How to motivate your culinary staff?

You want to keep your employees happy no matter what type of business you are running and one way to keep them happy is to keep them motivated. You want them to know that you appreciate the work that they are doing and you need to show it so that they don’t resent working for you. Here are a couple ways you can do just that.

1. Have a Hall of Fame – here you will showcase an employee at certain periods whether it is on a monthly basis, a quarterly basis or a yearly basis. But don’t just have the Hall of Fame but also have a ceremony to celebrate it at whatever interval you choose. Recognize them by presenting them with a gift and ensure both employees and management have a say in who is chosen.

2. Birthday Cards – Birthday cards can get impersonal pretty easily so instead of purchasing a box of cards and issuing them whenever one person has a birthday you an instead opt to create a handwritten and personalized card to wish an employee happy birthday.

3. ‘The 30 second boost’ – This requires you to take 30 seconds on each shift to talk with one of your employees about something that is not work related. You can ask about their kids, their parents, a hobby etc.

4. Take them to lunch of dinner on their yearly anniversary – for each year that an employee stays with your company take them to lunch or dinner. You can have this in your own restaurant or kitchen but use the time to get ideas and suggestions from them about the business. This shows them that they are assets to the business and that as their years of experience grow so does your respect for them. They will be happy to know that you are willing to listen to their opinions and suggestions and a lot of great ideas and menu items were developed by employees so you can get a lot of good ideas this way.

5. Give Employee Meals – By this we don’t mean that their meals should always be free but you can allow them to get a discount off of lunch from your menu or allow them free items such as free drinks or you can say everyone gets a free slice of cake of Friday afternoons…. something like that.

6. Feedback Cards – Provide these to your employees to give feedback on other employees. This will help them to see that their opinion counts and that way you can foster a good work ethic as people will be more willing to work well with others if they know that they will be evaluated as they truly are even when the eyes of management are not watching.

You can add to this list as you see the need. Just remember that the same thing you want out of your working experience is the same thing they want. Fair compensation for work done, obvious appreciation and a pleasant environment to work in these are some of the things that your employees want which are what you want as well.