Temporary Set Back

So, with the advent of yet another job change, and the latest attempt at earning a college degree, I've found I need to temporary shut down the blog.  Sorry folks :-(  I do have every intention to begin again, once I manage to carve out some more time in my schedule.  Stay tuned for updates!

Maintenance

When something is broken, fix it. That's the whole point of this week's post.

It can be hard. Budgets are demanding sometimes, quality repairmen can be hard to find. But the fact is, few things will destroy your employees' motivation faster than dealing with broken stuff. If they see you don't care enough about the business to keep it in good repair, why should they? Or worse, if they think you don't care enough about them to provide a functioning work environment, you could be facing a mutiny.

I once worked at a store where the touch screen on one of the registers would stick. You'd touch a button, and nothing would happen. You'd have to bear down, or lightly touch it. There wasn't any consistent solution to getting it to work. Once it did register the touch? Often times, it registered more than one. Instead of one junior bacon burger, you just rang up fifteen. It was an extremely frustrating situation in the middle of a lunch rush.

Management was aware of the problem, but not inclined to fix it. They were “too busy to call the help desk.” There “wasn't enough money in the budget” for a new one. They “weren't even sure” who to call to get it fixed. So the problem festered, until eventually a crew member struck the screen in frustration, cracking it. It took about two days for a tech to come out to repair it, and the full $2000 repair bill made sure no one bonused in that store for the quarter. The frustrated employee was let go, which was a huge loss to the team.

The real irony? We found out from the tech these screens go bad all the time, and had someone called the Help Desk a replacement would have been sent out, free of charge.

Or take another example, where the air condition vents were dripping water onto the floor. This was in a pizza shop, where there's a lot of flour dust around. The little water puddles, plus the dust, made for extremely messy floors. Not to mention the annoying fact that people born in America aren't used to having the ceiling drip water onto them. As the situation dragged on for weeks and weeks with no word from the company on whether or not it would be fixed, morale dragged. It grew increasingly difficult to get a decent closing mop job: “Who cares? The floors will just look like shit again thanks to the water puddles.”

It eventually took a conversation with the owner, who placed a phone call to the management company of the strip mall the store was located in. Citing the lease agreement, which clearly stated the management company's responsibility to maintain facilities, the shop's owner was able to get the problem resolved. But not before customers witnessed several irritated outbursts, and saw days of filthy floors.

It may be an expensive hassle to fix the problem, but you cannot allow a problem to perpetuate indefinitely. The longer it runs, the worse it gets and the worse the side effects get. Employees and customers know a well run operation when they see it, and they won't hesitate to leave a poorly run one.

Firing

Being the manager (or owner) typically comes down to one thing: Hire and Fire Authority. It boils down even further to control over who works in the restaurant. You're coaching the team, and you get to decide who plays and who doesn't. A lot, I'd say a vast majority even, of managers I've worked with will Hire but not Fire. I've come to feel that's a mistake, a very painful mistake.

That does NOT mean I think people should be fired more often. I've met plenty of people who are too quick to terminate an employee over issues that could be fixed with just a little flexibility on the manager's part.

Not everyone is of equal caliber. I'm not very good with anything that involves moving my fingers fast...making sandwiches in a lunch rush, spreading pepperoni on a pizza. You can find a lot of people better than me. However, I am excellent with customers, and do a fine job coaching employees. So it makes no sense to fire me because I'm not fast with the pepperoni. Just about everyone is like that...it's not that they're bad for the team, you just haven't found the right position for them to play.

Almost all “employee problems” stem from management. When a manager fails to set a proper, consistent expectation the employee is going to do whatever feels appropriate. It's not the employee's fault they were not properly directed. Training deficiencies are not the employee's fault. Lack of tools are not the employee's fault.

But...more often than we realize...sometimes everything IS in place. The employee has been instructed how to do the job. They've been given clear goals. They have the tools to do the job. Yet...they don't fulfill the expectation. And most telling, they don't care.

