Category: Workforce Engagement

The hospitality industry has one of the highest turnover rates than any other industry in the world. For any number of reasons restaurant businesses are constantly seeing employees come and go at a huge cost to their business. This has led to a lot of food businesses offering more incentives to stay: better pay, flexible hours, more training, career progression… But turnover still remains a huge problem.

One thing that is often overlooked when it comes to employee retention is communication. 

It’s a simple concept but a lot of people don’t even think about it. For any hospitality organisation, small or large, communication should be an integral part of your culture and your business plan. You can throw any amount of money at employees but if they’re not engaged with your business goals, they’re still going to be unproductive and inefficient members of staff.

Effective communication has been proven to increase employee retention and motivation. Not only that, better communication between owners, managers and teams helps build employee engagement which increases employee satisfaction, productivity, and profitability.

Engaged and satisfied employees feel valued, listened to and like they have a voice. They understand their role, what they need to do and how, and the impact they have on the organisation.

But how do you communicate this effectively to multiple employees all over the country?

When people think of communication, they think face to face, phone, email, text. However, employees might not get to the phone during busy periods. An email might be missed meaning the information quickly becomes out of date. Texting encourages employees to have their mobile phones out at work and even if it is for work purposes, it still looks unprofessional to the unknowing customer. And getting around to every employee in every location to speak to them face to face would be a full-time job in itself!

So how can you get the right information to your employees at the time they need it?

Hosting your communication platform on your POS, a device that employees regularly use, means that no information is missed. It keeps your teams in the loop with what’s going on instantly. Send messages to let employees know about schedule changes, VIP guests, or remind them about new menu items. Set tasks and targets to boost motivation and so that even unexperienced employees know what they should be doing. Store important documents, procedure or allergy information in a central location where everyone can access them. No more sauce stained papers!

Effective communication is hard to master. But it doesn’t have to be.

If you want to improve communication within your teams, ask us about Bizzlle or check out the website here.

You developers have got it easy when it comes to staying up to date with current tech. Even if you’re not lucky enough to be working with the latest and greatest stuff like the team at PXtech, you’re at least writing code every day, solving software problems, and keeping your tech mind sharp 9-5.

Since becoming development manager, I’ve really had to work hard to keep my development skills up to date. As time has gone on, my workload has shifted away from the code, and more towards reports, organisation, recruitment etc. (you know, all that management stuff). This meant that dipping into the code on the rare occasions I was able to, was just getting more and more difficult, and taking more and more time to get up to speed with what was going on. It didn’t help that making even an hour of space to focus on it without interruptions was nigh on impossible.

Things are changing though. Focusing is easier, I’m able to get productive from a cold start more quickly, and many of the newer frameworks the team are using don’t feel quite as alien anymore. Put another way, I feel in touch. Not as on top of everything as I’d like to be, but I can be productive as a developer alongside my responsibilities as a manager.

I wanted to share some of the tactics I’ve used to get to this point, and will continue to use to maintain the skills that are so valuable to me and, I hope, to my role at PXtech.

Make the space

It sounds obvious, but if you don’t make the space to work on your development skills, you won’t be able to work on them. Making the space is actually the easy bit, protecting it is harder. Distractions such as email, meetings, questions etc. all break your flow, which as you know is just disastrous for programming.

I did a few things to defend this time, which really helped. First I made a conscious effort to get control over when meetings happened. Bunching them together is best and planning the preparation and follow up time appropriately also helps. Second, I closed Outlook (I can sense the collective intake of breath from here). Yes that’s right, I closed my email, and most days I will only check emails at 11am and 3pm. I can’t claim credit for this idea, but this guy can.

Finally, I accepted that I needed to regularly commit time out of work to learning. It’s good practice for developers anyway, but essential if you’re not 100% development focused in your day job.

Embrace generalism

Sounds backwards right? The most successful programmers out there specialise, and for good reason. If you’re a generalist then your skills are in rich supply. If you’re a specialist, then you’re that big fish in a small pond (hat tip to John Sonmez).

Well, all that is true, but now you’re managing a team of specialists and aspiring specialists, and you need to know at least a little bit about what each of them is doing. Chances are your experience will help them hone that speciality and (if you’re doing your job right) apply it to your team’s products in the most effective way through excellent application architecture design.

