Words of Wisdom: Hiring and Taking Care of Employees

Michael Geiger

Brands: 7 Moe's Southwest Grill locations in Pennsylvania

How do you hire, retain, and take care of your employees?

We've always looked at internal development as the first option. The average tenure of our upper management team is about eight years. The pace at which we have grown over the past three to four years has made exclusively promoting and moving internal candidates increasingly difficult, so we have been going outside the organization more recently.

Our average hourly wage is right about $10 an hour, about 40 percent higher than the state minimum wage. This, coupled with aggressive management bonus structures, has always been a focus for us. We expect premium performance and are willing to pay a premium wage for it. We've always offered a full benefit package related to healthcare long before we were required to, and a generous 401(k) match. We do a senior employee event each year for everyone who has been with us more than two years, as well as a themed and fun manager holiday party. Also, as an incentive to be healthy, we do a mud run event each year. This year, for the first time, it will be a BattleFrog obstacle race. Last, we make it a priority to integrate philanthropic programs with employee incentives to ensure they understand how important it is for us to give back to the communities we serve.