Report: Benefits and Retention in the Food Industry

This report delves into the critical issue of high employee turnover within the food industry, analyzing the benefits that can be implemented to improve retention rates. It highlights the importance of health insurance, paid time off, and free meals as immediate benefits. The report emphasizes the significance of recognizing employee loyalty through rewards and acknowledging achievements, including bonuses and flexible shift timings. It also stresses the value of team-building activities and professional development opportunities, such as online learning platforms, to enhance employee skills and career growth. Furthermore, the report discusses the need for flexible leave policies and provides a structured approach to designing and managing employee benefit schemes, including identifying organizational objectives, conducting need assessments, designing benefit plans, communicating these plans, and evaluating their effectiveness over time. The conclusion underscores the role of employee benefits in fostering a productive and satisfied workforce, ultimately contributing to the overall success of food industry businesses.

Running Head: THE FOOD INDUSTRY
Benefits that should be made available to Food Industry Employees:
The industry research and analysis data very evidently proves that employee turnover rates are
quite high in the food industry. Therefore, the higher management needs to certain core benefits
that should be extended to the employees pertaining to this sector to reduce the wastage of time
and resources spent in recruiting, hiring ad retention of the employees. In the year 2017, food
industry witnessed that the average tenure of maximum employees was only one month and 26
days (Jehanzeb, Hamid, & Rasheed, 2015), thus such a high employee turnover suggests
necessary reforms that must be ensure to bring development in this industry. Thus this acute
problem of demand and supply of labor in the food and beverage industry needs to address in the
most important and strategic manner. Today retaining employees require the application of more
non-traditional workplace benefit schemes than choosing the regular ones. Thus the most
obvious benefits that should be made available to food industry employees are: Health
Insurance benefit. This is required for the employees of every sectors present in the Food
industry that is be it a chef, a dietician, or someone of managerial level (Shields, et al. 2015).
Though there are no such mandate federal or state laws for the extension of health-related
benefits to the employees of food industry sector but such security benefits is always beneficial
in attracting and retaining employees in the longer run. Employees belonging to food industry
sector are generally required to work on statutory holidays like New Year’s Day, Christmas day,
Good Friday and many more. Thus the management must ensure that the employees receive
holidays on alternate days as well as must be entitled to receive free meals at least on these
occasions. Apart from these, dedicated employees or staffs must be rewarded with an paid
annual vacation, as it is believed that these help boost employee’s moral and better the
productivity of the employees. These small gestures go a long way in recognizing the benefits of

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the employees and making them feel that their involvement with the organization is greatly
valued. Moreover it has been observed that more than 85% of the unused restaurant food land up
in the trash, thus feeding it instead to the employees is not only a humble gesture of the
organization towards its employees but also ensure proper waste management strategy (Thi,
Kumar & Lin, 2015). Rewarding the employees loyalty is often found missing in the
organizational cultural which largely impacts the employee turnover rate. For instance
maintaining and remembering the birthdays of the employee’s and celebrating it in the
organization. Other major and minor employee achievements must also be recognized and
rewarded either through monetary or non-monetary benefits (Tessema, Ready & Embaye, 2013).
It has been observed that cash bonuses have been a great motivational tool for employees to
reduce employee turnover and efficiently manage employees who tend to be less punctual or
pone to the habit of taking uninformed leaves and seem less interested towards maintain the
required productivity. Another important consideration regarding this profession that the
employers must consider is the shift durations and the shift timings. The employers must
provide clear notices regarding the start and end time of shifts for the employees and also other
specific details regarding when the meal break can be allotted to the employees (Bryant & Allen,
2013). Presence of other provisions like split shifts helps in increasing the working flexibility if
employees and altogether better manage the wok stress and remain productive as well.
Specifically if restaurants are considered, on any occasion or certain specific days there is a lot of
rush and customers, thus in this case there might be a requirement to make changes in the shift
time of employees. In that case the employees must be informed beforehand, and for any
overtime the employee must be paid without much delay. Even during such days, the employees
are entitled to receive meal breaks for at least half an hour after working for five hours straight.

