HR Insights — People Don’t Leave for $50. They Leave Because They’re Done.

By Jon Lim, in conversation with Janson Seah, Founder of StaffAny

I’ve been speaking to a lot of restaurant owners lately, and the same questions keep surfacing:

“What’s the market rate for salary?”

“Why did my staff leave for such a small increment?”

“How do I get people to stay?”

It made me think—are staff really leaving over $50, or is something deeper going on?

So I reached out to Janson Seah, founder of StaffAny, to unpack what’s actually happening—and how the best operators are solving it.

This post is the outcome of that conversation. We both see restaurants struggle with retention in different ways, and we wanted to break down what’s really driving staff loyalty—and what’s quietly killing it.

Start Here: What Kind of Employer Do You Want to Be?

Before we talk about tools, structure, or gamification, let’s go upstream.

What’s your philosophy as an employer?

There are only two real models:

1. Lean & Demanding

• Tight headcount.
• Everyone works hard.
• Company shares profits, rewards performance.
• High output, high expectations, high accountability.

2. Stable & Sustainable

• Slightly overhire.
• Shifts are smooth.
• No profit-sharing, but work is manageable.
• People stay because life is good—not great, but good.

Both work.

The problem is, many restaurants run lean, but don’t reward.

Or they avoid hiring, but offer no stability either.

And then they wonder why people leave.

Retention Isn’t a HR Issue. It’s a Design Problem.

One operator recently told me:

“I’m hiring an ops manager now that I run three outlets. How do I set them up for success?”

It’s a great question. But I flipped it around:

“How would you set your ops manager up to fail?”

As Charlie Munger once said:

“All I want to know is where I’ll die, so I’ll never go there.”

So here’s how you fail an ops manager:

• Don’t define success metrics.
• Don’t give them clarity on headcount, schedules, or P&L accountability.
• Let them get caught between owners, outlet managers, and unspoken expectations.
• Micromanage when things go wrong, ignore them when things go right.

Ops is already hard. But when you add ambiguity? It becomes unbearable.

The same is true for frontline staff.

Most people can handle pressure. What they can’t handle is pressure without clarity.

People Don’t Quit Hard Work. They Quit Pointless Work.

Here’s what high-performing restaurants do differently:

1. They Pay on Time and Get the Basics Right

You’d be surprised how many restaurants still scramble payroll from Excel and WhatsApp screenshots.

Janson shared a line that stuck with me:

“There are many things you can get wrong in business. But you can’t get payroll wrong.”

Late pay, miscalculated OT, or a missing incentive kills trust—quietly, and permanently.

2. They Turn Work into a Game Worth Playing

Let me clarify something about gamification.

It’s not about adding incentives.

It’s about removing friction.

In one conversation, I told a restaurant owner: your team isn’t struggling to upsell because they’re unmotivated. They’re struggling because your menu is too hard to sell.

Most of his diners were first-timers, but there was no “must-try” section. Staff had to guess what to recommend, and the upsell became guesswork.

I said: “Create a ‘first-timer’ section. Give your staff one go-to item. Make it a game they can win.”

That’s real gamification. It’s not about rewards.

It’s about design that makes winning possible—and then celebrates it.

3. They Talk About Growth Before the Staff Ask For It

Performance reviews often fall into two traps:

• They’re skipped.
• Or they’re treated like admin.

The best restaurants use reviews as growth conversations.

They bring up the next step before staff even ask:

• More hours.
• A lead shift.
• A raise.
• A clear plan.

They measure both soft and hard data:

• Soft = teamwork, initiative, accountability
• Hard = attendance, sales performance, shift coverage

When people see a path forward, they stay.

When they don’t, they quietly check out.

4. They Remove Chaos Before They Add Perks

Ask five team members what their role is. If you get five different answers, you don’t have flexibility—you have chaos.

Janson pointed me to a study by Spector & Jex that breaks this down:

• Role overload
• Role ambiguity
• Organizational constraints

Your staff won’t use those words.

They’ll just say: “I’m tired.”

You can’t retain someone who’s constantly firefighting, guessing what’s expected, or cleaning up after broken systems.

Clarity is a retention strategy.

Closing Thought: You Don’t Build Loyalty. You Earn It, One Shift at a Time.

Everyone talks about how hard hiring is.

But maybe the better question is:

What are you doing to deserve the team you already have?

Retention doesn’t come from slogans or vision decks.

It comes from what happens quietly, behind the scenes:

• The payslip that’s accurate and on time.
• The schedule that’s published early and managed fairly.
• The upsell that’s easy because the menu and KPIs are clear.
• The moment someone thinks, “I could leave—but I’d rather not.”

At the end of the day, staff don’t stay because the job is easy.

They stay because someone made it easier to succeed.

That’s why I reached out to Janson—and why I’ve always appreciated what he and the team at StaffAny are building.

It’s not just another HR system. It’s built by people who understand the daily grind of restaurants, and who design systems that support the people behind them.

If you’re serious about building a team that stays, grows, and performs—it’s worth a look.

Because in this market, loyalty isn’t given.

It’s earned—by design.