Economic incentives for staff retention

How is your employee retention? In the five years since the pandemic, restaurant operators have had to revamp how they attract and retain employees. As hiring is still a challenge, many are leaning into financial incentives that are hard to leave behind.
Michael Shemtov, whose company runs seven restaurants in Atlanta, Charleston and Nashville, said his restaurants include a “healthy hospitality” surcharge to every bill (currently 2.2 percent). This allows them to pay 70 percent of every employee’s health plan (up from 50 percent before the pandemic). Staff are also auto-enrolled in a retirement savings plan and offered a maternity/paternity savings match. “My thesis is that if I can get them to save $4,000-5,000 in a retirement account, then they’re really going to think hard about leaving me for another job,” he told Eater.
Stock options are another strategy. Brands like Shake Shack and Macaroni Grill have adopted this approach to boost retention among their management teams. Sweetgreen also offers equity incentives to salaried team members. They position this benefit as part of a larger effort to attract long-term employees – and they link equity to performance and contribution.
Beatnic, a vegan restaurant, introduced industry-leading paid parental leave in 2022 for all employees – full-time and part-time – including miscarriage leave under their bereavement policy. Granted, not every restaurant can make such incentives work financially. But at a time when talent is harder to find (and expensive to replace), what creative adjustments you can make to your benefits that might make it more appealing for people to stay?