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The organizations present in the food industry must lend equal focus on team building activities
as it has been observed that employees spend more than 90,000 hours in the working space in
their whole life time (Aga, D.Noorderhaven & Vallejo, 2016). Thus it is very important to
encourage team building activities which might include a team meal for experimenting the new
menu and asking suggestions from the staffs for bringing improvement in the same. Outdoor
events which require team participation like rock-climbing or bowling are great ways of building
up the team spirit and help employees coordinate and communicate with each other more openly.
Another critically significant factor which must be emphasized by the employees of the food
industry is assuring professional development of the staffs to ensure that the skills and
expertise of the employees’ are nurtured and developed with the best possible training heads and
receive proper guidance under the industry experts. Maximum employee turnover has been
associated with the extreme lack of professional growth opportunity within this sector. Smart
learning techniques must be observed by the firms to help the employees build their professional
profile. Therefore online learning platforms like Skillshare or Lynda can be chosen as
appropriate platforms for sharpening the creative and business skills of employees. Skill shortage
has been a significant challenge in the food industry, which in turn is directly affecting the
employment rate in this industry sector. Thus the employees must enjoy the benefit of being
exposed to industry specific learning to help expertise on their available skills and talents. Apart
from work place training benefits and facilities the employers are required to recognize and
grant leaves to employees on event of special requirements to ensue flexibility of work place
operations. These leaves include pregnancy leaves, parental leaves, family responsibility
leave and bereavement leave (Dobre, 2013). Though theses leaves are unpaid but are very
necessary for the welfare concerns of individual employees of the organization.

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These benefits needs to be ensured to the employees of the food industry not just to help
the companies reduce their employee turnover raters but overall create a team of satisfied and
happy staffs,, who would definitely ensure better productivity for the firm. Designing and
managing employee benefit schemes is undoubtedly a costly endeavor for any employee. Thus it
requires proper analysis and planning which in turn includes few steps like:
Identifying the organization’s benefit objective and total budget available to finance these
initiatives. The benefits objectives must completely align with the overall mission and vision of
the company and equally determine how much budget has been allocated for the same. The
second step is to conduct a need assessment survey among the existing employees regarding
their expectations from the organization which would be beneficial for the firm to prepare its
policies. This in turn increases the level of employee participation as well as maximizes
satisfaction of the employees towards the organization. Based on the finding from the analysis
and survey a benefits plan program is designed. The next step in the process is to
communicate these benefit plans to the employee for harnessing their level of acceptance
towards the policies and the final step to ensure the success of the process is evaluating these
policies in specific intervals (Jehanzeb & Bashir, 2013) to see how effective it stands in the
changing market scenario along with the changing demands and expectation of the employees.
There has been several argument and counter arguments regarding why employers should
extend benefits to their employees particularly if the concentration is laid of the food industry. It
is one of the primary way of ensuring personal and professional success of the employees and
create a more productive more environment as a whole.

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References:
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success: The mediating role of team-building. International Journal of Project
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Bryant, P. C., & Allen, D. G. (2013). Compensation, benefits and employee turnover: HR
strategies for retaining top talent. Compensation & Benefits Review, 45(3), 171-175.
Dobre, O. I. (2013). Employee motivation and organizational performance. Review of applied
socio-economic research, 5(1).
Jehanzeb, K., & Bashir, N. A. (2013). Training and development program and its benefits to
employee and organization: A conceptual study. European Journal of business and
management, 5(2).
Jehanzeb, K., Hamid, A. B. A., & Rasheed, A. (2015). What is the role of training and job
satisfaction on turnover intentions?. International Business Research, 8(3), 208.
Shields, J., Brown, M., Kaine, S., Dolle-Samuel, C., North-Samardzic, A., McLean, P., ... &
Plimmer, G. (2015). Managing employee performance & reward: Concepts, practices,
strategies. Cambridge University Press.

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Tessema, M. T., Ready, K. J., & Embaye, A. B. (2013). The effects of employee recognition,
pay, and benefits on job satisfaction: cross country evidence. Journal of Business and
Economics, 4(1), 1-12.
Thi, N. B. D., Kumar, G., & Lin, C. Y. (2015). An overview of food waste management in
developing countries: Current status and future perspective. Journal of environmental
management, 157, 220-229.