It's all in the cards

Workforce, Sept, 2002 by Todd Raphael

The recipe for success at Ruth's Chris Steak House isn't so much about its choice of beef. It's more about winning in the competitive steak restaurant business with a highly trained, fast-learning workforce, says Kathryn Harris, the company's director of education and hospitality.

She attributes much of the company's success to the straightforward employee-training system that was developed for the Metairie, Louisiana-based chain, which now employs 3,000 people. Instead of a daunting heavy binder of recipes and rules, everything that a host, cook, busser, bartender, or dishwasher needs to know is readily available on a set of 4-by-8 1/2-inch cards. Most of the company's employees use the cards, which are translated into Spanish on the back, to remember everything from a recipe for caramelized banana cream pie to information about relationships with customers, such as how a customer should be acknowledged if he is within 10 feet. The cards also provide a way for employees to quickly learn what it takes to get promoted. If a busser wants to be a server, for example, she can find the servers' stack of cards on the wall and learn what skills are involved.

What's more, the system reduces the threat of litigation. Employees know they have to wear non-skid shoes because it's on the cards, and they sign a statement acknowledging that they've read the cards. If an employee were to get hurt wearing the wrong shoes, Ruth's Chris could point to all the training it has provided, and to the employee's signature. Since the card system was implemented, Ruth's turnover has gone down from about 81 percent to about 75 percent, no small feat in the restaurant industry. Managers are turning over at a 22 to 25 percent rate, down about 10 percent from 1998, before the learning system was implemented. Harris traces the improvement directly to the company's learning process. In June, Ruth's Chris won rant Association for its learning system.

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