You Can’t Create Culture Without Purpose

Giving employees a sense of purpose through recognition and reward are the goals of high-performing restaurant brands

You know how restaurant executives bang on about their companies becoming the “employer of choice”? Or, indeed, already are an employer of choice? Well, that’s fine and dandy, contends ShiftOne Founder Ashish Gambhir. But if you really want bragging rights (and longterm workers) you become a “shift of choice” company. That’s the kind of workplace where employees are largely satisfied with working conditions because you let them know how they’re performing.

Gambhir was joined yesterday by Dr. Melissa Hughes of the Andrick Group and RTS CEO Fred LeFranc during an RTS webinar focused on how employee engagement leads to lowering turnover (and its associated costs). Here’s a brief overview with slides.

Here are a few Shift of Choice brands

Today, engagement — admittedly, a broad subject — is nonetheless a crucial one given the industry’s high turnover rates and overall low unemployment. “While being an employer of choice helps companies attract employees, it has nothing to do with creating a fulfilling culture that helps people stick around in an industry hammered by turnover,” Gambhir declared.

Hughes, the author of two books about how we think and behave, weighed in culture. She noted every company is interested in discovering culture’s secret sauce. To find it, she advised, management should think beyond Frisbee Fridays or foosball tables in break rooms. Instead, they should be aware that a company’s culture arises from the way its workers feel about their daily contributions. “It’s all about how you inspire a sense of purpose in people and how they feel about their roles,” she said.

Do the bulleted items match your labor management goals?

LeFranc wanted to know how restaurant managements can motivate a “very basic workforce.” Performance transparency appears to work, said Gambhir. He cited the app ShiftOne created after studying high-performing restaurant companies. His team was particularly interested in ways they motivated employees to remain in their jobs. Increasing their pay was one way, of course. But it wasn’t the only method they used.

These companies also measured performance metrics and shared them with employees who, in turn, always knew where they stood in terms of those metrics. To maintain performance, managers recognized individuals and rewarded them— and also encouraged competition among staff. ShiftOne then developed an app incorporating three important elements: transparency, recognition and competition. Gambhir cited the results (below) of Flynn Restaurant Group, the country’s largest restaurant franchisee, which now uses it.