I work at a food chain in a relatively small location. We’ve had multiple changes in management over the last year, and unsurprisingly our turnover rate has more than doubled since our first manager left.
Long story short, our first manager transferred to a different store for a better GM opportunity and filling in their spot was apparently a lot harder than anyone anticipated, and since then, we’re on our third (and not even final, because this one also wants to leave) manager. Almost all of our staff left after our first manager left, (there are only 3 of us left from the og crew) and every one of our current staff, management included, were hired either in or after March.
Every time we hire people, we give them a week (if even that, some people get 3 days) of training and then throw them head on into their position as if they’d always been here. Because of that, as well as the fact that we’re a smaller location and have significantly less staff than other branches, almost everyone quits. They don’t get trained properly because “we don’t have the hours” to schedule multiple people at the same time, and it gets overwhelming and people leave. Somebody quit about a month ago and their reasoning was quite literally that. They were thrown into their position without any guidance or help, and it was getting too much to deal with. They asked for help multiple times but were met with absolutely nothing…so they left. But even after being told why they left, the higher up that oversees our store thinks it’s because they were told to work faster. (Literally – I was told that they probably quit because 2 days after they were told that their work is good, but that they need to work on their speed and efficiently, they quit. Like, no, they got overwhelmed by the lack of support and being told that they need to be faster was probably their breaking point because nobody every acknowledged the fact that they were begging for help. One of my managers said “I trained them for two days and they still quit!” as if two days was a sufficient amount of time to learn an ENTIRE department).
And so it goes. We hire people, have high labor percentages because we have to double schedule to “train”, the new hires quit due to lack of, well, everything, and it happens over and over. The people who stick it out and continue to work here are getting their hours cut due to high labor percentages, and it never goes down because everyone quits and we’re stuck in the same ole rut of constantly hiring people.
There’s so much wrong with our branch that all leads back to poor management, but this is the one thing nobody ever gets through their head. People quit because we’re making them quit. We pay new hires mimimim wage. Why would they stay at a place that gives them no support or guidance, and thinks 2 days is enough time to learn an entire position when they could go elsewhere and make the same amount of money without losing their minds in the process.
It never ends.