4 Methods for Creating an Awesome Workplace for Restaurant Employees

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Introduction

Starting a restaurant may seem like an easy task at first, but as you start working the process, you'll quickly learn all of its hardships. There are a lot of areas to think about, such as

  • Dining room ambiance
  • Kitchen appliances and organization
  • Employee uniforms and attitude
  • Scheduling tactics
  • Menu creation
These are just a few of the tasks you'll need to accomplish when owning a restaurant. But one of the things you can't neglect is establishing an enjoyable work environment. Your employees are essentially what drives your restaurant to success without them, your restaurant can't succeed.

Even if your restaurant has been around for a long time, you might want to upgrade your work environment to better suit your employees after all, they need to feel good in order to perform well.
Why You Need a Better Workplace Environment
Well, one good reason is to decrease and ultimately prevent employee turnover rate. Not only is the turnover rate typically high, but also every employee who quits costs your business money.

There's no fixed price for any industry, but generally, the higher-paid your employee, the higher the cost of employee turnover.

So, How Do You Retain Your Employees for a Longer Time?
Contrary to popular opinion, an increased wage isn't the only way to increase employee retention. It sure is a good incentive, but by itself, it is not a guarantee.

Employees usually know the wage they should expect from a business, so that's rarely the reason for quitting. Interestingly enough simply showing appreciation toward your team can do wonders. Increase employee satisfaction and decrease employee turnover.

You can do this by

One - Properly Training Your Employees

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Training new hires should be the top priority of every restaurant, but a lot of restaurants don't even bother to train their employees. In fact, the numbers show that not all establishments even provide employee handbooks something that should not even be questioned when bringing on new employees.

Restaurants expect a high turnover rate, and that might be part of the reason why they find it valuable to thoroughly train new employees. But not training new hires increases the turnover rate, so training should still be a no-brainer.

Employees often leave because they don't like their job. But that might be, in part, because they don't know how to properly work the job. Training can easily fix this and most likely decrease employee turnover rates.

For example, by using a scheduling app for small businesses, for instance, you can go through some basic training sessions by scheduling an employee at a specified time during slower days to do a one-on-one training.

But by the time you start training your employees, you should create a process and involve senior employees in the training make it go smoothly without needing too much managerial intervention.

After a new hire has spent a week or more working at your restaurant, you should ask them how they're doing, find out whether they need help with something.

Two - Provide the Best Resources

When it comes to increasing employee satisfaction, another area you can improve on is by simplifying tasks and work processes.

By simply using available resources such as a scheduling app for small business can empower your employees and increase their performance.

For example, if employees want to swap shifts, they shouldn't have to go through an exhaustive process of calling multiple co-workers then verifying with management acceptable replacements. Scheduling applications make this possible because the apps typically offer a feature that sends a mass message to co-workers notifying that a shift is available.

Three - Know Your Team

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If you're a manager or owner of a restaurant, you need to know what's going on in all aspects of your restaurant. This includes internal conflicts between employees, and in some cases, employees and fellow managers.

An argument between employees can ruin the working atmosphere for all of your employees and cause a massive decrease in employee performance. Customer experience can also be drastically affected, as some employees' moods will become less inviting since they are not in a good headspace.

That's why it's important to get to know your employees on a professional work level. Personal matters can be more complicated and inappropriate to discuss at work, however, should personal matters affect their performance at work, you can consider how to carefully confront an employee with Human Resource's help.

Showing concern for an employee's well-being shows that you care about them. It shows that they are not just a pawn simply utilized to make a profit for the restaurant.

Have weekly meetings with your employees to check in and ask if everyone is doing alright or possibly having problems shows your concern.

Ask for Feedback

An open-door policy means nothing if you do not act on it.

Even if you do act on it, chances are that a lot of the employees aren't going to come and make suggestions without you asking for them first.

Scheduling regular meetings to ask what areas could be improved and asking your employees for suggestions will be well received. This can include operational systems or even food menu items.

If you can't host regular meetings, a scheduling app can assist in this area.

With this software, you can host virtual meetings and always have a direct line of communication with your employees.

Of course, you cannot implement all employee suggestions, but if you act on some of them, your employees will be appreciative.

You can even give rewards to successful ideas, which could include rewarded days off or gift cards.

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