Running a restaurant is hectic, stressful, and, sadly, often unsuccessful. All ways to add calm and structure should be embraced right away. With this in mind, here are some methods you can use to keep staffing at your restaurant organized.
Make Use of the Latest Tech
Using apps to order food is the latest trend, but there are apps developed especially for restaurants themselves so they can keep their staffing organized and even significantly reduce labor costs. When things run smoothly behind-the-scenes, everybody’s job becomes easier to do. You can use the latest employee mobile scheduling apps as a means to automate scheduling and streamline communications with your whole team, a win for everybody.
These apps can reduce the time it takes to make a schedule of 80%. This eases frustration and means employees have more time to work where they’re most effective. It is comprehensive of leave requests, availabilities, and group chats so that you can easily contact your whole staff if a shift needs to be picked up in an emergency.
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The interface is intuitive for everybody to use, and integrates easily with Point of Sales systems commonly found in North American restaurants. It can also forecast labor costs, and provide managers with a log book function so they can all be kept on the same page.
Give Willingly
Your staff deals with customers who may get angry about the food or the service, rightly or wrongly. If a customer has a complaint, your staff should be preemptively given permission to offer them something on the house, like dessert or a drink. This empowers them and relieves them of the pressure they’d feel if they had to bear a customer’s anger without having the ability to placate it.
Even if a mistake is made, no employee should ever feel like they need to cover for it out of their pocket from their tips or docked salary. To begin, this may be illegal depending on the conditions, and the money to be paid will come from your end, but think of it as a worthwhile investment in bolstering your frontline workers and ensuring your customers are satisfied.
Motivate Via Friendly Competition
Rewarding your staff is a classic motivator. You can set up a prize for the employee who reaches the highest sales targets. You can offer an extra paid day off to the winner, or something fun that doesn’t cost money, like naming a menu item after them. Be creative.
Get to Know Them
It’s sad when any employee feels alienated from the job they’re doing, and you want the people who work for you to feel driven to do their best. Asking questions about their live shows them that you don’t see them as merely a waiter, a busboy or a cook. You don’t have to undermine manager-employee boundaries, but developing a personal connection with the people you work with (besides being a lovely thing!) brings a human element to the job which may make them more likely to dig in and grind when there’s hard work to be done.
These are just a few methods to inspire your staff, and there are others. But try these out, and your restaurant will see positive results in no time.
