Food & Beverage - Tips to keep your staff happy - By Barry Chandler

Keeping your staff happy will not only make them likely to stick around for longer, but you will find that happy staff are more productive which has a positive effect on your profits.

Don't panic! Keeping your staff happy isn't necessarily about being the most lenient employer with the highest wages. Barkeeper looks at the ways you can work to keep your staff happy and create a better workplace.

Communicating with your staff

Communicating with your staff is important for many reasons. It is your opportunity to gain insight into how they feel their work is progressing as well as to ensure staff are kept up-to-date with policies, issues and day-to-day events in the business. This in turn has the effect of making your staff feel involved and provides them with an opportunity to have an input.

As well as regular one-on-one talks when you can with your staff, there are also methods of communication you can establish to make sure that communicating with your staff is regular and effective.

Team meetings are a great way to ensure that your staff are kept informed and involved with what's happening with the business. Staff can use this opportunity to provide you with their feedback.

You can also use team meetings as an opportunity to provide with training such as new legislation or new policies for the business.

Organising team meetings can be a difficult process. It is best to organise them at the beginning or end of a shift and if attending staff are no rostered on it can be a good idea to provide incentives such as food and drink to reimburse them for their time.

As well as staff meetings, staff notice boards can be a good way of providing staff with information about upcoming events, industry newsletters and so on. The trick with notice boards is to keep them updated and eye catching to help ensure you can capture the attention of your staff.

If your hospitality business is large, you may want to consider developing your own internal staff newsletter featuring achievements from staff (both inside and out of work), upcoming events, policy updates and so on. Staff could be incentivised to contribute to the newsletter and photos etc could also be included. This is a fun way to keep communicating with your staff.

Whichever method you employ to communicate with your staff, the most important thing is that staff are also given the opportunity to have input and involvement. Keeping your staff feeling like they are involved in your business is a key step in helping to keep your staff happy.

Incentives

Incentive is a great way to encourage staff to keep motivated and working hard. Incentives don't always have to be monetary and sometimes the best incentives are more about recognition.

If you are looking to include incentives to help keep your staff motivated you need to be clear about what it is you are trying to achieve. Are you trying to improve sales of a particular item? Fewer sick days? Better time management? Whatever it is decide first what the measures of success will be and choose a reward that reflects the values of your staff. You also need to be clear about whether you want the whole team to be rewarded or one person in particular.

Incentives such as sports events, nights or days out as a team etc can be great way to reward your staff as well as provide a great team building experience at the same time. Whatever incentive you choose, recognising your staff achievements is a great way to help keep your staff happy.

Turnover

No matter what you do to keep your staff happy and motivated, staff turnover is an inescapable part of the business. Clearly the higher the turnover, the higher the cost to you as an employer.

In most cases, where staff morale is high the turnover tends to be lower so staff communication and incentives can go a long way in helping you keep your staff turnover down.

Providing reasonable wages and working hours and providing your staff with career advancing opportunities can also help to keep the turnover down. But remember it all starts at the beginning so make sure you employ a stringent recruitment process so you can find the right staff with the best fit for your business and they'll be likely to stay with your business for longer.

About the Author
Barry Chandler started his hospitality career in Ireland more than 15 years ago and following management training in the five star resort Adare Manor in the West of Ireland joined the Sweeney Hotel Group as part of the opening bar management team of their newest hotel.

This was followed by five years overseas working as Food & Beverage Controller on 4 different cruise ships with Cunard and Seabourn Cruise Line as well as a period with Sheraton Hotels in Austria. Barry has also worked with POS company Micros Fidelio before setting up his own food & beverage control consultancy in 2004.

In 2005, Barry co founded the hospitality management websites www.barkeeper.ie and www.barkeeper.co.uk which offer 100s of downloadable tools and templates to small independent bars and restaurants in Europe and in 2008 setup the first American version of his websites with the launch of www.ManageYourBar.com, the complete online resource for American Bars & Clubs.

Barry holds a Diploma in International Food & Beverage Management from the Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management in Salzburg, Austria, has served as Chairperson of the Young Irish Hospitality Institute, Council Member of the Irish Hospitality Institute and was a finalist in the Price Waterhouse Coopers Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards in 2005.

Barry can be contacted as follows:
Barry Chandler
Tel: (614) 940 4895
Email: barry@manageyourbar.com
Web: http://ManageYourBar.com

Logos, product and company names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

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