A relationship between a restaurant and a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) is a logical match for the same reasons most businesses benefit from a partnership with a PEO. Group Health Insurance, Workers’ Compensation Insurance and Human Resource Management issues are at an all time high. Outsourcing volatile components of your business makes sense, particularly in the specialized business world we currently live in.

The more important question is why wouldn’t a restaurant want to partner with a PEO?

Does a restaurant have less exposure in Safety and OSHA compliance?
Quite the opposite, due to food handling and preparation, restaurants have to comply with more regulations and compliance issues than ninety percent of the general business population.

Does a restaurant have fewer State and Federal Tax regulations?
The hassles of tip accounting and reporting, extreme turnover, and minimum wage compliance, make restaurants high maintenance when it comes to payroll tracking and reporting. Most owners/managers must take valuable time away from their core responsibilities to oversee payroll, or even worse overpay an accountant to process it for them.

Is a restaurant’s workforce less likely to need Human Resource support?
Lets see….predominately young males and females working together late into the night. This environment has sexual harassment and hostile work environment written all over it. A PEO is uniquely suited to train and develop managers, as well as instituting proactive procedures for dealing with problems as they occur.

Is the business generally slow in nature?
Restaurant managers are some of the busiest people in business. They are constantly juggling servers, waiters, customers, schedules and unforeseen problems. This leaves little time to do much, but react to Human Resource problems as they arise.

Are employee Benefits less of an issue for restaurants than other businesses?
Restaurants may have less full time employees to provide benefits for, but they have the same problems that most small businesses have when shopping for a competitive benefits package to offer their key employees. This is where a PEO can be particularly helpful in providing a viable benefits package, without the hassle of day-to-day benefit administration.

Is the issue of retaining key employees not as applicable to restaurants?
Due to high turnover, the core group of employees at a restaurant is critical. The best way a business owner or general manager can hope to keep his key employees is to provide a path to for advancement and benefits that provide incentives for employees to stick around.

As you can see, a PEO can solve many problems that will inevitably arise when owning or running a restaurant. So, the underlying question is, why don’t more restaurants use PEO’s? Obviously, cost verses benefit always pops up when making a list of compelling reasons whether or not to outsource. Many PEO’s fees are particularly expensive for businesses with more part-time employees than full-time which can be hard to overcome.

However, the potential liabilities outlined in this article more than outweigh the short-term costs. Progressive business principals apply to restaurants as they do to any other business, if not more because of the high tempo and the intrinsic liabilities that surround the industry.

More and more company owners are turning to PEO’s to help leverage their businesses in the employment marketplace. They have found a better use for their time, MAKING MONEY.

Daryl Sisk is Vice President of Sales and Marketing for A Plus Benefits, Inc. You can contact Daryl at dsisk@aplusbenefits.com

In the past, the term “core competency” has described something a company can do that provides customer benefit, is difficult for competitors to imitate and that can be applied to many products or markets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_competency

Most of the articles I’ve read about core competency relate to businesses and therefore don’t address individual’s core competencies. In terms that are clearer to me a core competency is something that you or your company is particularly good at. This is the one thing that really sets you apart and contributes value to either yourself or your company.

Often core competencies are a bit surprising. For instance, Wal*Mart’s core competency is not its low prices but is arguably their supply chain management that makes its lower prices possible. Apple’s core competency isn’t building computers but is probably in its design and development of particularly intuitive user interfaces. Nordstrom’s isn’t its ability to attract great brands but its system of superior customer service.

People have core competencies as well. Tiger Woods’ core competency may be his passion for the game or his endurance. Lance Armstrong’s core competency isn’t his ability to ride his bike but rather his ability to deal with pain. Several business men that I’m familiar with are able to stomach risk while others have a high tolerance for very little sleep. Artists seem to have a core competency that allows them to see the finished product before starting the piece.

Each of us has a core competency. Some individuals discover theirs early in life and spend a great deal of time and effort to develop them. Other folks are still in the discovery stages and are trying to find their sea legs. Regardless of where you are, simply understanding that the development of your core competency is a key to future success is a great start.

Here are some ideas for discovering your core competency:

1. Think about the things you are good at then consider the skills/traits that make you particularly good.
2. Ask a trusted advisor what they see as your greatest strengths.
3. Think about the tasks or projects you have had success with then dissect them to understand the key contributors to the success.
4. Create a list of things you are deeply passionate about and a corresponding list of skills you possess that contribute to that passion.
5. Write down the 25 things you would do if you could do anything you wanted to. Consider the items in that list that are a result of a skill you possess.

