cover a shift for a same-day call-out, prepare for a future event, or manage your weekly staffing needs.
Qwick offers a convenient way to meet new talent and experience their abilities in real-time with no long-term commitment. Even better, our platform has a $0 cost to hire, so if you find a professional you enjoy working with, you can hire them full-time at no cost to you.
Retention strategies for university staff
Staff can also ease their recruitment efforts by having to recruit less frequently. Using thoughtful strategies to promote employee retention can ease the burden on hiring and recruitment by keeping employees in their roles long-term.
Employee engagement initiatives
Employee engagement correlates directly with retention. More engaged employees are more likely to stick around at their jobs and more likely to go above and beyond in their workplace tasks.
One poll found that high employee engagement leads to an 18% reduction in turnover for high-turnover environments. By investing in methods to engage employees, you can find ways to boost morale and retain staff.
Employee engagement strategies include:
- Established feedback mechanisms – Employees want to feel like their voices are heard and they have a stake in creating the work environment they want. Employers should offer a system for submitting feedback or perform weekly check-ins to gather input directly.
- Team-building activities – Team building activities can provide a fun break from the work environment while also strengthening the relationship between the team for a more positive, more efficient work environment.
- Meal-plan incentives—Dining halls provide an excellent resource for reciprocating your staff’s hard work. Offering employees a meal plan is a great way to give back, making them feel appreciated and saving them time and money.
Career development opportunities
Many employees desire an opportunity to grow and expand from their current career roles. Employers can provide these opportunities directly, using several avenues to support this growth and boost employee engagement.
Potential career development opportunities employees can offer are:
- Mentorship programs – Employers can partner new employees with more experienced employees so that they feel more supported, better equipped to handle their job, and can gain new skills.
- Skill development workshops – Skill development workshops allow employees to learn new skills from more experienced team members, allowing them to branch out in their field and build a more versatile skill set.
- Tuition assistance programs – Many employees are seeking their own education. University employers can support their career development by paying for a portion of the tuition or offering discounts on courses for employees.
Work-life balance policies
Employees across industries value work-life balance. In fact, employees who feel burned out are almost three times as likely to leave their current employer, so fostering a work environment that promotes balance can offer several benefits.
Policies that promote a work-life balance can make a job position more attractive, improve employee morale to promote employee retention, and build a positive reputation of the business to attract new talent.
Employers can implement a variety of policies to support a healthy work-life balance and a healthy work environment, including:
- Flexible scheduling options – Flexible scheduling gives employees more freedom and input in determining their schedule, allowing them to handle necessary tasks outside of work and feel more engaged during their shift.
- Paid time off – Paid time off allows employees to take rest and recuperation days without sacrificing pay, improving energy and morale.
- Wellness programs—Wellness programs can include fitness classes, emotional assistance classes, and connections to health screenings, allowing employees to care for their health and well-being while keeping up with their work.
Compliance and regulatory considerations
As universities take steps to build a strong team of professionals, they must also remain in compliance with important laws and regulations designed to protect their employees. In the staffing process, they will have to balance all the following.
Labor law compliance
Labor laws restrict employees from working beyond a certain number of hours in a given day or week. Keeping your team properly staffed with enough shifts prevents too much burden from being placed on individual staff members and keeps you in compliance.
Health and safety protocols
Health and safety protocols like proper sanitization of prep stations, appropriate signage throughout the kitchen, and effective food labeling procedures are crucial for ensuring employee and customer safety. Without the necessary staff to keep up with demand, these things can slip through the cracks, so it’s important for university managers to prioritize staffing to avoid cutting corners.
Diversity and inclusion policies
Universities should work to recruit and hire talent from diverse backgrounds as they will bring diverse talent and skill sets, creating a stronger, more versatile team. Employees also want a workplace where they will feel valued and respected, so creating a diverse and inclusive work environment will also go a long way toward attracting and retaining new talent.
Measuring recruitment success
Utilizing measurements and analytics will allow universities to understand their progress and success in hiring new applicants. Setting key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics for assessing recruitment will provide tangible benchmarks to assess and improve recruiting and hiring measures.
Applicant tracking and analytics
Applicant tracking systems (ATS) can help compile candidate information, monitor recruitment metrics, and give you an overarching view of the success of your hiring methods. Using applicant tracking systems and analytics technologies can provide more insight into areas of success and areas for improvement in recruitment.
Important metrics to consider include:
- Candidate time-to-hire
- Cost-per-hire
- Applicant conversion rates
- Employee retention rates
Candidate experience surveys
Using surveys to understand the experience of candidates in your recruitment and hiring processes can provide valuable insight into ways you can improve your methods. These surveys can tell you if you are losing any strong prospects at any point due to a flaw in your approach and how you can keep candidates engaged throughout the process.
