15 Tips for Building a Stronger Restaurant Culture
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What Is Employee Management?
Before we delve deep into the expert tips to help your team work better, we’ll discuss the concept of employee management itself so we’re all on the same page.
Employee management (sometimes called staff management or workforce management) is a set of interrelated processes and practices that a business uses to help its team perform at their best every day.
With the advent and growth of mobile technology and cloud computing, many businesses conduct these processes and practices almost exclusively via computer and its associated software.
Granted, some of the components of employee management — hiring and discipline, for example — are more effective when done face-to-face without a computer to get in the way.
Other components, such as time-tracking and scheduling, are best done with software that helps you save time and effort.
Benefits Of Employee Management
1) Increases Employee Productivity
Maintaining employee productivity can be a challenge for even the most successful managers.
The processes and practices of employee management simplify that task by providing insight into the way your employees operate and how that contributes to your business as a whole.
Armed with that knowledge, you can make the necessary changes to increase employee productivity company-wide.
2) Decreases Labor Costs
Labor costs are one of the largest expenses that most businesses have to deal with.
But with an effective employee management program in place, your business can gain more control over both the way your team works and the costs associated with this activity.
Decreasing labor costs in this way can have a profound effect on your company’s bottom line and, by extension, its ultimate success.
3) Eliminates Risk Of Non-Compliance
A big part of employee management as a whole is about complying with local, state, and federal employment laws.
Where your business is located plays a large role in determining what those laws will be as practices differ from state to state, county to county, and even city to city.
When you abide by all the statutes, regulations, and ordinances (e.g., payroll, overtime, work hours), you all but eliminate the risk of non-compliance in your area.
4) Improves Workflow Efficiency
When you implement the tips in the next section, you’ll discover ways to streamline workflows and improve efficiency throughout your business.
This will yield dividends in the form of a happier and more engaged team that is better able to tackle any problem or project that comes their way.
5) Ensures Data Security
Data security has always been important in the financial sector, law offices, and companies that rely heavily on research and development.
However, as remote teams quickly become the norm rather than the exception, all corners of the business world are discovering the importance of data security and keeping their proprietary information out of the public eye.
Strong employee management practices help keep track of files, documents, and other data that has the potential to damage your business should they leak out.
6) Promotes Team Motivation
Motivation is a big part of what makes your team successful. An employee management system with motivation at its core can help promote team motivation and improve the way they feel about their job and the company as a whole.
And when your employees are more motivated to do their job well, your customers and clients will notice, and your business will improve.
Employee Management Tips
1) Create The Best Schedule Possible
Effective employee management starts with scheduling. And in the 21st century, the best schedules are created with help from dedicated software like Sling.
Whether your business has one shift or three, Sling can help simplify the schedule-creation process.
2) Establish Process Clarity For Employees
Create a process for everything your business does. Whether it’s taking orders or interacting with customers, make sure that process is clear. Encourage your employees to practice the process until they can execute it without difficulty.
3) Track Time And Labor Costs
Effective employee management also means effective time and money management. You can achieve all three at once by using an app like Sling.
Sling’s built-in time clock and labor cost analysis tools make payroll processing as simple as a few clicks or taps.
4) Establish Process Clarity For Customers
When your employees use the same process repeatedly in their interactions with customers, those customers learn what to expect and what to say to get what they need. That’s a good thing.
Establishing process clarity for customers (whether it be placing an order or picking up a product) makes it easier on all parties involved and ensures overall customer satisfaction.
5) Implement An Alternative Work Schedule
Alternative work schedules — like split shifts, flextime, and compressed workweeks — allow employees to balance their work lives and personal lives. This balance translates to improved focus and happiness at work.
6) Don’t Put Customers Above Employees
We’ve all heard the saying, “The customer is always right.” Unfortunately, this idea can sometimes cause trouble in the workplace. It may lead to a whole host of problems, including low employee morale and a feeling in your team that no one has their back.
There are certainly occasions when the customer is right, but if you can take the side of your employees once in a while, they’ll feel better about themselves and their job.
7) Cultivate A Strong Employee/Employer Relationship
Cultivating a strong employee/employer relationship increases productivity, improves employee loyalty, and streamlines conflict resolution. Take the time to get to know your employees so that they feel like a part of a family.
8) Give Employees The Best Training
Few things are as intimidating as being thrown into the workflow without the proper training.
Set up a process to train new and existing employees that is both comprehensive and complete (i.e., don’t start the training and then fail to take the employee all the way through).
9) Motivate Employees The Right Way
Each of your employees is unique. They all have different personalities. And each of them finds motivation in a different way.
When you get to know your team members’ likes and dislikes, you can tailor the way you motivate them to be more effective.
10) Create A Clear Managerial Structure
Within your business, there should always be a clear line of responsibility. If an employee has a question for his direct superior, he should know who that person is and the responsibility shouldn’t shift from one manager to another.
11) Conduct Regular Performance Reviews
Periodic performance reviews should be a regular part of your yearly schedule. Always lead with the positive and be sure to base your review on a few key points.
For more on this important activity, check out our article 12 Easy Tips To Get The Most Out Of Employee Mid-Year Reviews.
12) Offer Competitive Compensation And Benefits
Compensation and benefits are two of the most effective means for increasing morale and improving your employee management. Avoid taking this concept to the extreme, but realize that it does play a part in motivating your employees to perform at their best every day.
