Make the Most of Resources, Culture to Build and Keep Good Teams by Sean Ireland
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s 2022 began, a persistent shortage of labor continued to be a key challenge for Buffalo Wild Wings® franchisees and their teams, who’ve hoped for improvement after nearly two years of suffering from the business complications of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. While COVID-19 infections have ebbed and flowed since March of 2020, the difficulties that franchisees
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and businesses have had finding, hiring and retaining team members have been constant. Not limited to the restaurant or hospitality industries, the trend in the nation’s labor rate even earned a nickname in 2021: the Great Resignation. Government data shows that more than 20 million people quit their jobs in the second half of last year for a wide range of reasons. It was a continuation of a trend that has seen employers struggle to find the personnel they need to keep their operations running. Be it due to the fears of contracting COVID-19, child care difficulties caused by the pandemic or other causes, a significant decrease in eligible workers in the labor pool has employers throughout the economy scrambling to find job candidates and keep them on board as team members. While some point to specific pandemic-related causes for the struggles,
others believe there is a significant philosophical shift in the psyche of workers. Anthony Klotz, an organizational psychologist and professor at Texas A&M University credited with coining the term, “the Great Resignation,” told Bloomberg News in an interview in May that many people are seeking to change their work-life
