Restaurant Industry: 2014 Minimum Wage Increases

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If you’re within the restaurant or food services industry, you may utilize a handful of minimum wage workers. Were you aware of the various state changes, effective January 1, 2014? The following states are experiencing an increase; don’t forget to update your payroll!

 

STATE CURRENT MINIMUM WAGE NEW MININUM WAGE EFFECTIVE JAN 1, 2014
Arizona $7.80/Hour $7.90/Hour
Connecticut $8.25/Hour $8.70/Hour
Florida $7.79/Hour $7.93/Hour
Missouri $7.35/Hour $7.50/Hour
Montana $7.80/Hour $7.90/Hour
New Jersey $7.25/Hour $8.25/Hour
Ohio $7.85/Hour $7.95/Hour (for restaurants with annual gross receipts in excess of $292,000)
Oregon $8.95/Hour $9.10/Hour
Rhode Island $7.75/Hour $8.00/Hour
Vermont $8.60/Hour $8.73/Hour
Washington $9.19/Hour $9.32/Hour

 

Also, effective July 1, 2014: California will experience a state increase to $9.00/Hour. The current minimum wage is $8.00/Hour.

For additional restaurant resources, visit our “HR Solutions for the Restaurant Industry” section. Contact our team at Employer Solutions Plus if you have any questions: 727-698-6207.

Conducting Employee Training at a Franchise

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Your grand opening is weeks away and employee training is underway. Whether you’re a restaurant franchisee, a hotel franchisee or even a small coffee shop, your employees need to get up to speed so that your location’s brand and experience is in line with the established corporate image.

Corporate headquarters and parent companies often provide managers and employees with training and guidelines on the following:

  • How to Best Sell Products and Services
  • The Ideal Customer Experience
  • Cleanliness and Facility Upkeep
  • Uniforms and Image
  • Marketing

But, as a separate franchisee location, your employees work for you each day – not corporate. It is for this reason that it’s important to ensure that you remain in compliance by providing adequate training and resources surrounding the following:

  • New Hire Training
  • Discrimination and Harassment Prevention
  • Workplace Conflict and Violence Prevention
  • Wage & Hour Practices (Employees need to know how to properly record hours, and supervisors need adequate training)
  • Ethics
  • Occupational Safety and Health (You may not think you have a “dangerous” workplace, but OSHA has specific standards and employee training requirements)

Providing the above-mentioned training could be the difference between winning or losing an employee claim in the future. Did you provide the employee with everything they needed to succeed? Training also helps prevent workplace accidents. Did you thoroughly instruct the employee on how to operate machinery, handle tools, or lift large objects?

Compliance aside, the best employees are always learning and looking to improve. Partnerships with PEOs not only bring about skilled experts to conduct on-site or virtual classroom training to keep your workplace in compliance, but can assist in a variety of training to help improve teamwork and leadership too.

To learn more about the PEO relationship as it relates to employee training, contact Employer Solutions Plus.

Opening a Franchise Location – Your HR Checklist

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You’re a new franchisee – congratulations! Among the many positive things going on at this moment, is the sense of security, knowing that you’ve invested in a proven template for business and an established brand.

Beyond your brand, you may also have established guidelines for customer service, product offerings, and operations. But, wait a minute – did anyone mention HR?! Corporations don’t always provide new franchisees with best practices and how-to’s for HR and employee management – that may be the one area of business you’ll need to explore on your own.

Don’t panic. Fortunately for you and your employees there are plenty of resources available, including the team at Employer Solutions Plus who are willing to help you navigate “everything HR.”

Let’s review 10 areas of HR that every business owner should be up to speed on:

  1. Hiring & Firing: Do you know where to recruit the best employees? How to retain them? How do you appropriately terminate an employee while staying in compliance?
  2. Employee Training: Will you provide on-site training or virtual classroom training? What do employees need to be adequately trained on?
  3. Employee Handbooks: Your Company’s employee handbook serves as an important communication tool between you and your employees. A handbook sets forth your expectations for your employees, and lets new hires know what they should expect too! Who will write your handbook? Who will keep it up to date?
  4. Benefits: Robust benefits packages help make you an employer of choice, and help retain your top talent!
  5. Compliance: There are hundreds upon hundreds of pages of fine print surrounding employment law and regulation. Who will ensure your workplace stays in compliance at all times?
  6. Payroll: Whether you’re a small, medium or large business, efficient and accurate payroll processing services keep your business obstacle-free and promote better cash flow.
  7. Tax filings: Withholding, FICA, Federal & State Unemployment … Do you have a designated tax person or is your payroll/office manager managing it all?
  8. Risk Management: Accidents happen, and when they do, you’ll want to make sure that you have a great workers compensation policy.
  9. Communication: Communicating with employees isn’t always easy. Are you prepared to conduct interviews, employee reviews, training and exit interviews?
  10. Wages, Hours, and Technology: Tracking workers’ hours, and calculating time and a half is a lot easier when you’ve got technology on your side!

