How putting your staff first makes you money

When times are tough, investment in your staff tends to be the first thing a hospitality business cuts. The brilliant Ella de Beer of Electric Mayonnaise knows that we've got that entirely the wrong way round, and she has New York legend Danny Meyer on her side. He ranks his own team first and his investors fifth, which might seem like a recipe for disaster - but his phenomenal success tells a different story.  In his lauded book Setting The Table, he explains "I staunchly believe that standing conventional business priorities on their head ultimately leads to even greater, more enduring financial success." Put more simply in his interview on the Rethinking podcast: "The reason that we put investors fifth is not because we want to make less money, it's because we want to make more money." If that resonates, or piques your curiosity, read on. Because we've got the figures to back it up.

We have all signed our 'VAT's the Problem' campaign and we are all awaiting Andy Burnham's budget in the hope that the Year of the Fire Horse can be somewhat less fiery.

It's the end of the month and the flash P&L is on your desk. Payroll's up again (thanks SSP, NIC etc), business rates haven't really gone anywhere and somewhere on that spreadsheet is a line for training and development, and it is, without fail, the easiest one to cut. Nobody notices a missed workshop the way they notice a missed delivery.

The Mechanism

That instinct is understandable. Danny Meyer built his business philosophy around a single, deliberately ordered list. He called it enlightened hospitality: employees first, then guests, then community, then suppliers, then investors. In that order, always.

It reads like a nice sentiment for a mission statement. It isn't. It's a mechanism. Meyer's argument is that if you take care of your team properly — genuinely, not performatively — that care doesn't stay with them. It moves. Well looked-after employees look after guests. Guests who feel looked after come back, and tell their friends. A community that trusts you sends you its people. Suppliers who are treated fairly go further for you. And investors, who come last on the list, end up doing best of all, because everything above them is working.

We have heard this so often that we are mostly deaf to it now, but in reality, we see it daily and we don't connect the dots. That restaurant where the service is robotic, charmless and entirely forgettable is not likely to have you singing its praises or returning in a hurry. But you know the other one too — the place where someone remembers how you take your coffee, or remembers your dog’s name. That isn't charm. It's training, dressed up as personality.

Actions over Words

It's easy to talk about putting employees first in the abstract — better pay, better culture, somewhere to change and sit down and have their break — but these are not the things that instil a sense of being cared for, of genuine curiosity, engagement and investment. Training is where that principle actually gets tested, because it costs something real: time, money, a shift covered while someone's in a workshop instead of on the floor.

That's precisely why it matters so much. Anyone can put "we value our people" on a careers page. Fewer businesses will pay someone to sit in on a training session and learn how a rota actually gets built, or send a supervisor through a proper leadership programme instead of promoting the person who's been there longest and runs a good shift, then hoping for the best.

Training is the version of "employees first" that shows up in the budget, not just the brand voice.

You Pay Anyway

And it's worth being honest about what happens when it doesn't show up. Untrained managers make worse rota decisions, handle difficult conversations badly, and burn themselves or others out fast — which is exactly the kind of disruptive absence and turnover that's hardest for a stretched team to absorb. You end up paying for the lack of training anyway. It just shows up as agency cover, exit interviews and recruitment costs instead of a line marked "L&D."

Training doesn't eliminate turnover. But it consistently shows up as one of the strongest levers against it, because people tend to leave jobs where they feel stuck, not jobs where they feel like they're growing. A team member who's being invested in has a reason to stay through a hard trading period that a pay rise alone won't always buy you.

The Maths

Meyer never published a spreadsheet for this. Gallup did. Business units in the top quartile for employee engagement see 23% higher profitability than those at the bottom, 18% higher productivity and 10% higher customer loyalty. They also see 78% less absenteeism. And in the kind of higher-turnover environment hospitality knows all too well, that same top-quartile engagement is tied to 21% lower staff turnover — increasing to 51% lower in workplaces that already retain people well. Development is one of the specific things Gallup points to as actually driving that engagement, alongside the basics of being told clearly what's expected of you and having what you need to do your job. Not your birthday off. Not the staff food. Development.

The businesses seeing that 23% profitability gap aren't spending more on marketing or shaving their margins tighter. They're spending more on their people, in the specific and unglamorous form of training, and getting the guests, the community, the suppliers and eventually the investors that Meyer's order promises in return.

Nobody needs telling that hospitality budgets are stretched thin right now — anyone reading this is living it. But the businesses we see thriving are those that really have their people front and centre, that deliver service that is thoughtful, personal and engaging because the server feels thought about and engaged.

Employees first. Everyone else follows.

If Ella has persuaded you to give that line in the budget a second look, the Countertalk Academy is where we'd suggest you spend it. We built our training hand-in-hand with Ella, of hospitality training experts Electric Mayonnaise, as five standalone modules. Each one is a single, stand-alone four-hour session, in person and at £250 a head, so that you can send the right person to the right one without upending the rota or the budget.

Each one is there to return something particular to the business:

• Reading and Controlling a P&L makes for team leaders who can interrogate the figures - and act on them.
• Leading with Clarity teaches the feedback and communication that keep a team pulling in the same direction. 
• HR for Team Leaders covers the difficult conversations and the employment law essentials, protecting and strengthening the business and the team culture.
• Building a Team That Builds the Business shows managers how to develop and keep their people, which means lower turnover, stronger performance and a team that feels ownership of the numbers it influences.

So please, have a look at the modules and this term's date. Make the most of your incredible team and reap the rewards during the upcoming festive period.