Want To Keep Your Restaurant Employees? You Won’t Succeed Unless You Do These 3 Things.

Having trouble keeping your employees?

Sometimes it’s not your fault. Life happens. Employees prioritize factors outside of your control, like moving across the country or wanting more money for a job than you can afford. So you accept their departure.

But sometimes employees leave and you feel you could have prevented it. Something feels off when they leave for the restaurant down the street without much of an explanation.

And now you must deal with recruiting, hiring, and training new employees. Things that costs you time and money. And, that’s best case scenario - when things work out. Because if they don’t, you must let the employee go and start the process all over again.

Are you doing everything you can to keep employees, especially star performers?

Every situation is unique. But unless you consistently do these 3 things, and do them well, you definitely won’t keep your employees:

Set A Culture Of Excellence

Employees need to believe in their company’s mission. The why. And the proper way to accomplish it. The why is the best intrinsic motivator.

Customer experience should be at the center of your company mission. And the following should be expected in some capacity:

• Going above and beyond for the customer
• Reacting quickly to issues as they arise
• Going outside of established job duties
• Collaboration, particularly across the front and back of the house

Mistakes should also be tolerated and not punished as long as they are not severe and employees are learning from them.

Make the company brand represent something meaningful. Facilitate an environment that allows employees to enjoy interacting with their coworkers.

Set the right culture and then follow-through on emphasizing it.

Invest In Your Employees

Why would your employees care about you if you don’t care about them?

Telling your employees you care is good, showing them is even better.

Take the time to get to know your employees on a personal level and make sure they are satisfied. Make sure to regularly express recognition and appreciation for hard work. Make employees feel included in accomplishing the mission.

Check in with employees to provide training and help them reach their career goals. Invest in technology that will provide data around performance, so business decisions, such as promotions and extra training, will be more transparent.

Invest in small perks like rewards, social events, breaks, and other experiences to improve employee quality of life.

Develop A High Performing GM

Develop, promote, or hire an outstanding GM.

The GM role is critical for employee satisfaction and retention. GMs should be leaders and role models within your organization.

You won’t keep many employees with a bad GM. They may still listen to the GM’s instructions, out of respect for the title, but they will leave at the first good opportunity.

The best GMs are:

• Proactive
• Customer-oriented
• Team-invested
• Business-minded
• Positive

Unless your talent is really lacking, you should promote GMs from within your organization. This demonstrates loyalty and commitment to your employees. And, after all, you should be investing in your employees.

Ideally, you have trained several backup candidates to be successful in the GM role. That way, if a GM leaves abruptly, there won’t be panic.

Finally, don’t forget that GMs are employees too, so all the guidelines above also apply to them. Check in on your GM and make them feel appreciated. One of the best ways to make GMs feel included is to give them a cut of revenue so they feel attached to the success of your business.

Good luck! Now go use what you know to make your employees happy!

Thanks for reading :P