At National Restaurant Consultants (NRC), we have spent decades in the industry to build our programs for Operations Analysis and hiring and training procedures. We infuse these practices with the belief that, at its core, a restaurant business is hospitality, requiring a level of customer care that goes above-and-beyond. And sometimes in the daily operations of a busy restaurant, this belief can get lost.
It’s similar to an experience Scott Greenberg recently wrote about for Nation’s Restaurant News (NRN). Mr. Greenberg is a business coach and author of The Wealthy Franchisee: Game-Changing Steps to Becoming a Thriving Franchise Superstar, all of which informs his business sense of the restaurant world and the employees who make it possible. As Greenberg wrote for this NRN piece, he was engaged in a Q&A centered around employee productivity—more specifically, employees who do their contracted job versus employees who care to do their job.
“Every restaurant depends on moments that can’t be required. A server notices that guests are celebrating an anniversary and creates a memory they’ll talk about long after dessert. A cashier walks around the counter to help an older guest carry a tray. A line cook sees another station falling behind and jumps in before anyone asks. None of those actions are likely to appear in an employee handbook, yet they’re often the moments guests remember most because someone chose to care just a little more than the job technically required,” he explains. “I think of that as discretionary effort. It’s the willingness to invest emotionally in the work rather than simply complete the work. The question that has interested me for years isn’t why some employees naturally give that extra effort while others don’t. It’s what makes someone want to.”
Of course, there is much more to the human experience and conditioned behaviors than can be eradicated simply through good work culture; but as Greenberg goes on to explain in his article, there are many top-down factors that can be implemented to improve upon employee motivation. There are pieces of employee culture that need to be nurtured so that employees feel valued and happy; and there are other more purpose-driven practices that foster a business’s sense of the bigger picture.
Some of Greenberg’s ideas include:
- Worker experience. “What does it feel like to work here?” Greenberg asks. “Not what wages are paid or what benefits are offered. What does it actually feel like to spend a shift working under this leadership team? What does an employee experience from the moment they walk through the back door until they leave at the end of the shift?”
The real question here is, as an employer, are you treating your staff as the cogs which carry out tasks? Or have you built a work environment where employees feel valued and like they are contributing to something? Obviously we place emphasis on customer experience—that’s crucial in being a part of the hospitality industry. But to be hospitable is to focus on people, and that means all people, employees included. The employee experience directly impacts the customer experience, and when your staff buys into this symbiotic relationships, everyone benefits.
- Value details as much as the big picture. Greenberg makes it clear: good work culture doesn’t usually require a massive operations overhaul. While efficiency and equipment and management styles all impact how a work feels at their job, usually a little recognition—even just a few seconds’ worth—can change the tide entirely.
Greenberg says, “When people believe their effort has been seen, they begin to feel that they matter. Recognition isn’t powerful because it flatters people. It’s powerful because it tells them someone noticed.”
- Always pay it forward. This is not just the rule for the customer experience. “In many organizations, the guest experience eventually becomes a reflection of the employee experience. Leaders don’t just teach hospitality; they model it. Employees absorb that experience, and many eventually pass it along to the people they serve,” says Greenberg. Managers have just as much impact on their employees as they do their customers. Like teachers or coaches, managers can directly affect how their employees learn, grow, dream, and perform—in the moment and on into the future.
These philosophies are inherent to how we work with our clients to hire and train managers and staff for success. Restaurants must always remember, it’s a “people business” and create working and dining experiences that emphasize these human needs.