How to Make Your Restaurant Employees’ Lives Easier
Running a restaurant is complicated. You have to carefully manage how to buy, store, prepare, serve, and of course cook the food. But more than that, it requires many people doing different jobs to work together in harmony. Here are some tips to help make it easier to manage the staff at your restaurant.
- Use Tech to Organize Scheduling and More
When employees know well in advance when they are and aren’t working, it makes it easier for them to plan their personal lives outside of work. There are apps available designed especially for restaurants which not only ease scheduling, they’re an all-in-one platform for other vital functions. Make sure the app you get to organize scheduling can also help with: clocking in; team communications; a leave management system; manager log books; workforce management; employee management.
Especially if you’re a small-medium sized restaurant and your employees tend to be younger, you should click here to learn more because the market has several options for such apps, and they aren’t all equal. These apps are both staff- and management-centered, so everyone will be grateful you implemented it.
- Give Constructive Feedback
All employees want to know how they’re doing on the job — either they’re succeeding and reinforcement makes them feel satisfied, or they need guidance and support to get to where they need to be. This is mutually beneficial. Make sure the feedback balances the right tone between positivity with constructive criticism. Try to leave discussions surrounding money, like a potential raise, for another meeting; sometimes financial considerations add pressure on an employee that makes it harder for them to give genuine feedback. Make it easy for them butlimiting the conversation about job performance strictly to precisely this, and leaving the money out.
- Receive Feedback
Constructive criticism is a two-way street! Listen to what your employees have to say, because they hold important insights about your restaurant, and it’s wise to seek input from every corner. Whether this is done via a team meeting, a suggestion box, through a regular employee performance review or some other method that works best for your restaurant, learn where management can improve.
Ultimately, feedback is about making sure the restaurant patrons have the best experience possible. But your staff will also appreciate being heard.
- Ensure Good Working Conditions
Show your employees appreciation by making sure they have safe and comfortable working conditions. Kitchens should be well ventilated. Make sure waiters aren’t on their toes for too long without a break.
Give them nutritious food — they can’t do their job well if they’re hungry, and it’s not good to subsist on an unhealthy diet. It’s fine to have a burger and fries once in a while but employees obviously come to work regularly, and nobody should eat fried food day in and day out.
If you keep these tips in mind, your staff will be grateful. Once there’s a system in place to make sure your staff have an easier and more pleasant work experience, focus can shift to the thing that matters most in a restaurant: the food.