I try to learn something new every week. Whether it’s a technique one of my team are using, or looking at an emerging technology area so I can have an informed discussion on it with our expert in that area. It helps to push me and my team, as well as keeping my knowledge relevant to what’s being worked on

Have a side project

I can’t stress this enough. It’s all very well aiming to be an active member of the development team, delivering value to the customer by coding features and completing sprint items, but sooner or later you’ll be pulled away and you’ll go through a period where getting anything (technical) done is not, and cannot be top of your priority list. The team will be impacted, sprint goals will be missed, and you’ll feel awful being the one dragging everyone else down. Sorry – it’s a fact, and you can bet it’ll happen at the worst time.

For that reason, I try to limit my direct delivery of backlog features to relatively independent, lower priority items. Naturally, they’re also not always the most interesting.

To afford myself the luxury of playing with the very latest tech in an interesting way and being able to dip in and out as required, I have a side project (an important one, but a side project nonetheless) that only I work on. It’s my playground for want of a better word. Somewhere I can try things out and learn new things safely. It’s been invaluable to me in staying up to date and keeping up with the team around me.

Read endlessly

Read tech blogs, news, books, everything you can to keep a grip on where the industry is going. Not only do you want to make sure you’re focusing your precious time in the right areas, but you need to keep tabs on your team to ensure you have the right mix of capabilities in the right areas.

I find Twitter is a particularly useful tool for this. I check it as frequently as I can, and try to keep the majority of the people I follow relevant to my industry. (If it helps, set up another account for this!)

Learn from your team

One of the best resources available to you, is sat right with you in the same room most of the time. These are the people who you are entrusting and helping to become specialists in their respective fields, so learn from them. Get them to show you what they’re doing, explain it, and help you apply it. They’ll benefit from your eyes and approval of their work, and you’ll benefit from the research and learning they did to get to that point. Win-Win.

So there are the 5 main tactics I have used to keep myself up to date since letting go of development full time. It’s hard – really hard – but I’m not ready to let go of it yet, and I can’t yet imagine a time when I will be.

Ralph Cooper, Head of Software Development

Engagement is one of the most discussed topics in the hospitality sector. By now, most business owners will have heard about the benefits of customer engagement. When done right, it has been proven to increase customer loyalty, improve repeat custom and boost overall profitability. But while the benefits of an engaged customer base are endless, employee engagement is often regarded with a little less zeal.

We’re here to tell you that employee engagement is just as important, if not more so, than customer engagement. In fact, we would go as far to say that you cannot begin to engage customers without having an engaged workforce first.

Casual and fast dining restaurants are fast paced and it’s no secret that hospitality has one of the highest employee turnovers of any other sector, reportedly costing the industry a huge £11 billion a year. Despite the overheads of continually having to recruit new employees, an unengaged workforce brings with it a whole host of issues and could be the very thing that is hindering efforts of engaging your customers.

As well as being happier, healthier and more fulfilled at work, engaged employees deliver improved business performance evidenced by productivity, profit, revenue growth, customer satisfaction, innovation and efficiency.  Engaged employees care for the company’s future, are willing to go the extra mile for their customers and know how their work impacts the overall goals and vision of your organisation.

Engaged customers bring a 21% profitability premium to the companies they are engaged with.  Engaged employees increase sales by 20%, their absenteeism drops by 41%, and safety incidents decrease by 70%. Companies that invest in engagement see a 17% rise in productivity and a 40% rise in quality of work compared to those who don’t.[1]

For customers to be engaged, they need to see a workforce that is passionate, innovative and enjoying the work that they do. This will encourage customer interaction, create a more comfortable and happier environment to dine, and customers are more likely to receive the best service possible. No matter how hard you try to engage customers through loyalty apps and social media, if they have a negative dining experience in the restaurant, you’d be lucky to see them again.

An engaged workforce will become a necessity if you wish to truly make gains in coming years and stay ahead of your competition – but where do you start when beginning to think about an employee engagement strategy? It’s all good and well telling you why you should be engaging employees but it’s even more difficult figuring out how to engage them.

This is where your restaurant data plays a huge part. Not only will collecting and analysing your data give you visibility of transactions, sales trends and the best trading times, it can also provide a wealth of knowledge about your employees. This includes how productive they are, when they’re most productive, who they’re most productive with, and how outside factors influence their performance at work. Knowing this information will allow you to create the most engaging working environment for your employees to ensure you’re always getting the best out of your team.

If you want to know more about unlocking the wealth of information waiting to be utilised in your business analytics database, join us for a webinar soon to find out how to use your restaurant data effectively in order engage employees and increase productivity and profitability.

