Drive Revenue with Staff Management Best Practices
Building and retaining a successful staff is easily one of, if not the largest industry issue operators face. You can have the perfect location, the most creative concept, the tastiest menu, and the top of the line equipment, but if you don't have a strong team, you WILL fail. In recent studies it was found that 96% of customers will leave you for bad service. So how can you create and retain a successful staff?
The most powerful step to developing a profitable organization is to acknowledge that your staff is your most impactful component to your success. Once you recognize this and are ready to accept accountability for your team, you can begin the process of finding the right staff, hang on to them, and mentor them towards greater success for everyone!
Getting Started - How do I find the right people for my Team?
Culture Creation
A positive work culture is one that prioritizes the well-being of employees, offers support, and has policies in place that encourage trust and respect. Before you begin the interview process, it is important to create the desired culture internally so that you can get the interviewee buy-in before they even start. You are not just interviewing them, they are interviewing you. You need to be able to gage their buy-in to determine if they will be good fit and set expectations before they even start.
- Supportive Leadership
- Respect
- Zero Tolerance to toxic behavior
- Perks and Benefits
- Job Security
Building Your Team and Documenting Strategic Interview Information with your Avero Logbook
Your Avero Logbook is a great place to prepare and track interview notes. Creating a Interview / Staff Logbook Section provides the ability to reference key information on those you do hire but also those you do not. Just because they were not a good fit does not mean that there is not note worthy information to track. *Using the Field name and the employee name in each note allows for more robust search capabilities in the future with Logbook Search.
Logbook Fields:
- Name - This makes their interview page easily searchable in the future
- Position - Important to note when reviewing later if additional promotions occurred
- Experience - Experience is not always necessary to be successful in F&B. Often times someone willing to learn and excited to enter the field is far easier to train and incorporate into your company culture than an F&B veteran. Listen to how they describe their experience and make sure they are willing to adapt to your model and does not have the "I know better than you" mentality.
- Preferred Management Style - "How do you like to be managed?" This question often catches applicants by surprise. It is a great way to show potential employees that you are interested in them and their future with the company. It helps leadership understand the best way to establish a strong working relationship throughout their tenure. They may be struggling during training or later in their employment and you may need to reference it to help get through difficult conversations or areas of opportunities.
- Why are they leaving or left their last position - Retention Information - Don't make the same mistakes. Understand what drove them away from their last job to prevent the same cycle and think if this could be happening now in your current practices. This could be a deterrent in your own organization that is upsetting current employees or something to monitor in the future. In addition to retention, it can be a red flag to not employ someone if the reasons are toxic indicators. Too much negative talk about their former employer especially if not constructive can be a major reason to pass up on this applicant.
- Motivation - Retention Information - Again, understanding what drives the employee will help you be constructive in engaging them later on. It also is a great practice to know like motivations by interviewees and staff to use when running initiatives and contests.
- Why F&B - Why are they here? Passion for customers, products, and career opportunities in F&B are essential for great staff. If they are just interested in a paycheck it will be very difficult to get their engagement. They should show you the energy you want them to have while working when discussing this question.
- Biggest Challenges - What challenges did you face in prior positions. Be open to keeping the conversation going and ask follow up questions. You may be facing them now and a fresh perspective is always helpful. Did they overcome them? Did they take any initiative to provide solutions. An individual that will come with solutions (whether they are successful or not) instead of just complains or "deals with it" is a great candidate for employment.
- Achievements - This may be something they can implement in your organization, or there maybe something similar they can assist on later. As they grow with your company, showing that you were interested in what they had to say in the interview helps the employee feel respected and heard. Encouraging them to take on similar initiatives will help both the company be more profitable, inspires them to work smarter, and helps develop promotable employees.
- Questions - What questions did they ask you? How did they react to your answers.
- Additional Takeaways - Anything else ;)