Nandu Awatramani: “To create a fantastic work culture, help your employees grow, even when there’s no position to grow into”
…Help your employees grow, even when there’s no position to grow into. Despite growing rapidly, we didn’t have enough positions for our employees to grow into. I had recognized in my efforts to solve employee turnover that growth mattered more to our employees than money. And if we could help them grow, we were rewarding them for their efforts and respecting their ambition and helping them get further. So to overcome not having enough of vacant positions for our employees to grow into, we began training them on improving personal skills, like financial planning, meditation, managing stress, negotiation. We unknowingly began helping them grow personally and that was even more important to them than professional growth. Find a way to help them achieve their goals, they’ll help you achieve yours.
As a part of my series about how leaders can create a “fantastic work culture”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Nandu Awatramani. Nandu is the founder of F and B Business School, an online business school for restaurant & other food business operators to learn the industry’s best business practices & run an easier, more profitable business & lead a better life. He believes there’s a better way to do business in the restaurant industry without stress over employee issues, backbreaking hours, & low margins. He has 18 years of experience owning & operating restaurants & hotels in diverse international markets. From 2012 to 2015, he had successfully managed to triple his restaurants turnover & net earnings using unique business practices, discipline & focus. Today, through his online programs at F and B Business School, he shares his unique systems & techniques to manage & scale hospitality business profitably. These proven unique business practices have aligned his companies to a single goal & freed him from the day-to-day management of his businesses and consistently earn more than his competition. He is based out of New York.
He holds a BSc. Int. Hospitality Mgmt.& Tourism (Summa Cum Laude) from Les Roches International School of Hotel Mgmt (Switzerland). His experience includes many years spent working at Hotels & Restaurant in Geneva (Switzerland), New Orleans (USA) & Mumbai (IN)
Thank you so much for doing this with us Nandu! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
After owning and running restaurants and other food businesses in India, my wife and I decided to move to the US. She’s from New York. During the week we were to move, I had a major heart attack that went misdiagnosed for the bad stomach. Five days later, we found out I had had a major heart attack, and by then I had lost a portion of my heart.
The recovery was slow. During that time we realized I couldn’t jump back into the restaurant business an put in the hours to build another chain. So I decided to share and teach the unique business techniques and practices I used to do much better than my competition, especially in the face of stiff competition in the areas of space, people, concepts, and price.
Today, along with my proven frameworks and techniques to run and scale restaurant profitably, I share the industry’s best practices online at F and B Business School.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
In 2010, My employee retention rate was 35% (nearly 7 out of 10 people were leaving my company). Imagine running a business like that. The upcoming hotel, construction, and retail industry were stealing employees away from the restaurant industry by paying them higher salaries we couldn’t afford.
I tried paying my employees more and offering them incentives, but that didn’t help retain them. I was out of options. I called an HR consultant to help me understand what I was doing wrong. She decided to interview all my employees and find out what would it take to make them stay on longer? She came back to me with a pie chart and said, ‘You need to (1) pay them more, (2) value them more and (3) help them grow.’
I was pissed off. I was already paying more. I wasn’t a bad person, I treated them well, and I was doing everything to help them grow, I just couldn’t keep opening a new restaurant to promote people.
That’s when I had a breakthrough. I had to be really honest with myself. I was treating my employees like a cost on my P and L. I wasn’t really a good person. I needed to treat them like a human being first, employee second and definitely not like a cost on my P and L.
It changed everything from the way I approached solving employee turnover, attracting, hiring and retaining people and helping them grow to creating infectious loyalty that outlasted their job with me. I took care of what they valued. They took care of what I valued. My employee retention jumped up from 35% to 92% and stayed there (That was three times better than the industry average).
Are you working on any exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?
I’m excited to make a difference to the business and lives of restaurateurs. To do that, one of the things I’ve created are online programs sharing proven business practices to solve high employee turnover, low-profit margins, and inconsistent revenues. I also share unique scale up habits that help the ambitious restaurateur scale profitably.