13) Handle A Disgruntled Employee Promptly
A disgruntled employee is like a bad infection that can spread to other parts of your business. Just like treating a physical infection in your body, the best way to stop it from spreading is to catch it early and do your best to treat the underlying problem.
14) Establish Clear Expectations
Give every employee in your business a set of clear expectations. These expectations should state what the employee is held accountable for and outline behavior and office standards.
Think of these expectations as a “cheat sheet” for doing a good job. A set of clear expectations gives your employees a clear path to success.
15) Make Your Company Mission A Part Of Everything You Do
If you don’t have a company mission, compose one soon. Print it in your employee handbook. Display it on the wall. Then make that mission a part of everything you and your employees do.
In combination with clear processes and expectations, this will help your employees feel like they are working toward a purpose, not just because you said so.
16) Maintain A Productive Work-Life Balance
A big part of a successful employee management system is maintaining a productive work-life balance.
Giving team members enough time to take care of commitments and responsibilities in their personal life makes it easier for them to sustain a positive attitude while they’re at work.
Work-life balance also applies while your team is on the job. Be sure to provide enough breaks throughout the day to keep team members happy, positive, and energized to do their best.
17) Implement Team Task Management
At first glance, team task management may seem like little more than a glorified to-do list. While that is a big part of the process, it’s so much more than just checking off items on a to-do list.
As an employee management strategy, team task management is the process of directing, organizing, and conducting both smaller tasks and larger projects through to their conclusion.
This often involves:
- Planning
- Testing
- Tracking
- Reporting
- Enforcing deadlines
- Integrating task dependencies
- Creating priorities
- Managing time on task
- And so much more…
In some ways, team task management looks a lot like project management, but the two are actually very different.
Project management focuses on the phases a large-scale undertaking goes through and the team effort behind it.
Team task management, on the other hand, focuses on individual jobs that must be done to keep the project or the business running smoothly.
18) Set Business Goals
Goals give your business direction and purpose other than just making money.
They also serve as a way to provide motivation and contribute to your overall employee management strategy.
Business goals are very similar in concept to employee development plans in that they set a target of improvement at which your team can aim and strive.
19) Establish An Organizational Strategy
At its most basic, an organizational strategy is a plan that specifies how your business will allocate resources such as money, labor, and inventory in order to support infrastructure, production, marketing, inventory, and other business activities.
Typically, organizational strategy is broken down into three distinct categories:
Each category is a building block within the larger plan of action that guides your business and contributes to employee management.
20) Improve Company Culture
Company culture contributes heavily to the success of your employee management system.
Improving company culture, then, goes a long way toward keeping your team happy, healthy, and focused on doing their best at all times.
The textbook definition of company culture is the behavior within an organization and the meaning that people attach to that behavior.
As a tool for improving company culture, that definition is a bit too general. But when you look beneath the surface at the components of company culture, you’ll begin to see how it applies to employee management.
Those components include:
- Company vision
- Company mission
- Organizational strategy
- Values
- Norms
- Systems
- Symbols
- Language
- Assumptions
- Beliefs
- Habits
When you understand how these components of company culture affect your business, you can begin to make small improvements that will contribute to the success of your employee management system.
21) Identify High-Potential Employees
A big part of any successful employee management system is identifying high-potential employees.
Autonomous, adaptable, persistent, and self-aware employees are hard to come by, so it’s all the more important for your business to identify them early on.
Doing so will help your business keep these high-potential individuals challenged and satisfied in their job so they don’t start looking elsewhere for a better opportunity.
22) Work On Retaining High-Performing Employees
Though they may look similar on the surface, high-potential employees and high-performing employees are two very different things.
High-potential employees, as the name describes, have the capacity and the capability to do great things in your business.
High-performing employees have demonstrated their capacity and capability for greatness and are striving to continue improving.
Successful businesses need both types of employees on their staff rota.
An effective employee management system will include programs and processes that encourage high-performing team members to continue working for your business.
Two big motivators that make this possible are compensation and benefits. Employee management doesn’t revolve exclusively around these variables, but they do play a big part in job satisfaction.
23) Build A Staffing Model For Future Use
A staffing model is a group of reports, charts, graphs, and other data that measure and describe your business’s work activity, labor needs, and expenditures associated with the way your team operates.
At its core, then, a staffing model is a predictive tool that makes it easier for your HR department to identify annual business needs, formulate a plan to meet those requirements, and, ultimately, create an employee management plan that serves your business well.
Within the realm of employee management, a staffing model can help your business establish the number of team members it needs to excel and what skills and knowledge your employees will need in order to reach the goals you’ve set.
Armed with that information, your business will be better equipped to understand the current state of its employee management, what it needs in the future, and what steps to take to get there.
Use The Right Tool For The Job
At the most basic, employee management comes down to good communication.
It doesn’t matter if that communication revolves around scheduling, inventory, clocking in and out, ethics, or customer service. The better you communicate with your employees, the stronger your team will be.
We developed the Sling app to streamline communication. Sling is a suite of tools that makes scheduling, tracking labor, finding substitutes, assigning tasks, and building employee engagement extremely simple. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
There are so many ways Sling can help improve your employee management that we don’t have room to talk about them here. So instead of reading about it, why not try it out? Sign up for a free account and see for yourself how Sling can streamline your managerial duties.
For more free resources to help you manage your business better, organize and schedule your team, and track and calculate labor costs, visit GetSling.com today.
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This content is for informational purposes and is not intended as legal, tax, HR, or any other professional advice. Please contact an attorney or other professional for specific advice.
