Day 150 - 07 Jul 95 - Page 22
1 I would not get a team work together. So, it is absolutely
2 common sense, I feel personally, to have low turnover
3 because it means that people are staying.
4
5 Q. As a Store Manager at Leicester and as Area Supervisor at
6 Colchester, Clacton, and any other managerial job that you
7 have done with the Company, is that low turnover something
8 -- you have done various things to deal with in order to
9 get it down -- sorry, it is not a very well phrased
10 question.
11
12 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You are really asking are there things you
13 can do to try to get and keep down a restaurant's turnover
14 rate?
15 A. Again, I would go on my personal experience when I,
16 sort of, worked as an Assistant Manager and was responsible
17 for performance reviews, responsible for training, I used
18 those sorts experiences as a Restaurant Manager, and ask
19 people to follow the same sort of ethics. Then,
20 subsequently, as a Supervisor, I would do exactly the same
21 thing.
22
23 I do not think that I am doing anything that is out of the
24 ordinary within the Company, to be honest. I would not
25 suggest that I have some form of wondrous panacea to all of
26 this. I am doing what we all do and, that is,
27 understanding the lower the turnover, the better it is
28 going to be for everybody, as a business and as the
29 individuals who work in the restaurants.
30
31 MR. ATKINSON: Personally, for example, when you were at
32 Leicester, have you managed to achieve reasonably low
33 turnover -- I suppose it could always be lower?
34 A. Yes. I think by the fact that I had people coming
35 back, I had a very open minded view to their own
36 circumstances, was very flexible in my approach. It does
37 not make me any different, but I certainly found that
38 easier in terms of running a restaurant in Leicester,
39 certainly.
40
41 Q. But was your ability to achieve that relatively low
42 turnover -----
43
44 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I may have missed a link somewhere. Did
45 Mr. Stanton achieve low turnover?
46
47 MR. ATKINSON: Yes.
48
49 MR. JUSTICE BELL: He did, did he?
50
51 MR. ATKINSON: He says he did at Leicester.
52
53 MR. JUSTICE BELL: What was it? Have you said and I have missed
54 it? What was the turnover at Leicester?
55 A. I cannot recall any specific numbers. Gosh! All I can
56 really work on is the fact that I was not having to recruit
57 people every five minutes, I mean, or in terms of
58 recruiting people on a regular basis. I would be looking
59 towards seasonal adjustments, primarily in December. But
60 I was -- I would get maybe seven or eight, maybe a dozen or
