A negative restaurant environment will destroy your team-building efforts. Before you can get employees to work together, you have to make them happy about working in general. As a manager and leader, you set the tone for the restaurant. Your interactions with employees, guests, and other members of the leadership team have a direct impact on how well your team performs. A positive environment with high team morale will increase efficiency, improve customer service, and reduce turnover. A negative team environment will, of course, have the opposite effect.
Five Ways to Boost Restaurant Team Morale
Praise. Show your team members you value them. Never miss an opportunity to praise employees for a job well done. A well-placed “well done” is worth a lot, and has even greater impact when offered in front of others. Low key contests and small rewards can also help create and maintain a positive team environment.
Training. Teach your staff something new every day. Training takes on many different forms. Formal training meetings, online training courses, and ongoing mentoring all are forms of teaching. Employees who are constantly learning and being challenged with new information have higher morale.
Empowerment. Trust your employees to do their jobs. When you provide the right training and ongoing mentoring, you won’t have to micromanage your team members. Trust them to do their jobs just as you are trusted to do yours.
Consistency. Treat everyone equally. Be fair when it comes to scheduling and discipline. Don’t bend the rules for anyone no matter what the circumstances — and don’t just leave discipline to the whim of a supervisor.
Communication. Communicate openly and honestly. Communicate with your people about everything that affects their team environment. Encourage questions and listen to feedback from staff. Work-related gossip is an enemy of teamwork — stop it before it starts by keeping employees fully informed.
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