When running a hospitality business, service is the business. The caliber of your team influences customer experience, reputation, and repeat revenue — anywhere from a five-star hotel to a boutique cafe to a busy cloud kitchen. So, it isn’t just a matter of human resource management when figuring out whether you want to hire trained hospitality workers or untrained hospitality workers, it’s an operational decision based on return on investment (ROI).

This section will look in-depth into how ROI stacks up against each of the options knowing the nature of the hospitality business.

What is ROI in the Hiring of Hospitality Workers?

In hospitality, when we talk about ROI this does not just mean wages versus profits. ROI is looked at in a much larger lens – guest perception/satisfaction, staff retention, operational efficiency, ability to upsell, proactive reputation management, revenue generation, etc.

Every staff placement can either enrich the guest experience or become a cost centre or liability – either way, it is dependent on skills, malleability to learn and service inclination.

When you ask about ROI in employment, you are asking the following -- How quickly will this person start to contribute to service quality, team dynamic, and ultimately revenue generation?

Trained Hospitality Staff: Immediate Impact, Higher Input

Hiring trained personnel [like hospitality graduates or certified bartenders, chefs, front desk associates] offers an immediate benefit, and these trained individuals are usually job-ready, trained in process, and do not tend to make easy-to-avoid mistakes. 

Trained staff often are also able to provide or have less need to provide training on communication skills, technical skills (i.e., POS systems, hygiene standards), and service attitude and philosophy for the guest interaction product. They have experience and are able to reduce time requirement for on boarding, and improve guest interaction experiences on the first day regardless of the training style.

That said, this becomes costly. Trained individuals expect to earn a competitive salary, expect opportunities for career growth, and may/may not expect relocation support. Trained individuals will also exhibit a greater degree of rigidity in adjusting to new service philosophies if they are thoroughly trained in one service style of philosophy.

All that said again, if customer experience is a priority, trained hospitality staff offers consistently better results, and consistent long-term returns that typically justifies the initial investment.

Untrained Staff: Cheap, But Resource-Intensive

Untrained staff - what we would refer to as freshers or candidates from outside hospitality backgrounds - can be really economical for businesses with limited budgets or that have to hire seasonally.

They tend to be more flexible, they are usually happy to learn, and they will seamlessly fit into your service culture. Local hires may even have language skills or regionally specific guest knowledge that trained off-site hires may not.

The negative? You have to build them up from nothing. Training infrastructure, methods for ongoing mentorship, supervision that is hands-on; all become necessary. If any of these are missing, there will be errors. And, we all know the hospitality world does not forgive even small errors when it comes to a review or customer loss.

When considering the ROI of hiring untrained staff, it all comes down to the willingness and availability of time and energy to train and support the new recruit. If you do not have this URL of commitment available, what could seem like a cheaper hire could end up costing your business more in adverse PR, guest experience, or retention.

The Investment in Training

If you are hiring untrained employees, your ROI relies entirely upon the quality of your training processes. Companies that provide onboarding, skill training, and feedback mechanisms, are typically able to evolve raw talent, through the training modules, into dedicated, talented professionals.

Your training module should be made up of fundamental items, such as hygiene items, guest handling, point of sales, upselling processes, and emergency procedures. Cross-training is another way to become more agile during busy times.

Employees that have grown with your brand become assets, as they have a strong understanding of your tass ideas, feel ownership of the business, and find it even harder to leave; therefore, your turnover rate can decrease year after year.

Hybrid Hiring

Many successful hospitality brands are now hybrid hiring. They hire trained people for guest-facing roles—front office, bar or fine dining—and they are hiring untrained but aspiring candidates for support-type roles—housekeeping, stewarding or kitchen prep.

This model allows companies to keep wage costs down while developing in-house growth pathways. In time, the untrained employee goes through training and is promoted into a trained hire role, reducing the need to source externally, and fostering loyalty.

The key very clearly is mentorship; if you can match up a trained team leader with junior untrained hires, you can instill a mentorship culture, improve morale, and support service standards being upheld.

Short-Term Expense vs. Long-Term Value

It is easy to be lured by the prospect of hiring at low cost. However, in hospitality, short-term savings can come at the cost of long-term value if service isn’t up to scratch or team dynamics fall apart. 

Trained team members offer long-term value; flow and continuity in operations, engaged guests, and reduced mistakes. Untrained team members offer a short-term expense. They can only ever offer long-term value if you properly train them and support their training and development.

Hospitality is a people business. Your team will represent your brand far more than anything on your menu, or the surroundings of your shop or restaurant. Eliminating quality people will unnoticed deteriorate your reputation and in this industry, reputation is everything.

Your Employees Are Your Brand

When it comes to the difference between trained hospitality staff and untrained hospitality staff, determining the ROI cannot be specifically identified or calculated. It depends on your business's model, capability to train people, your guest profile and vision for growth.

Based on that, in a time when guest reviews now travel faster than word of mouth ever did, trained professionals are your best marketers! The most mundane interaction with a guest or a simple entrance or exit from your establishment can have an impact that can alter your online reputation and bottom line.

If budgets permit, hire your best people for roles that are important! If budgets do not, either engage and commit to fully develop your untrained staff into future leaders. Either way, think about hiring as an investment in experience, loyalty and sustainable growth outcomes, not an expense.

Ready to Maximize Your Hiring ROI?

Whether you are trying to find high-quality individuals who are ready to work for you and provide quality service from day one, or if you are wanting to find those hidden gems of talent so that you can train, develop and grow them as potential leaders of the future — Foodism Connect is here to help.

The Foodism Connect platform is uniquely built to service the hospitality space. We help you screen, pre-interview, and hire the best candidates faster than your competition. You have greater control of your staffing process by using filters for training background, experience, location, soft skills and many more.

Don't leave your guest experience to chance. Hire smarter using Foodism Connect — and watch your ROI speak for itself.

Check out Foodism Connect today and hire with confidence.