SYRACUSE, N.Y. (NCC News) — Several food and beverage companies are relying on bonuses to recruit new employees. This new incentive is intended to attract more people to the customer service industry and increase employee retention rates.
Ryan Mcnerney is a District Manager for Pepsi and says new employees are awarded twenty-five-hundred-dollar sign-on bonuses and an extra two-thousand-dollars after working for a full-year with the company.
“I think all around we do a really good job with compensation and I think it’s a great thing to get people in the door whether it be like a relocation bonus or like an initial sign-on bonus…a housing stipend or like a mileage stipend,” Mcnerney said.
The food and beverage industry is notorious for high turnover rates. Despite the fact that most of these positions do not require a previous work history or post-secondary degree; the on-the-job training is relatively seamless for most new hires.
Today, Covid-19 is still negatively impacting employment rates and hiring managers are using more effective solutions to help meet the needs of prospective employees.
“There are added perks that would make people want to come to the company, Mcnerney said.” “But as a whole, I think that they are only effective to the degree of which people want to work in that industry.”
In Destiny USA, many restaurants like Margaritaville are offering five-hundred-dollar sign-on bonuses to employees who work a minimum of 90 days.
Bartender Ciara Contini, says a friend referred her to the job and she immediately applied directly through the sign-on bonus.
“I know everyone is going to be getting the sign-on bonus processed at the same time,” Contini said. “There are quite a few employees here that are also expecting it like me and they are very excited and happy about it.”
Margaritaville is still accepting applications for food service workers and Pepsi is hiring Class A drivers on an on-going bases.