For some franchisees, a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) makes perfect sense. They’re able to bundle the 10 aforementioned HR responsibilities under one cost effective umbrella. For others, a PEO may not be the perfect solution. Corporate may already offer you resources for payroll and taxes, but may not be able to assist you in the other 8 areas. For these particular clients, partnering up with a company that represents multiple providers in each product category will allow you the flexibility to customize a cost effective solution that meets your individual needs.

For more information on PEO services, or customized HR support packages, contact Employer Solutions Plus.

Outsourced HR for Restaurant Franchises

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You’re the owner of a successful restaurant franchise, with multiple locations operating in various states. You’ve mastered and streamlined the following processes:

· Operating Expenses

· Inventory & Logistics

· Marketing

· The Menu

· Customer Experience

· Atmosphere

When someone invests in your franchise, they’ve got a solid foundation for success. But wouldn’t it be nice to build all of the backend headaches and behind the scenes administration into your franchise model, to further ensure success?

Eliminating HR headaches and hurdles makes your franchise model and business solutions much more attractive to new investors looking to open a restaurant of their own.

First step, is partnering directly with a PEO or a business partner that represents the “best of” the most critical services a restaurant owner requires to make informed decisions regarding PEOs, Payroll Only Solutions, Health Insurance Options / Employee Benefits and Ancillary Benefit Programs.

Here’s why you need to do this:

Managing restaurant employees is a dangerous and costly proposition. There are literally hundreds of employment laws and regulations in which a business owner needs to comply. Failure to comply could result in a lawsuit big enough to shut down an entire location.

More restaurants are finding it advantageous (and profitable) to outsource “everything HR” to professionals which result in the following: relief from the burden of employment administration, improved risk management, improved employment practices, streamlined hiring and firing processes, and better benefits packages.

By partnering with a PEO to manage your corporate locations, you’ll have established a relationship that can be passed along or recommended to each new franchisee.

An alternative to outsourcing “everything HR” to a PEO is to find an HR specialist, such as Employer Solutions Plus, that is an expert in HR, payroll, benefits and risk management… and can quickly piece together the perfect HR package.
An HR specialist will also let you know if a PEO is your best (and most cost-effective) option.

Employer Solutions Plus workplace solutions allow your restaurant(s) to focus on what it does best … Let us handle the rest by calling us today!

Benefits: How Small Franchise Locations Gain Large-Company Purchasing Power

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Franchising is an attractive way of doing business, there’s no doubt about it. Rather than relying on a new brand or concept to “take off,” franchisees utilize corporate image and power as a tool to expand their market share more rapidly and less expensively.

With a brand that’s already recognized, franchise owners reap many benefits when it comes to hiring and marketing services and sometimes even an overall business model and/or growth plan. It’s already been established, and that certainly beats starting from scratch!

However, franchisees could face some challenges when it comes to: employee benefits. While you may be part of a very large “corporate image,” you may not be part of a corporate policy for vendor services such as health insurance. Large companies tend to get more attractive (and cost-effective) health insurance options because there are hundreds, sometimes thousands, of employees on their policy. You may only be a small employer but realize the importance of offering health insurance benefits to attract and retain quality employees.

So, where does this leave you? A great solution is a Professional Employer Organization (PEO). PEOs present purchasing power for health insurance due to the overall population size of their employee base. They pool employees from numerous client companies on to a single company policy (the PEO’s policy) through the co-employment relationship.

Employer Solutions Plus has established partnerships with many national PEOs who understand the unique needs of a franchise owner. With a PEO, clients gain better service, better pricing, and more options – beyond health insurance and into payroll processing, employee administration and more!

If you are with corporate… Providing health insurance options (such as master group health) to new franchisees makes your business model and franchising set-up much more attractive. You help new locations get off to the right start by keeping their vendor expenses as low as possible. Suddenly, “corporate benefits” is added alongside the value of a franchisee’s corporate image … further ensuring their success!

If you are an individual franchisee… If corporate doesn’t currently offer PEO or health insurance options, give Employer Solutions Plus a call to discuss your employee benefits. We work with many PEOs interested in providing you with economical options for health insurance!

Click here to reach us!