Human Resources and Staffing: Life Cycle and Compliance
Staffing is both a cost and a risk
Human resources in catering spans the full employee life cycle: job analysis and descriptions, recruiting, selection, onboarding, training, scheduling, performance management, progressive discipline, and separation. Layer on compliance: FLSA exempt versus non-exempt status, overtime, tip credit and tip pooling rules, child labor restrictions, I-9 verification, anti-discrimination and anti-harassment obligations, and state-specific meal and rest break requirements.
Traps: treating a regular server as an independent contractor (misclassification penalties are severe); assuming "at-will" permits any termination (it does not permit discrimination or retaliation); forgetting that labor burden adds roughly 20–35% over base wage; and building schedules without linking labor hours to forecast volume or sales per labor hour.
Worked example. A banquet operation has 50 hourly employees and 40% annual turnover, or about 20 replacements. If replacement cost is conservatively 25% of a $32,000 annual wage ($8,000), turnover costs roughly 20 × $8,000 = $160,000 per year - frequently more than a dedicated recruiter and structured training program would cost.
Rule of thumb: schedule to sales per labor hour, coach in the moment, and document in writing before formal discipline - progressive discipline is progressive documentation.