FEBRUARY 2000

Consider The Source

By Barry Gabrielson, Sr. Analyst, People Report™

During our recent fall People Report™ conferences, we were very pleased to be able to present our members with human resource benchmarks and trends based on three plus years of tracking and analyzing over 23,000 newly hired and/or terminated managers. People Report™ now tracks over 3,800 units, 17,400 incumbent managers, and 275,953 unit level employees in the foodservice industry. Of the 31 member companies tracked by People Report™, over half are also CHART members.

One of our major findings is the profound impact of sourcing strategies on both workforce retention and demographics. As companies continue to focus on the challenges of today’s hot labor market, retaining newly hired managers has become as critical an issue as how to recruit them initially. People Report™ analysis shows that one of the keys to longer tenure relates directly to the original source of hire. Additionally, sourcing strategies appear to have significant impact on workforce diversity, another key human resource issue facing business today.

Managers promoted from within stay on the job as managers and average of 2.55 years. This is 1.17 years longer than those hired externally, who average a brief 1.38 years tenure. Managers hired through recruiting agencies stayed the shortest period of time at 1.07 years. Of those hired externally, advertisements yielded the highest tenures with an average of 1.50 years.

Internally promoted managers have greater gender diversity than those hired externally. While women make up about 25% of all management hires, the percentage of managers promoted internally increases to 35%, while their numbers decrease to less than 20% of external sources like career fairs and agencies. College recruiting is the only external source where women represent more than one quarter of the hires (33%).

The racial diversity of hires, when examined by source also shows some striking differences. Again, internally promoted mangers are more racially diverse than those hired externally, and this is particularly true for Hispanic Americans. However, certain external sources like career fairs and college recruiting, while less frequently used, result in significantly higher numbers of African American managers.

While very preliminary as a source, Internet hires tracked to date by People Report™ are predominately white males, with the exception of higher than average percentage of Asian

American hires. As companies seek to maximize the speed and cost efficiencies of Internet recruitment, they should also monitor the demographics of this source and strategize and plan accordingly. A final note, while People Report™ tracks tenure data on Internet hires, it is too early to tell how long these new managers will stay.