I want to help restaurant owners in the US and globally, to earn a lot more and lead a better life so they can build a safety net for themselves, spend more time with their family and take care of their health. To make it easily accessible, these solution-focused programs are online, available anytime, making it easy for them to run through these programs at their own time and get results quickly. (knowing restaurateurs have very little spare time and a busy lifestyle.)
Ok, lets jump to the main part of our interview. According to this study cited in Forbes, more than half of the US workforce is unhappy. Why do you think that number is so high?
Because people have forgotten to treat others as human beings, like people first, before treating them like an asset or like I did, a cost on their P and L.
There are a few things employees need to stay motivated, encouraged, enthusiastic and happy. They need (1) appreciation for their work, (2) acknowledgment for their efforts, (3) involved in the business like what they do and what they have to say matters, (4) and valued for what they bring to the business. Today, companies can’t make their employees feel these four essential things occasionally.
In my personal experience, I have seen employee retention, productivity and efficiencies shoot up by making my employees feel these four essential feelings in everything I do.
Based on your experience or research, how do you think an unhappy workforce will impact a) company productivity b) company profitability c) and employee health and wellbeing?
Based on your experience or research, how do you think an unhappy workforce will impact a) company productivity b) company profitability c) and employee health and wellbeing?
In my experience, an unhappy workforce will be unproductive, not be concerned about the well being (profitability) of the company.
As a result, the management may typically react to their lack of motivation and concern and control them through fear or punishment thinking that is the solution. This approach will have immediate adverse effects on an employee’s mental health and impact his/her physical health. Moreover, this will not stop at just the employee, but a draining or unhealthy psychological and physical health may have a direct correlation to the wellbeing of an employee and his/her family. Therefore, adding to more unhappiness.
To break this chain reaction or circle, caring for an employee, his/her needs, financial and emotional responsibilities is the answer to improved health and wellbeing, which will translate into higher motivation levels, enthusiasm, and productivity.
Can you share 5 things that managers and executives should be doing to improve their company work culture? Can you give a personal story or example for each?
- Get the right people in and get the wrong people out
I learned to improve my company’s culture from fear based to encouragement, it started with keeping those and attracting new employees who shared my values ambition, hard work and integrity (the right employees for my business). Unfortunately, some of my old employees didn’t share my values and I had to let them go (it hurt), but I knew deep down, going forward, only those who shared my values would value the company and each other. People with shared values like working with each other.
2. Make your employees feel like they matter
Employees like all human beings need to feel like what they do makes a difference, that their efforts matter to their immediate supervisors, the team, the company and to the customer. In order to make them feel like they matter, we focused on connecting with them as a person. We understood their ambitions, their financial responsibilities, their family needs and their own needs. We assured them they matter. Sometimes it was through a new improved core value employee induction and sometimes it was as simple as handing them $10 for doing a good job. It started with valuing them as who they were as another human being first.
3. Create high levels of mutual trust between employees and management
To build a culture that outperformed, that was happy from within, that my employees wanted to experience every day, we had to increase the levels of mutual trust. We had to create an equal playing field for everyone and create more transparency in how they were treated, recognized, appreciated and acknowledged for their work. A simple thing as sharing the rules took away fear. Holding the management accountable to be fair (even when it meant letting a highly productive employee go because of misconduct) brought about a higher degree of integrity in our actions.
4. Help your employees grow, even when there’s no position to grow into
Despite growing rapidly, we didn’t have enough positions for our employees to grow into. I had recognized in my efforts to solve employee turnover that growth mattered more to our employees than money. And if we could help them grow, we were rewarding them for their efforts and respecting their ambition and helping them get further. So to overcome not having enough of vacant positions for our employees to grow into, we began training them on improving personal skills, like financial planning, meditation, managing stress, negotiation. We unknowingly began helping them grow personally and that was even more important to them than professional growth. Find a way to help them achieve their goals, they’ll help you achieve yours.
