3 Simple Yet Powerful Tips to Drive Engagement in Your Restaurant
I grew up in the restaurant industry. From working at my dad’s various Quiznos locations in Regina, to working at the restaurants my grandparents owned — I’ve been in this industry for a long time. Now, I work with an awesome team that builds a scheduling and labor management solution for restaurants to help manage and retain their staff — but that’s just the product goal. The real driver behind that is encouraging the engagement and satisfaction of restaurant workers.
At 7shifts, it’s our core mission to “improve happiness and efficiency in the workplace,” and for me, it’s more than just something we chant to restaurant clients — it’s something I embody in my work as a leader, and something our whole team strives toward every day.
So, while there can never be a perfect workplace, I’ve learned that there are definite ways you can work to promote a great culture, and ensure you have a great team backing it.
1. Hire the right people to build the right culture
Building an engaged team starts with hiring the right people that fit the culture you want to build in your restaurant. But this can run into a chicken & egg situation — which came first, the people or the culture?
The culture should fall in line with your company’s core values and mission — so guide your hiring process by first building out these key details about your company.
“There’s no right way to train the wrong person.”
— Dany Meyer, Union Square Hospitality
You can’t make up for the wrong hire with training — even if someone has the right qualifications, if they aren’t a fit, then they aren’t a fit. Relying on just paper qualification for your team hire leaves you with little-to-no culture, and employees can relate to and engage with a nonexistent culture.
Takeaway: Establish your core value and mission early on and hire people who embody those values.
2. Learn about their interests, and incorporate them into the workplace
Your work as an employer or manager isn’t over once you’re staffed up — the next piece is critical, and it’s to have a plan to keep that workforce engaged. Getting to know that workforce is the first step.
Get in the habit of chatting with your team and building a more personal connection with them. What drives them in their career? What do they like to do outside of work?
With a base understanding of your employees personalities and interests, you can start figuring out ways to incorporate those interests into the work.
If your server loves photography, there could be an opportunity to take pictures for the menu, or highlight the business on social media. If your dishwasher plays in a band in his spare time, maybe hire them to come in for live music one night, or even encourage them to play their music in the kitchen for other staff.
Takeaway: Get to know your employees and their core interests and find ways to bring them out in the restaurant.
3. Encourage team collaboration — for more than just work duties
Getting your team to collaborate builds a sense of community — and I’m not just talking about having a server help in the dish pit on a busy night. Bringing an air of transparency to the workplace and getting your team involved in more corporate decisions is a great way to make them feel valued and grow engagement in a meaningful way.
If you’re changing up the cocktail menu, make it an event for the team and invite staff to help come up with new cocktail names, taste test, and vote on the best contenders to make it on the menu.
There’s a lot of creative stuff that you can do that just encourage more team collaboration and ultimately make it a really fun atmosphere that people enjoy being a part of.
Takeaway: Look at every business change as an opportunity to promote transparency and encourage team engagement. Make decisions collaborative, and get feedback from your staff wherever possible!
Thousands of restaurants are opening all the time. What are you doing as a restaurateur to differentiate yourself as an employer and preventing your teams from going to work at another restaurant across the street?
Restaurateurs really need to understand the culture that they have in the restaurant and how to grow it, because most people just want to work around people they like working with.
If you have the hiring process nailed, that’s the hardest part, and now it’s just a matter of making sure those individuals that already enjoy working with each other feel empowered and they feel like your restaurant is a place that they want to come and be a part of every day.
Psst, 7shifts is on a mission to improve happiness and efficiency in the workplace by providing the leading tool for scheduling and labor management, built specifically for restaurants. Check us out!
