The holiday season is upon us! This means one main thing for restaurant operators & leaders: the busiest time of the year! Crowds of hungry and thirsty guests will be piling through your doors, eager to fuel their holiday shopping sprees or spend time with loved ones.
This time of year can result in staff being overworked and feeling run down. It is hard work serving all the guests & making the magic happen behind the scenes. So this holiday season, make sure your staff and employees are well taken care of and feeling supported by following our tips:
4 Ways To Keep Your Staff Happy During The Holidays
1) Create A Consistent & Fair Schedule
While it can be hard to make the perfect holiday schedule for your staff, ensuring that you do your best and keep everyone’s busy lives in mind is very important! Of course there will be busy weekends where you need most of your staff to be on the floor - if so, make sure to give everyone at least a few of their preferred days off.
Employees who are able to relax & recuperate on their days off will be ready & motivated to get back to business and continue creating memorable guest experiences!
2) Allow For Festive Team Building Activities
Even though you’re at work, it doesn't mean you can’t feel the holiday spirit! Allow your staff to participate in as many fun activities as possible during this busy time. While most restaurants aren’t able to shut down and have a full-blown staff shindig, there are many other ways to celebrate & increase team building and positivity:
- Holiday cookie decorating
- Staff Holiday Brunch before opening
- Holiday-themed wear days (Ugly Sweater Saturday!)
- Team night out
By allowing your staff to feel included in common holiday workplace activities, people will be more inclined to continue working hard & staying focused during hectic rushes.
3) Focus On Giving Back As A Team
Giving back is very important during this season, as we are reminded of those who may be less fortunate than us. Rallying together as a team to contribute to a charity or a charitable initiative will leave everyone feeling good, spirited, and fulfilled! Here are a few things to keep in mind when attempting to get your staff together to give back:
- Local or national? What charitable drives are happening in your own backyard?
- Money or time? Does your staff have the means & time to get out and help (whether it be at a soup kitchen or wrapping gifts for the elderly)?
- What will encourage your staff to participate & achieve optimal results? Sometimes incentives, such as gift cards, are great ways to bring in more charitable donations (the most nonperishable cans wins, for example)!
Uniting your employees during this season is a great way to focus on team building activities, that truly have a purpose.
4) Let Your Team Focus On Customer Experience
The holiday season is hard on the restaurant & food service industry. Customer experience should be the number one priority, especially during this busy time. However, just because it’s a unique season does not mean that the typical kitchen equipment breakdowns won’t be happening. The worst thing that could happen during December is an equipment issue that leads to a ton of lost revenue, and a huge headache for your team. Instead of focusing on the customer experience, your staff will be consumed with repair & maintenance issues that they should not be worrying about.
In order to empower your teams during this holiday season, partner with a technology platform (such as ResQ!) to take repair & maintenance issues off your hands. Enabling your employees with easy-to-use and trackable platform is the best gift you can give them!
Having access to a great technology platform will allow you to focus your efforts on growing your restaurants - without sacrificing other areas of the business! Why attempt to implement multiple technology platforms, when using ResQ will result in solving multiple business needs all in one? If you’re looking to optimize your current hiring needs, look no further!
When looking to implement the right technology into your restaurant, it’s important to find something that is able to streamline all your needs into one solution. ResQ is an end-to-end repair & maintenance management platform that focuses on cutting costs, saving time, and increasing overall efficiency and visibility.
