The Nation’s Restaurant News, today published an article on a recent survey to gauge the state of training in the restaurant industry.

The sample pool was 58 corporate trainers, but represented companies that had between 200 and 65,000 employees; 43 per cent of the trainers were from casual-dining chains.

Jim Sullivan, chief executive of Sullivision, and the Council of Hotel and Restaurant Trainers, who approached Purdue researchers for help with the survey, was quoted as saying “Other industries, such as retail, automotive and manufacturing collectively track organizational learning and ‘best practices’ in training across companies, but the foodservice industry does not."

The study findings show that despite the push to incorporate more technology into training, 93 per cent of respondents believe one-on-one training is the best training method.

Respondents also indicated that better employee selection and hiring has a positive impact on training. One of the statements most respondents agreed with was, “Our HR strategy/training is most effective when we hire for attitude and train for skill.”

And, while a majority of respondents indicated that their companies were spending more on training than in the previous year, the annual training budget was a mean of $1.6 million, and a mean of 2.5 per cent of total sales; about 1/2 of what the automotive and retail industry spend.