Teamwork is the foundation of running any business. If there is no teamwork among the team members or staff, it could be a difficult job to ensure the growth and success of a business. For a restaurant or eatery business, ensuring that all team members are working to achieve a common goal is very important. There are a few businesses that don’t require teamwork but for a restaurant or food place, teamwork is very important. Teamwork involves careful planning, showcasing the strengths of each individual, hiding the weaknesses, and working to achieve a common goal.
If you are a restaurant owner, you can invest in improving the teamwork of your staff which would provide an optimal experience to all the staff members, reduce turnover rates, and increase staff morale. When all the departments in your restaurants aren’t together as a team, it can severely damage the customer experience. Ensuring that all the staff members are aligned to achieve a common goal is very important. Even a lack of communication or poor communication can negatively impact your business.
If you are a restaurant owner who wants to improve teamwork in his/her restaurant, worry not. We have got some tips that will be helpful in promoting and improving teamwork in a restaurant:
Hire Employees Wisely
First things first, you should hire your employees wisely so that there are no issues later on. Your hiring process determines how well your staff and different departments will perform together. While hiring employees, you should make sure that the person you are going to hire has qualities like being a team player, motivated, committed, confident, good people skills, reliable, organized, etc. People who will be possessing these qualities and align with your restaurant’s culture and work motto will be beneficial for the growth of your restaurant.
Along with this, make sure that you also involve your manager or someone else with such a position during the hiring process so that he can determine whether the person will fit into the current team and adjust with the existing team members or not.
Establish Effective Communication
Effective communication should be established across different departments to ensure the success of the restaurant. Like any other business, communication is very important in the food business. When employees are communicating well with each other and working well together, they will be able to deliver a much better experience to customers.
It is your job as the restaurant owner to establish effective communication in the restaurant. It can be done by encouraging everyone to speak and clarifying roles, specifying roles, and setting expectations. Everyone should be aware of his/her job and everything should be conveyed promptly to all the staff members so that teamwork improves and your restaurant becomes a success.
Encourage Feedback
Sometimes, great ideas can come from unexpected places, and in this case, they can come from your customers or your employees. Getting feedback from your employees and your permanent customers is very important in improving teamwork. Big fast-food restaurant chains like McDonald’s have their customer satisfaction program McDVoice where they are able to find out about the behavior of their employees in a particular location from their customers. TacoBell has a similar program called TellTheBell where they inquire about their employees from their customers. Through such programs, they are able to find out how customers are being dealt with at a particular location
Feedback from employees can also be precious to promote teamwork in the company. Some employees like giving their feedback openly, while others like to stay anonymous. Still, whatever the method may be, employee feedback should be taken seriously, and based on the majority of the feedback, appropriate changes should be made to ensure a healthy working environment.
Outline The Expectations & Clarify The Roles
Outlining the expectations and clarifying the roles is very important to avoid any conflict. To avoid unbalanced amounts of work, conflict, and resentment among employees, everyone’s roles should be clarified beforehand and everyone should be well aware of what his job position is. For instance, if someone is hired as a manager, his job is to manage different services and not to serve food to the customers. Everyone in your team must understand their personal roles as well as the roles of their coworkers to avoid any conflict.
Along with this, staff expectations should be outlined so that everyone understands what they need to accomplish and deliver. This can include defining the dress code, cleanliness, reliability, attitude with customers, guest relations, etc.
Hold Social Events
It is your job as an administrator to hold social events so that your employees can develop social connections with each other. Social connections can impact employee performance and mood in a workplace and you can promote positive social connections by curating social events and outings for your employees so that they get a chance to meet and bond with each other. It can include having annual dinners, team building exercises, celebrating a particular holiday or employees’ birthdays, etc.