[1] Gallup, Gallup 2016 Q12 Meta-Analysis: Ninth Edition, http://www.gallup.com/services/191489/q12-meta-analysis-report-2016.aspx

Engagement comes in many forms and is often difficult to measure. With such a visceral concept, the definition of engagement can be iffy but the basis remains the same: ‘being positively present during the performance of work by willingly contributing intellectual effort, experiencing positive emotions and meaningful connections to others’.[1]

More and more businesses within the hospitality sector are beginning to recognise the positive effects of an engaged workforce. With 88% of businesses planning on improving engagement in 2017, failure to recognise the power it has will leave your business lagging behind your competitors.[2]

Ensuring employees are thoroughly engaged can improve all areas of a business. It is no secret that hospitality has one of the highest employee turnover rates of any industry. Bloomberg BNA estimated that a huge $11 billion is lost annually due to employee turnover. Money is literally walking out the door due to low levels of engagement.

It has also been proven that engagement isn’t only good for improving staff retention. As well as being happier, healthier and more fulfilled at work, engaged employees deliver improved business performance evidenced by productivity, profit, revenue growth, customer satisfaction, innovation and efficiency.  Engaged employees care for the company’s future, are willing to go the extra mile and know how their work impacts the overall goals and vision of your company.

Engaged customers bring a 21% profitability premium to the companies they are engaged with.  Engaged employees increase sales by 20%, their absenteeism drops by 41% and safety incidents decrease by 70%. Companies that invest in engagement see a 17% rise in productivity and 40% rise in quality of work compared to those who don’t.[3]

These are facts. Engagement works. All the statistics show that engaged employees improve the workplace beyond the happy employee; engaged employees actively work to improve profit and decrease unnecessary costs. Engaged employees are more loyal to their company, saving you money and time on recruitment and training. Your HR department would be better off spending less time recruiting new talent, and more time engaging and retaining the great employees your business already has.

With an increasing number of socioeconomic concerns influencing and, in most cases curbing profit, it’s easy to want to take the reins and implement processes and systems that rely on control, direction and compliance. This will only damage engagement levels and cause further financial distress. Instead construct the right teams, analyse productivity levels, ensure you have the right people working together at the right times, and trust them to do their job. Give them the support they need, discuss the larger focus of the business, where you want to be and where you want them to be, and they are more than likely to succeed and be happier while doing so.

Engagement is pinned to be one of the most explored concepts for hospitality this year and looking at the results so far, it is no wonder why. Businesses are being more innovative than ever with their workplace culture and are really going that extra mile to ensure they can provide the best, most engaging, environment for their employees. While installing slides in the office will be a little farfetched for most, if your business isn’t working on its engagement levels, it will be left behind and struggle to stay ahead of the curve. Not to mention spending valuable revenue on recruitment, training and labour costs! Large or small, engagement can help you transform your business for the better and it’s time you started talking about it.

Engagement needs discussing now more than ever; you should not underestimate the power it can have.

If you would like to discuss engagement in more detail and see how your technology can help, please get in touch at info@pxtech.com or 01332 921 300.

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[1] CIPD, Employee Engagement: An Introduction, https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/fundamentals/relations/engagement/factsheet#

[2] Virgin Pulse, State of the Industry: Employee Wellbeing, Culture and Engagement, http://community.virginpulse.com/state-of-the-industry-2017-es

[3] Gallup, Gallup 2016 Q12 Meta-Analysis: Ninth Edition, http://www.gallup.com/services/191489/q12-meta-analysis-report-2016.aspx

Engaged customers bring a 21% profitability premium to the companies they are engaged with.  Engaged employees increase sales by 20%, their absenteeism drops by 41% and safety incidents decrease by 70%. (Gallup 2016 Q12 Meta-Analysis: Ninth Edition)

Still think engagement isn’t important?

Engagement is far more than satisfaction or happiness. It is about emotional commitment. When customers and employees feel engaged and are engaged with a company, they are part of its experience, its adventure. They develop a feeling of pride and a feeling of belonging. They are prepared to go the extra mile to support the company.

The engaged customer will evangelise the company and the brand. The engaged employee will use discretionary effort to solve problems, to drive innovation, and is concerned with the company’s well-being.

Engagement is about people. Technology is the tool to make it successful.

To find out more and to join the conversation on engagement, email us on info@pxtech.com or give us a call: 01332 921 300!

Is it feasible to expect every single worker to be engaged?

It feels likes employee engagement is the new buzz in hospitality, with promises of increased productivity and profitability being thrown about.

