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Whether you’re a restaurant owner or a manager, creating training for waitresses that prepares your servers for customer-facing activities is crucial to the overall success of your business. Clients expect to take part in effective and enjoyable interactions, but what that means varies in different contexts. How should servers position the cutlery on the table? What are the week’s special options? How is the fish prepared, to the minimum detail? Developing a comprehensive server training program for your business is essential if managers and owners want to ensure that their servers are knowledgeable and attentive to customer needs. Not every business can afford to send their employees to a waitress school such as ABC Server Training, but with a training program that is up to date with the latest trends in learning and development, managers can train their employees seamlessly and effectively in just a few clicks, and use their content any number of times. In this article, you will find a downloadable template for a comprehensive server training program that you can and should adapt to your business’s particular needs. 

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Why microlearning is the best option for server training 

Training for waitresses in food and beverage businesses can be very impractical. Who will be able to stop their own work to show the new employee what to do and how to behave? Do we have enough time to dispense not one but two employees? That’s why microlearning is the best option for server training – better than sending your employees to a waitress school. Microlearning involves delivering content in small, digestible bits that are usually less than 5 minutes long. Microlearning works because it’s a form of active learning, which is twice as effective as traditional teaching methods (for example, sitting in a lecture about food safety). Here are some other advantages of microlearning:

  • Train staff more affordably and effectively

Microlearning is engaging, which saves managers and owners money and time in employee training. Bite-sized contents in the style of social media are what your workforce will retain most easily. Onboarding time, for example, falls by 67% on average.

  • Seamless server training that works

Sign-ins and downloads can create barriers that prevent your employees from successfully accessing their training programs when they need or want to. Integrating with the channels your workforce already uses to communicate such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp or Microsoft Teams allows for less friction. Less friction means more engagement and more engagement means greater retention. In this way, employees always have training content within reach should they need a quick refresher on the job’s rules and best practices.

  • Training for waitresses of all ages

Gen Z and millennials are already a large part of the food & beverage workforce so using a method that works for them is fundamental. In fact, 75% of the US workforce in 2020 was made of Gen Z and millennials.

What are the Fundamentals of Effective Server Training?

Designing high-quality content in-house, in an affordable manner, can sound impossible to some restaurant managers and owners. Professional training is changing, but the fundamental pillars of an effective professional learning and development experience remain the same. The secret is to focus on engagement rather than complexity. Here’s a few things to keep in mind when creating a comprehensive training program that attends to all of your needs, flows smoothly from end to end, and achieves quick results:

  • Be clear about goals, objectives, expectations and resources

What are your business’s basic policies, expectations, and rules? What should your workforce know, and what do you hope to teach them as they onboard the team? Having clear definitions of responsibilities and the skills and knowledge needed to accomplish them is fundamental so your team achieves maximum cohesion and effectiveness. 

  • Ensure that learning is continuous

A comprehensive server training program should emphasize the importance of continuous learning and development. Be sure to make all of the information available to your employees at all times with a digital platform accessible on demand. Don’t forget to create opportunities for trainees to provide feedback on their experiences and suggest improvements to the training program.

  • Measure results and make improvements 

It is very important to evaluate the performance of your training – and of your employees. Quizzes and summary cards help you measure the effectiveness of your content retention. Track results and fine-tune your waitress training program with Bites until it is functioning at its best. Some tools have AI-powered interactive dashboards that provide valuable insights for progress evaluation. With smart analytics, you can collect data, evaluate progress, and drill down into performance statistics.

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