Once you’ve discovered you core competency(s) focus on developing that skill. Stop setting New Year’s resolutions to overcome your greatest weaknesses. Instead, set goals to further develop your greatest strengths. Doing so will set you apart from everyone else and make you an invaluable asset to any team.

Jake Lunt is the General Manager of Idaho Operations for A Plus Benefits Inc.

When I was in graduate school I was surrounded by other students that were particularly skilled in wide ranging areas. There were some that knew everything about Excel and when you asked them if something could be done they would punch out the mega formula in seconds. Others were particularly capable of throwing together a Power Point presentation that supported, instead of distracting from, the proposed strategy. There were a number of students that had incredible presentation skills and others were great writers. It didn’t take long for most of us to discover where the skills were and then create advantageous alliances. The time constraints and volume of work in grad school required each group to be as efficient as possible and this solution worked well.

Unfortunately, while this strategy ensured that we would consistently complete high quality work on time, it also left some of us with less developed critical skill sets. I’m not advocating that we should become experts at everything, but I am suggesting that by being forced to do something yourself, you are likely to develop skills that may be lying dormant. Additionally, as we experience various challenges in our careers we can only rely on past experiences to overcome those challenges.Twyla Tharp, in her book The Creative Habit, writes about skill development as a result of being forced to do something on your own.

Yogi Berra once said that for Christmas he told his father, “I want a baseball bat, a glove, and a ball.” His father said, “Which one of the three do you want?” As a good parent, he was saying, I can’t give you everything, but if you’re really serious about baseball, you’ll figure out how to get the other two. That’s a powerful lesson: Learn to do for yourself. It’s the only way to broaden your skills.

Advance your skills by forcing yourself to develop those areas that surround your core competencies and accent your strengths. If your functional skill and interest is in human resources, work to further develop your people skills by interacting more frequently with wide variety of people. Attend networking functions and eat lunch more often with groups you normally don’t spend time with. If you hope to become a CEO, study war strategy and coach your son’s little league team. All of these things will contribute a foundation of experiences to lean on as you face challenges in the future.

Jake Lunt is the General Manager of Idaho Operations for A Plus Benefits Inc..

“Outsourcing is bad!” No, “Outsourcing is great!” And so goes the argument, back and forth and back and forth. My guess is that we’ll be hearing the pros and cons of each side for decades. So, amidst the banter I thought I should throw my hat in the ring. However, I don’t want to discuss outsourcing jobs to other countries. I simply want to highlight the concept.

Outsourcing, at its root, is something all of us do. Who among us has not hired a young man from the neighborhood to mow the lawn? Who has decided to eat a juicy burger instead of going home to cook? How many of us take our cars to a service center instead working on them ourselves? I’d assert that all of these activities are a form of outsourcing. We basically take a task and allow someone who will do it faster and with more expertise to do it for us. By doing this we add a little cash to the neighbors “new iPod” fund or to a local business and we are free to work on something else.

Think about it. If the neighbor will mow our lawn for $10 and will use her mower and her fuel we won’t have to buy a gas can or a mower. Just that will save us between $200 and $600 plus another $20 - $40 in fuel. So we’ve already paid for the first 22 – 64 mowings not including the cost of trimming the edges or the cost of our time. Thinking about it a bit further, how many other things are being left undone so that we have time to mow the stinking lawn. (When was the last time you had the time to use the gym pass, for which you pay $40 a month?) It almost seems silly to insist upon mowing our own lawn in order to save a couple bucks when in reality we could make double or triple that amount if we worked an extra hour at work. I can hear it now: “Sorry boss, I can’t work overtime because I’ve got to get some yard work done.”

To illustrate this, I met with a business owner yesterday that absolutely failed to recognize what it costs her when she stops doing what she gets paid a lot of money to do, in order to do something that someone else could and probably should do.

Sitting behind a desk piled with paperwork, that she had “no time to complete”, she told me that if there is any task she can take upon herself in order to save a dollar she’d do it. She told me that she bought services based wholly on their ability to immediately save her money. I’d guess that she, the CEO of a 90 employee company, made a salary of at least $60k. She was completely oblivious to the fact that every hour she spent doing a job that an employee could do for $10 an hour actually cost her about $20. She wasn’t saving the company anything. In fact, her shortsightedness is actually hurting shareholder value.

So next time your young neighbor knocks on the door and asks if she can mow the lawn for $10 a week, stop and think about how much money she is going to save you.

Jake Lunt is the General Manager of Idaho Operations for A Plus Benefits Inc..