What I can’t decide is, could there be a big underlying problem with the whole engagement hype? Does it create unrealistic expectations for employees? Does it set unachievable goals for companies?

When I got my first job at 16 working for a well-known fast food brand, I’m not sure I was engaged.  In fact I didn’t want a job. It was my dad that had frog marched me down there saying “you’re old enough to work now, it’s an important life lesson to learn how to support yourself.” Thanks Dad :).  During my time there I worked loads of overtime not because I couldn’t get enough of work but because I loved having loads of money, more than my pocket money, to spend on all the things I wanted…and there was a lot I wanted! Clothes, shoes, video games, going out on the razzle!

Did I care about the company goals? Did I care if we took more money than the other shop down the road? No I don’t think I did.  I did care that customers left happy, enjoyed their meal and would go out of my way to help if something had gone wrong.  Does that mean I was engaged and was that a result of something my manager did to make me feel this way? I don’t know.

In contrast, I feel completely engaged in my current role. I understand the impact I have and I know my opinion is respected, even if it’s not right.  I feel valued, in control of my own destiny, being supported without it being overbearing.  Here we are all about engagement. We want all our employees to have a voice, to be able to challenge and push us forward with innovative thinking.  We use a number of engagement tools like Hipchat, Mailchimp and Sharepoint.  It feels great, I get up in the morning and I’m thinking right what’s my plan for today – I feel driven and ready to succeed.

Now when I think back to my first job, I question what would have motivated me in the same way I am now back then.  Would it have been the same that engages me now? Is it the technology that helps engage me? I didn’t go skipping to work back then. I do feel I worked to my best ability but I certainly didn’t feel like I feel now.

Questions I want to understand are;  does every job/role have the potential to offer a meaningful, exciting, and self-actualising experience?  Does a job need to engage you to ensure you are at your most productive at all times? Can technology play a part in employee engagement? Let me know what you think!

 Kerry Townsend, Director of Hospitality Business

We can be guilty of assuming that volunteers don’t want all the responsibilities that come with looking after a retail store. Many charities are hesitant to offload tasks seen as boring or complicated onto their volunteers in fear of scaring them away. However, not giving volunteers any responsibilities can deter them too.

When surveyed, only 31% of people said that their charity makes them feel valued. There are seven in ten people who do not feel like their importance is recognised by the organisation to which they choose to donate their time. When we talk so frequently about how volunteers are fundamental to a functioning charity shop, it is surprising to hear that they feel so disconnected.

When speaking with volunteers, we found that their most common needs are to feel valued, trusted and listened to. Ensuring your volunteers know they are highly important and are contributing to the wider mission of your organisation is key to recruiting and retaining the volunteers you need for success.

Enhanced communication with your volunteers can help boost motivation. Telling them they are important, what their hard work goes on to achieve, and how they impact the end mission is a positive way to reinforce hard work. In order to make them feel listened to, there must be a two-way line of open communication. Volunteers offer a wealth of experience and knowledge and can deliver an abundance of good ideas to help increase funds, improve the charity and better the organisation as a whole.

There needs to be this communication for them to feel trusted too. To further develop trust, it’s a good idea to offer them the more difficult or important tasks. It’s easy to assume that they don’t want the responsibility or are not up to the job but by not asking them if so, you are making them feel like they’re not trusted enough to fully contribute to the cause.

While being listened to and trusted will contribute to making them feel valued, there are also other things you can do for your volunteers. Demonstrating that you are ready to invest in volunteers where you cannot offer wages can be an excellent motivator. Sending them on training courses means they have the chance to develop their own personal skills while also making them better at the job they do in-store.

In our blog post on the importance of collaboration, we outline many ways you can raise extra funds to pay for something like this. Partnering with businesses who will pay for training bursaries in return for a short ad in a monthly newsletter or a feature on your website is a fantastic way of sourcing funds. Alternatively, join hands with another charity and improve volunteering skills across the sector while sharing the costs!

Giving volunteers different skills than they already have is a great motivator for many and investing in them is a sure way to make them feel worthwhile. Young people just beginning their careers will likely want extra experience to boost their CV, while older people or those trying to get back into the working world will also be looking to learn something new.

Knowing you’re taking the time to invest in them and develop their skills beyond the charity will boost motivation and will allow volunteers to invest back into your organisation. Interacting and engaging with volunteers is a two-way street, so treating them as valued members of your team will result in reciprocal respect and hard work. Investing in your volunteers will allow them to invest in you and create a more skilled, friendlier and more profitable retail store.

