Business Success Workforce Engagement

By | October 1, 2019

Restaurant Managers who invest in engaging their employees has a domino effect. An empowered employee will increase customer satisfaction, decrease days off, and decrease wasted time on the job. Good relationships on the job decreases toxic communication, which lowers employee turnover.

Build Habits With Training

Knowledge is power. The more knowledge an employee has, the more empowered they are to communicate to customers more effectively. Set clear expectations and make sure everyone is held to the same standards.

Restaurants rarely have a lot of room for advancement, but there are positions that give employees the opportunity to use their skills and improve their performance. They become responsible for the knowledge they learn, and they become mentors for newer employees.

Coaching vs Communicating

The power of coaching lies in the ability to make sure everyone understands the message. It separates ‘listening’ to a message to ‘hearing’ what the speaker wanted you to hear.

Coaching also offers a way to communicate that doesn’t give the other person the opportunity to argue. It is non-confrontational. It is nontoxic.

Coaching also focuses on ‘doing’. It is possible to tell people ‘what’ you want them to do, in detail, but still leave them unable to ‘do’ the job.

Target Communication

Coaching and Target communication keeps employees from tuning out. Technology makes communication so easy that people are ‘attentively ignoring’ messages they do not want to hear, or that they believe are irrelevant.  This can include corrections, changing their routines, performance reviews, personal messages, and instructions.

Never say something important through technology, in public, or when someone is doing something else.

Emphasize and Reward Accountability

This eliminates resentment, confusion and time wasted in a shift. Good organization leads to effective, stress free staff.

How Can Managers Make This Work

Understanding how to manage staff, and successfully managing staff are two diametrically different tasks. The first one is based on knowledge. The second on is based attitude, perception, and personality.

A poor organizer will put too much workload on their staff.  An ambitious, driver, personality type will take too much responsibility, creating frustration which they can take out on their staff.

Teach Yourself to Value Staff

When employees feel valued they are more likely to provide feedback that helps good managers avoid problems before they become crisis.

Define roles

Every team member should understand the scope of their responsibilities and duties. If they are working the late shift and a piece of machine breaks down do they get the other one out of the back? Call the repair man? Call the boss? Tell customers it is not available

Limit the span of control

Empower employees do not micromanage them. Managers have enough work to do without needing to babysit the staff. Remember that everyone has an important role to play satisfying customers, making profits for the restaurant, and in the  hospitality industry.


What is the most important aspect of a person’s job? Is it getting food to the customer as fast as possible or interacting with new customers the moment they sit down? The more consistent tasks are, the more confidence the employees will have. Confident employees are more relaxed. Relaxed employees create a nice environment.

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