Hiring and retaining quality employees is one of the biggest challenges today's restaurant operators face.
At the 2007 Fast Casual Executive Summit, Sept. 18-19 at the Hotel Palomar in Dallas, "Recruiting & Retaining Passionate People" will be one of four collaboratives presented by industry insiders.
In the collaborative, scheduled to take place from 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Sept. 19, HR expert Rudy Miick will review findings from the 2007 Fast Casual Benchmark Study and will explore how the HR environment is defined in the fast-casual segment.
"Retention is more about me and my leaders than it is about who seems to be in the marketplace applying for a job," Miick said in the Fast Casual special report, "Restaurant Hiring and Retention: How to Recruit, Train and Keep the Best Employees." "The counter-intuitive is true: If you're treating your people right, training, coaching, celebrating, making it harder to get a job at your restaurant is more effective than making it easier."
Miick hopes to equip attendees with an arsenal of tools that will help companies long after the event has ended.
When people walk away from his discussion, "they'll leave with ideas, they'll leave with tools, they'll leave motivated and inspired to create high retention and high performance, especially in an environment where we often hear there's no loyalty," Miick said.
The invitation-only Fast Casual Summit is designed to create an atmosphere of openly sharing experiences, talents and ideas, said Paul Barron, event chairman and publisher of Fast Casual magazine.
"We're focusing on a very elite group of executives, entrepreneurs and restaurateurs that have essentially built brands from scratch," he said. "It's a mindset that is open to sharing."
The Summit will begin at noon Sept. 18 with a luncheon and keynote address given by Tim Pulido, CEO of Shakey's USA.
Miick's discussion will be followed by "New frontiers in franchising and expanding your brand," given by Pattye Moore, co-founder of Instincts LLC.