It is always difficult when you start working with a new team; you come from somewhere where you know everyone, what they do, the products, customers and processes and have to learn all about the new team, products, processes, customers, suppliers and resist the initial temptation to try and change things. I joined the team here at PXtech as the QA and Release manager, a new role for the company, and I’ve spent a few months on a journey of discovery consisting of lots of questions, usually repeated, as my head tries to fill with all of this new information.

Joining the team at PXtech was like a breath of fresh air to me; the team is successful, dynamic and has a desire to improve. My previous experience working in large corporations felt like wading uphill through treacle in comparison when you wanted to do anything which could not be isolated to your own direct team, but it did help me understand how to sell and achieve improvement.

Everyone can improve and even when I have spent many years working with a team I’ve always found that I’ve had to resist trying too much at once. Sometimes trying to introduce change in a well-established team can be hard because it’s scary moving away from what is known and what has always worked (well or not so well) in the past. In these situations I have found that it is always best to get sponsorship for the change at a senior / influential level. The book “Our Iceberg is Melting” by John Kotter which was recommended to me by a previous manager is very insightful and I recommend it as a good read for anyone struggling to implement any kind of change. This is why we started with a vision for quality.

We’ve now created our vision; we’ve obtained approval and we’re going to start breaking it down into small manageable tasks. We will trial each small improvement and evaluate its effectiveness. For the improvements which turn out well, we will then aim to embed them into normal daily process. We have also started promoting the vision throughout the company to ensure that team members beyond the QA and development team are engaged.

VISION

Engagement

• Pro-actively seek feedback from our Customers, Partners, Users and each other to drive continuous improvement
• Collaborative business wide approach that fosters an environment within the workplace that encourages quality
• Building on customer understanding to create high quality products and solutions

Value

• Customer at the heart of our business. We get it right first time
• Expand on our teams skills to ensure the best possible delivery
• Discover issues sooner in the quality lifecycle to reduce the cost of delivery

Efficiency

• Clear measures of progress to easily identify our successes and failures
• Delivery of our Products and Solutions on budget and on time
• Ensure best practice is used for release, environment and test data management

Steve Playford
QA and Release Manager

By 2020, it is thought that 70% of the world will be using smartphones and 90% of the globe will be covered by mobile broadband networks.

Technology is no longer ‘nice to have’ but is an essential tool for reaching business goals. While this isn’t news to any hospitality organisation owner, a dangerous situation they may find themselves in is thinking that ‘adequate’ technology will suffice.

A lot of hospitality organisations are susceptible to the risk of settling for sufficient restaurant technology. While rational – updating software and hardware nationwide can be a frightening thought – stagnant tech could be the cause for the lack of engagement with your staff and your customers.

The hospitality industry is fickle; customers change their minds and the staff turnover is high. An organisation within the sector has to be at the top of its game when innovating how to utilise its tech to its full advantage in a bid keep employees and customers loyal to their brand. Lagging behind on the technological spectrum not only creates a less engaging environment for your customers to dine but also a less convenient one. Not to mention obsolete tech will cause problems for your employees and potentially create a much more difficult and hostile working environment.

With Millennials and Gen Zers being the future of your business custom and workforce, it’s important to ensure that their need for tech is satisfied. Born into a world of digital, visual and interactivity, their use of technology in everyday practices is innate. They don’t just desire digital ways of working and living; they expect it. For a restaurant to continue to grow with its employees and customers, and to have a future in the 21^st century and beyond, it must constantly be implementing new technological practices into the everyday.

This can be difficult if you don’t regularly update your software and hardware or even if you’re not mindful of the risks of outdated technology. This isn’t to say that you should introduce robotic waiters just yet but you should be applying innovative ways of working into the monotony of your prosaic tasks.

Processes like staff scheduling, menu or price changes and stock management can all be administered much easier if your data is hosted in a centralised database and directly linked to a good EPOS system and other Business Intelligence solutions.

Not only will a congruent log of data make life easier for your board of leaders, your management and your floor workers but will give valuable insights into your customers as well. Knowledge really is power – having clear visibility of your organisation, staff productivity and consumer buying habits will allow you the capability of being able to see what areas of your business affect one another and how you can make changes in order to improve said areas.

Implementing digital process behind the scenes, making life easier and more engaging for your employees, means you’ll be prepared to introduce cutting edge technology front-of-house too. You’ll always be ready for the next tech trends and you’ll know what your customers want and expect so that you can always provide them with a fulfilling dining experience.

