Human Resources Blog

“Save time and money, and get peace-of-mind.”

Back when you started a restaurant, you wanted to create a place known for clean plates and smiling faces. You set out to create dishes that would attract flocks of people and customer’s who’d line up hours in advance.

But right now, you’re stressed out, working extra hours, and struggling to get out from behind a computer screen.

Hours of your day get lost in excel sheets, paperwork, and tracking due dates…

You put up with this extra work because you don’t know what else to do. You need employees, so if you must, then the extra human resources and managing employees work are the costs to you.

What Most Owner’s Don’t Understand About The Restaurant Industry

The best restaurateurs start their businesses with a passion to make customers happy by creating delightful dishes. When restaurateurs are good at their jobs, their businesses get busy.

That’s when things get complicated.

Everyone knows the restaurant industry is tough. But what ends up knocking most owners and businesses down are the mind-boggling logistics surrounding employees.

When you have employees, you have to worry about:

• Recruiting
• Background checks and I-9s
• Onboarding and training
• Payroll
• Workplace safety and workers compensation claims
• Discipline and termination
• Unemployment insurance and unemployment claims
• Workers compensation
• Health insurance and other benefits
• Regulatory compliance and government-mandated reporting

3 Paths to Success

In order to grow their restaurants and business, successful owners outsource their payroll service quickly. After that owner’s don’t always know how to deal with all those other employee-related issues.

After 15+ years working with restaurateurs, we discovered three paths to success for most restaurateurs

• 3 Solutions
• The DIY Solution
  • Some owner’s want to navigate the HR minefields on their own. This is a bold option. But you can do it. On this path, you’ll want some guidance.
    • See Our Checklist
• The Outsourcer Solution
  • Lots of restaurant owners want to create dishes and fun environments. So, they choose some of their HR burdens to offload to administrative service organizations like ours.
    • Learn More
• The All-in-One Solution
  • Owners who want to erase HR issues usually work with professional employer organizations like Delta. These restaurateurs enjoy bigger cost savings, lower turnover rates, and faster growth rates.
    • Learn More

The DIY HR Solution

Only for the bold

Until you have multiple locations and hundreds of employees, you probably can’t justify a dedicated human resources (HR) staff. If you choose to handle HR on your own, a great place to start is the Employee Handbook

Here’s a quick guide many small, successful restaurants use to create an Employee Handbook.

We recommend getting some legal aid. This guide was compiled from best practices, but it is certainly not extensive.  So, we hope you’ll keep researching and stay up-to-date.

Lastly, you may have already done this, but if not, seriously consider using a payroll processing service.

Small business owners almost always outsource this process—often to their accountant.

Any payroll processing service can calculate pay and deductions, print paychecks, handle direct deposits, file payroll tax withholdings, prepare various compliance reports, and generate annual W-2s. They may even be able to handle garnishments and Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) reporting.

But they can’t provide day-to-day HR support, provide insurance, or administer your employee benefit programs.

Great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people.

– Steve Jobs

The Outsourcing Solution

For those wanting to eliminate some headaches

When you are tired of headaches or looking to spend more of your time growing your business, then hiring out some or all of your HR functions is a simple and effective strategy.

Many business owners don’t know if their ready to hand over all of their HR processes to someone. And then, some owners are comfortable navigating a couple HR complexities on their own.

Logistically, the HR services are outsourced to an Administrative Service Organization (ASO). Imagine an HR services Menu. With this solution, you choose services a la carte. You can craft your HR experience by choosing specific functions.

For instance, for Bizzuka and their owner John Munsell, Delta put a team of HR experts behind the scenes, handled hiring, onboarding, job descriptions, employee handbooks, and payroll while John implemented a new business model that required lots of new hires

With this solution, you can get creative and flexible with your HR. But even more so at your restaurant. When you begin to eliminate HR stressors, you get more time back, so you can do the work you love again.

Can you imagine what you could if you removed that HR stress altogether.

The All-in-One Solution

For owners looking to offer better benefits and erase HR headaches

This solution is by far the simplest and easiest solution for most business owners. If you want to grow your business, cut turnover rates, and gain stability, then outsourcing all of your HR services to a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) is the right solution.

What exactly is a PEO

PEOs are Professional Employer Organizations. They are similar to ASOs.

Many of our customer’s think of Delta and our PEO as stagehands behind the scenes of a Broadway play.

Any good PEO’s team handles all the technical aspects of the play – scenery, lighting, costumes, props. Meanwhile, on center stage, you are the star who makes the entire production a success. 

DELTA’S RISK MANAGER HAS SAVED US HUGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY WITH ITS CLAIMS ADMINISTRATION AND ACCIDENT PREVENTION.

VooDoo Barbeque

Our team provided quick, cost-saving advice. Now, they trust all of their HR services to our team and provide top-notch benefit packages to their employees to retain talent.

Let’s make this simple

Our customers think of the PEO like a strong rope—hang with us.

Strong ropes are made of many cords. One cord snaps easily, but, bundled with hundreds of others, the little cords hold incredible weights.

In the same way, PEOs unify small businesses under one shared tax ID number.

This is known as a co-employment relationship.

Here’s Why Co-Employment Matters:

It Creates the Solution with all the Benefits

To be clear:

• The PEO provides traditional HR functions.
• Co-employment model transfers key responsibilities such as employee-related risk and compliance to the PEO.
• Meanwhile, you maintain complete control of your employees and daily operations—without any of the risks and liabilities.

Co-employment treats all of a PEO’s client employees as a single large pool, providing advantages normally available only to very large companies:

• Better health insurance plans and lower rates
• Lower worker compensation and unemployment insurance rates
• Big-company benefits like 401k plans and Health Savings Accounts (HSA)

How All of This Affects a Business

According to a 2014 study by noted economists Laurie Bassi and Dan McMurrer, small businesses that rely on PEOs:

• Grow 7% to 9% faster
• Have 10% to 14% lower turnover
• Are 50% less likely to go out of business

Because the PEO becomes the employer of record, it assumes responsibility for:

• On-time submissions for payroll taxes and reports
• Safety program training, inspection, and risk management
• Mandated regulatory reporting and compliance
• Employee disciplinary actions and terminations
• Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA) reporting
• Wrongful termination and other employee-related lawsuits

Basically, you give up all of the most frustrating parts of business, so you can do more of what you love.

Your Next Step

If you need help with HR or want to offload HR frustrations, give us a call.

Delta Administrative Services can reduce the stress of managing employees, offload your human resources and reporting, allow you to offer a great benefits package, and let you get back to what you do best – creating clean plates and smiling faces.

So, take the next step and call (800) 828-6130 or email us (info@deltapeo.com). Talk to our Team and see how Delta can reduce your employee management and human resources workload. You’ll be glad you did.