How to Keep Your Restaurant Team Happy and Motivated with Mr. Tomato LXP
These days, it’s very usual to hear loud complaints from the restaurant industry workforce, whether it’s from waiters, chefs, or even managers. Along with the evidential increase in turnover rates, this should be an alarming indicator for restaurants.
Employees are the most valuable asset of any company. But we can argue that of all industries, restaurants are one of those where the workforce satisfaction is the most crucial for their success. This is a business were the staff is in constant contact with the customer, meaning that an employee’s attitude could quite literally affect your sales — whether in a positive or negative way.
Luckily, this is a problem that has the tastiest of solutions. We present you with 10 things you must do to keep your restaurant staff happy and motivated and how you can make them simple and more effective with a team development for restaurants called Mr. Tomato LXP.
#1 Provide Regular Training and Development Opportunities
Invest in regular training and development opportunities for your staff to enhance their skills and knowledge and, eventually, raise above to a higher role. This should include training in customer service, food safety, and communication skills.
Mr. Tomato LXP offers comprehensive training and development resources to help enhance your staff's skills and knowledge. It auto-generates gamified training modules for your menu, policies, and bar, and even specialized certifications for diverse topics— all directly from your documents, allowing your team to self-train from the comfort of their phones in the most engaging way!
#2 Foster a Positive and Supportive Work Environment
Make sure you are creating a culture of respect and teamwork. Encourage open communication and constructive feedback, celebrating your staff's successes and milestones and making them feel like they are valued.
Mr. Tomato LXP makes it easy for managers to enhance the connection with their staff. Its social media-style platform allows for easy communication, sharing posts with pictures, special moments, events, relevant news, and even AI-generated pop-up questions to keep employees engaged and stimulated with their learning.
#3 Offer Competitive Compensation and Benefits
This is crucial to attract and retain talented staff and boost their motivation. This includes fair wages, health insurance, retirement benefits, and other perks like paid time off and employee discounts.
Mr. Tomato’s Leaderboard is an easy way to do performance tracking and employee recognition, allowing managers to acknowledge each employee’s outstanding service and contributions to the team.
#4 Recognize and Reward Outstanding Performance
Do regular evaluations and performance-based bonuses and keep an employee recognition program that celebrates outstanding service and contributions to the team.
Keeping track of everyone’s performance becomes easier with Mr. Tomato’s analytics, allowing managers and restaurant owner to view everyone’s progress in an organized and consice dashboard.
#5 Provide Opportunities for Advancement
Make it clear for your employees that there are career growth opportunities within your organization. Encourage your staff to set goals and work towards them, and provide the training and support needed to help them achieve their goals.
#6 Foster a Healthy Work-Life Balance
It’s highly important to allow your restaurant employees to have a healthy work-life balance. Provide them with flexible schedules and ample time off.
Mr. Tomato's scheduling tools allow you to create flexible schedules and provide ample time off to ensure a healthy work-life balance for your staff.
#7 Encourage Employee Feedback and Suggestions
Considering your employees’ opinion is very important for the improvement of your restaurant and its operations. Use their input to make positive changes that can benefit your staff and customers.
#8 Provide a Safe and Clean Working Environment
Our surroundings can impact our emotions in several ways, but restaurants are where tidiness and safety are the most important.
Keep your employees in a healthy environment by meeting all industry standards and regulations. Simplify cleaning and order supervision with Mr. Tomato’s Checklists, ensure that no procedure goes undone and that your employees and customers’ safety is a priority.
#9 Promote a Diverse and Inclusive Workplace
Make all employees feel welcome and valued despite their differences. Embrace diversity in all its forms and strive to create an environment that celebrates and respects differences.
#10 Cultivate a Sense of Purpose and Pride
Provide opportunities to make a meaningful impact on your customers and community. Encourage your staff to take pride in their work and to see their role in your restaurant as an important part of a larger mission.
Happy employees make happy customers
Restaurant employees play a crucial role in providing customers with an excellent dining experience. A happy and motivated staff can lead to better customer service, increased sales, and reduced turnover rates. Therefore, it's crucial for restaurant owners to focus on keeping their employees satisfied and motivated.