Engagement is a hot topic in the hospitality industry and a subjective one at that. No doubt it has its rewards but knowing where to start can be difficult. A good place would be to make sure employees are engaged first which in turn will generate positive and meaningful encounters with customers. There are many proven ways to engage staff including practices such as gamification, which can be easily managed through your EPOS to encourage friendly competition and increase productivity. Other examples include employee apps (hosted on a device they pick up every hour of the day) which allows them to select availability, swap shifts with colleagues and view task lists, making their working life as easy and convenient as possible.

Engaged and content employees leads to better customer experiences in-store, increased productivity and increased profitability. People learn better when they’re comfortable with the delivery environment so speaking their language and using technology as a tool to engage will likely see better results.

If you would like to more about how technology can encourage engagement within the hospitality industry, you can contact PXtech on 01332 921 300 or info@pxtech.com.

In the world of IT it can be challenging to keep good people. The demand for skilled developers and other IT professionals is booming and more companies are upping their game and offering better perks and “à la mode” cultures to match those of the bigger companies such as Airbnb, Google and Facebook, to name but a few.

With this demand come the vultures, circling outside your building ready to dive on any employee that shows any sign of doubt or itchy feet. They use all tools available to them including things like LinkedIn or even trying to smart their way past the receptionist on the phone by coming up with some elaborate story of why they need to talk to so and so.

But when an employee does plan to jump ship, does throwing more money at them in the hope of retaining them actually work? Are you just delaying the inevitable? Is money really everyone’s first priority?

Obviously money makes the world go round and it’s always going to be high on our requirements, but it’s not what drives most people. A question worth asking yourself is “would you value an employee whose only motivation was money?”

Don’t get me wrong; money is high up there on our list. Many of us live to our means and become accustomed to a certain income, having mortgages, car loans, childcare outgoings, and if like me a healthy shoe obsession to keep funded.

However, when I look at my colleagues and those that apply to work for us, there are more important factors in keeping us satisfied and happy at work.

These are:

Job stability

Recently during interviews I’ve been asked more often about what customers we have, what’s our growth strategy and what are our long and short term goals. With Brexit driving further economic uncertainty employees are looking for stability.

Sadly, I’ve heard a number of times about employees taking a new job and then finding the situation quickly changes due to buy outs, new management and redundancies.

Additionally, particularly in smaller companies the rumour mill turns quickly. Ensuring employees have visibility of change and the goals and aspirations of the company will make sure you can control the information and message that gets put out there.

 Training and personal development

Structured personal development and training opportunities are a must for most career focused employees. Annual reviews are a great time to set clear objectives that meet the employee’s career aspirations but also follow the company’s strategic goals.

Employees can get caught up in the now and sometimes objectives get set aside so monthly reviews are a great opportunity to take the time to discuss how they are getting on, adjust objectives if their ambitions change direction and renew focus.

Having this focus and structure on personal development ensure that the employee feels they own their career progression and enables them to climb the ladder.

 Poetic licence

There is nothing a developer likes more than to be given free range to tinker with new technology and get the opportunity to do new things. Finding this opportunity for them to whet their creative appetite without high costs to the customer or high risks to us is a sure way of keeping developers happy. Well, that and lots of tea!

 Working environment

Ok, so I’m not saying you need to go installing a fireman’s pole or slide in your office for employees to get downstairs but having modern furnishing and an area for employees to get away from their desks really goes a long way to promoting employee well-being and productivity.

It’s also great to build relations within the team but sometimes team building exercises can feel forced and have little impact. Instead having an optional Friday lunch at the pub or activities such as games nights, climbing, laser quest or bowling have proven to have higher participation.

Participating in charity events such as ‘Giving Tuesday’, ‘Macmillan Coffee Mornings’ and maybe the local 10K race are also great opportunities to get everyone mingling whilst also raising money for charities. One of the favourites at PXtech is the Marie Curie Charity Quiz Night that always gets a large number of people putting their name in a hat to be part of the yearly team.

Most importantly don’t forget to celebrate events such as birthdays, marriages and births with a bit of cake!

In conclusion, never forget that while money is important, basing staff retention purely on wages gives competitors an easy target to beat when attempting to poach employees. By giving people multiple reasons to stay, woven into every facet of their work life, you can operate with much more confidence that employees are building a future not only for themselves, but as part of the company on a long-term basis.

Kerry Townsend, Director of Hospitality Business