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Five techniques for turning your restaurant staff into a high performing team
By Sean Conrad
April 7, 2011
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In a restaurant, every employee has a vital role to play in creating a great dining experience for patrons. If your team isn't working together effectively, or individual members aren't pulling their weight, the whole establishment suffers. Poor team performance is also likely to impact individual employees, resulting in dissatisfaction, lower performance, tensions or animosities, and higher turnover.
Conversely, when working on a high performing team, people feel supported, better enjoy their work, and are likely to be more efficient, engaged and productive. All of this is great for business. So how do you turn your staff – who typically have different skills, abilities and perspectives - into a high performing team?
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Here are five things you can do:
1. Define clear performance expectations for each role
Understanding individual roles is the first step to being part of a high-performing team. Ensure every staff member to know what their role is, what's expected of them in terms of performance, what support they can expect to receive from others and how their work impacts the team and the restaurant as a whole. There are three formal ways you should communicate this information to your staff: job descriptions, competencies and goals.
Every staff member should have a clear job description that outlines their roles and responsibilities in the restaurant. They should also understand the roles and responsibilities of other staff members. By having a clear understanding of their role, as well as everyone else's, each staff member will understand their interdependence.
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Staff members also need to understand the competencies that are important to high performance and success in their role. You may have core competencies for your restaurant that help establish your distinct character or culture, as well as competencies for individual roles. Employees need to know how you want them to work and what you value as a team and an organization.
Finally, it's important for every employee to have clear individual goals that link to the overall goals for the restaurant. Every team member needs to know what they are expected to accomplish, and how their work is helping the team and the restaurant achieve its goals. This goal alignment helps build commitment, accountability, engagement, and high performance.
2. Train and cross train staff
To build a high performing team, it's important to provide everyone with training in their particular role. Training should be used to address skill gaps and should also broaden or deepen existing skills or develop new ones. And remember, training takes many forms. It can include formal classroom training as well as job shadowing, mentoring, reading, observation, webcasts, podcasts, etc. Different training media help you accommodate your staff's learning style and availability.
When you're building a high performance team, it's also important to cross-train team members. Cross-training allows an individual to "walk in someone else's shoes" and gives them a broader understanding of the workplace and team. It's a great tool for building team relationships and strengths. You could have a waitress work a few shifts bussing tables or doing prep in the kitchen. It's also great to get managers back in the trenches doing their employees' work. Cross-training staff in this way invariably gives them a better understanding and deeper appreciation of the challenges their team mates face – and results in better teamwork and communication. It also results in a stronger, more nimble workforce who can fill in for one another in a pinch.
3. Give staff ongoing feedback and coaching
Every employee needs to hear, on a regular basis, what they are doing well, where they can improve and if there's anything they should stop doing. By giving all your employees ongoing feedback and coaching, you help improve their individual performance, as well as the team's.
4. Gather feedback on performance from team mates and patrons
In a restaurant, with its busy work environment and varied shifts, it's almost impossible for a manager or supervisor to have a deep knowledge of each of their employees' performance. By gathering 360-degree feedback from those who work most closely with each employee, you can get a better perspective and understanding of their performance. You can also better understand how the employee is functioning on the team, and how they are perceived by the team. In addition, you can use feedback from restaurant patrons – either on the performance of an individual, or the experience created by the team. This invaluable information can help you and the employee maximize their performance as well as the team's and address any problems.
5. Recognize and reward high performance
If you want to encourage strong team behaviour and performance, recognize and reward it. Get everyone on board with this initiative, encouraging praise, "thank yous" and recognition for individual work well done, in support of the larger team. If you recognize and reward individual good performance publicly (in front of the team) rather than privately, your acknowledgements and rewards can serve to motivate the entire team to perform. And when the whole team is performing well, it's important to recognize and reward the team as a whole, not just the high performing individuals.
These five techniques are basic employee performance management best practices that foster employee high performance. In a restaurant, where you need everyone working together as a high performing team to deliver a great dining experience, they can help to improve both individual and team performance.
About the author:
Sean Conrad has helped countless organizations improve the way they manage employee performance. He's a regular contributor to Halogen Software's blog.
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