5. Reward their efforts by giving them things that matter most to them
Culture transcends the workplace. It trickles into how we see the world. How we treat each other. How we treat ourselves. We learned that for our employees to do more of what we valued, we needed to reward them in a way that aligned with our values and mattered more to them. This meant, we interviewed many employees to understand what kind of rewards mattered to them and would motivate them to do better, be more productive, efficient and enjoy their work. Once we knew what they were, we created unique incentive programs that rewarded them on what they valued. We appreciated them publicly, we acknowledged their efforts (not on just one day but remembered to keep mentioning to them every time we saw them). More times than not, appreciating, acknowledging them and making them feel valued along with these unique rewards mattered to them more than money.
It’s very nice to suggest ideas, but it seems like we have to “change the culture regarding work culture”. What can we do as a society to make a broader change in the US workforce’s work culture?
Any change begins with us. It’s true.
We can make a broader change in the US workforce’s work culture by changing the way we look and feel about ourselves.
If companies can focus on helping people like themselves more for who they are, encourage them to reach their goals, and care for them like human beings and not just an asset, the ripple effects of a person loving themselves more will transcend the company boundaries and will begin to infect a larger audience in a shorter span of time.
How would you describe your leadership or management style? Can you give us a few examples?
My leadership style is empowering, encouraging and rewarding.
After I had learned to treat people with respect, like humans and not a cost, I learned to lead from the heart and let me business acumen and skill find ways to share more from my heart. I learned to be more generous than work from fear. I learned if I help my employees in a way that matters to them, they will help me. I learned that if my employees feel like they are soaring, they will help me soar. I learned to take care of them like family. I learned they mattered to me, more than money, more than recognition, more than acceptance form the society. Their success and happiness mattered. Till today, I hear from them, it puts a smile on my face and fills my heart, something no amount of money can do.
I believe in rewarding a person for their work, their intention and the outcome of their work.
I believe encouragement does wonders for a person’s self-worth and is one of the biggest driving factors in doing well for themselves and the company.
I believe empowering others. Because 2 empowered people are better than 10 who don’t believe in themselves.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I was looking for funding to grow my restaurant chain. After knowing on 10’s of doors, there was one person who was willing to take a risk on me. His name was Rehan Yar Khan. After he had verbally agreed to invest in my company, for the next 9 months, he was testing me to see if I’d be willing to listen to his advice, take feedback well and implement changes he though was necessary. IN those months, I met CEO’s, consultants and business owners of very large and diverse groups. I learned how the habits and techniques that helped me scale profitably while doing less. I attribute much of success due to his patience, his advice and his belief in me. He made me feel valued, he acknowledged my efforts, he appreciated my hard work and he involved me in the bigger plan he had for us.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I started F and B Business School, an online platform to help share the restaurant industry’s best business practices with restaurant and food operators globally, because there is a better way to run a restaurant business, one without back breaking hours, employee turnover and paper-thin margins. I want restaurant owners to lead a better business and life. To create a safety net for their family, to have more money to do what matters to them and to have more time to spend with their family and take care of their health.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“I’M STILL LEARNING.” –MICHELANGELO
In Italian: Ancora imparo.
Throughout my life and till today, I have to keep learning to move ahead, especially if I want to do things differently, do deferent things. Instead of accepting what is, I want things to be better within me, around me, in my environment. And that requires me to keep learning. I remember I read somewhere, when you’ve thought you’ve mastered anything, you’ve lost…keep learning. Keeping a hungry to learn mindset has helped me break through mental barriers, mindsets and paradigms that were holding me back to be able to serve others today rather than just wanting to serve myself.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
Love yourself more, because when you love yourself, it will become easier to love the people and the environment around you and that will take care of the earth. It all begins with loving yourself everyday.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you continued success!
