This guest post about encouraging restaurant staff independence is from our friends over at Humanity.
Small business owners, especially restaurateurs, often cringe at the simple thought of giving up control in their eatery. This reaction is completely understandable. You’ve invested everything in this restaurant and you’re treated its growth as if it were your child.
You’ve also probably gotten used to wearing several hats at the same time. You peek into the kitchen every now and then to give tips, you hang out in the front of the house and greet customers to make sure they are getting the experience that they desire. You’ve grown accustomed to having a say in everything that goes on in your establishment.
But letting go is a necessary part of the process. That is, if you want to see your restaurant grow. You can’t micro-manage every detail forever, right?
If you plan on growing your restaurant business, you have to sacrifice some of this control to focus on the process. One of the key components to this is being able to grant your staff more independence.
Here’s are some good beginner tips for initiating the process.
Give Them a Say
When trying to manage a staff of hourly employees, things can get pretty messy. Restaurant workers are often students or people with families. They have other responsibilities in their personal lives they need to schedule around their work shifts.
In such a situation, the first reaction would be to maintain absolute and unwavering control over the process. But in reality, that’s not the best way to go. Giving your employees a say on how their shifts are distributed empowers them. It also decreases the amount of management has to put into this process.
More and more restaurants these days are ditching the antiquated methods of pen and paper or spreadsheets and choosing some type of online employee scheduling software instead. Using such a tool makes it easy for managers to create conflict-free shifts. It also gives employees more independence by making the feedback loop much smaller by improving communication.
Whatever method you use, there’s two things that you should enable your employees to do: submit their work preferences/availability and request shift swaps and drops on their own.
Getting them involved in the process shows them that you care enough to give them the ability to provide their input into when and how they work. You’re not only giving them independence, you are building confidence and trust between management and staff at the same time.
Set and Goals and Measure Progress
When granting your restaurant staff independence as far as their personal work tasks are concerned, you’re not simply letting go of the wheel and giving them absolute freedom to do as they please. You are entering a process of establishing trust and encouraging professional development.
The best way to do this is to talk about it first, and then set goals for each staff member. Setting goals is a process as well. It should be a collaborative one. You shouldn’t be the only person deciding what would be a good goal for your employee to try and achieve. Talk it out and see if you can agree on a fair and reasonably work goal to strive towards.
Set clear goals and then check in with them periodically to see whether or not they are achieving them. For example, you could set a goal for servers to increase their up-sells by 20% over several months and then meet with them regularly to see how they’re doing.
Accept Failure as an Option
If they aren’t achieving the goals you’ve set, don’t give up on them right away. Offer guidance to help them reach these plateaus. Failure is a very real part of the process when you’re trying to make your restaurant staff more independent. Strive to make sure that both you and your employees are learning from every mistake made along the way.
If an employee is starting to forge his or her own path, missteps along the way are bound to happen. It’s your job to make sure that they don’t get discouraged. One of the greatest misconceptions about working towards employee independence is that managers should simply get out of the way. That’s absolutely untrue.
The reality is that the manager will still be very involved with the employee, but in a different way than before. Instead of barking out orders and monitoring an employee’s every move, give them space, but offer support. To help improve restaurant staff independence, let employees know you support them and you’re ready to help whenever they need you.
Expand Comfort Zones
There’s a fine line between building an employee’s confidence by increase their level of independence and setting them up to fail. One of the most important things to balance is the number of new things you introduce to an employee.
And, while it’s incredibly important to push a staff member’s comfort zone to help that person learn and develop, it’s important to set limits as well.
Gaining independence on the job is all about pushing your comfort zone and engaging in responsibilities that are unfamiliar to you. But it’s equally important to expand that comfort zone slowly so that it doesn’t become too much to handle.
Once again, communicating with your staff members, providing constant feedback, and being a good mentor are important parts of this process.
Supply the Tools
If you want your employees to be more independent, you need to give them the tools to achieve independence. Restaurant employees need to continuously develop their skills if they want to improve and earn the trust of their employers.
Don’t hesitate to invest in courses, seminars or any other type of education for your employees, because you’re investing in the future success of your restaurant as much as you are investing in the individual employees.
With the needed knowledge to increase their independence, employees can push their own comfort zones and build confidence.
Conclusion
While there are many benefits that come with employee independence, one of the main benefits in the restaurant business specifically is that encouraging employees to be more proactive can also increase retention – a serious problem for many restaurateurs.
Employees want to feel as if they are an integral part of your establishment’s success. Independence can lead to employee happiness, and happiness can lead to improving your bottom line.
Furthermore, your best employees will seek independence and respond positively to increased responsibility and expanded roles. Letting them forge their own path will help by not only giving you more time to focus on the growth of your restaurant, it will also benefit your restaurant by engaging your best employees and inspiring them to stay with you instead of seeking new professional challenges elsewhere.