It could be showing up on time. It could be following procedure. It could be something like being friendly towards customers. It could be halfway completing a task (garbage went out the door, but the can liners never got replaced). With most people, you can point out the behavior, make it clear (respectfully) that it's not acceptable, and the employee corrects the behavior...because most employees want to do well at their jobs.

Not everyone. And when you start saying the same directives over and over (“You have to be here at the START of your shift, Alec, or you're hurting the team” or “Use the ¼ size ladle with that sauce, please, Smitty” or “Lisa, we talked about this yesterday—the trashbags have to go IN the dumpster”) it's time to think about helping the employee find a place where they're better suited...'cause they clearly aren't fitting into your store's culture.

This why you want to use Progressive Discipline. It gives both you and the employee in question a chance to evaluate what's going on. The employee is made aware of your seriousness, and is given ample opportunity to change. It also protects you from wrongful termination suits, or having to pay out unemployment benefits when a termination is for cause. As long as you're being Consistent, anyhow.

But the key thing to remember is that keeping an unhappy, unmotivated, or incompetent employee on payroll is a lot like leaving a tumor in your body. It'll only make things worse. Once you've determined the situation won't improve, you need to end the drama and let the person go.

Life Outside Work Is Critical

Keeping perspective is really the key in the QSR world. When you start taking things personally (they never are) and treat each challenge like the end of the world (they're not) you're going to get stressed out and make bad decisions. These bad decisions will more often than not make life more difficult for your subordinates...and that's really the cardinal sin. You have to keep your cool so you can keep the needs of your team in mind.

The best way to do keep perspective is realize the importance of the service industry. It's important: People pay money for the convenience, for the experience, to have their day made a little better. There's a reason so many people make their livings (albeit most of them just barely) in the service sector: it's imporant.

That being said, no small child ever got cancer because of a late pizza. No one lost their life because a coupon wasn't rung in correctly. Economies of nations do not fall because food cost is high one week. These are all things to be avoided, and your ability to make the day go by without these problems is why you're the boss.

But it's just work. It's just a job. It's a big part of who you are, but it's not the whole package. You spend quite a few hours of your week outside the store too. You've got a family (or hopes of having one). You've got hobbies. Friends. Books you like to read, movies you like to watch, volunteer work you like to participate in.

If you work to live—instead of living to work—you'll be more balanced. More able to put that dropped meat patty into perspective. (Really, those things don't cost much. If that's your biggest problem in life you're golden). You'll be less likely to fly off the handle, throw things, yell and scream. You'll be a more compassionate human being, and compassionate human beings take better care of their team. A team that feels looked after tends to work better.

By an odd paradox, having a life outside work will make you a better person. Being a better person will enable you to do a better job at work. Having a life outside the store lets you have a clearer focus on what you do in the store.

So leave on time, or even a little early, whenever you can. Don't show up absurdly early for no reason. Stay away on your day off, live your life instead of stopping by or calling every hour. And if you're sitting there going, “But then the store will fall apart!” you need to get yourself a management team that's up to the job. Teach, train, and a develop your junior managers and use them in a way that takes advantage of their skills.

That's all there is to it: get a life. If you have one already, don't be ashamed of it. If you're putting in your share of the work and the hours, very little will be gained by doing more. Everything in moderation, people, even your job.

Progressive Discipline, in a Nutshell

You've made the hire. You've set the expectation, trained the employee, ensured they have the tools to do the job. You've provided the feedback on how they're doing. And yet...they won't do it.

You're pretty sure this isn't an ability thing. They trained well, completed the task while you were closely supervising them. But now that you've left the grill in the capable hands while you work with someone else...the quality has dropped off significantly. Or maybe it's a prep issue...they can't seem to read the list no matter how many times you emphasize it.

What do you do? It seems a lil unreasonable to fire them, no? But at the same time...the work needs to be done, and done correctly. And if you have to stand there watching this employee work...then what are you paying THEM for?

This is where progressive discipline comes in. I hate the term, personally; it seems very serious and scary, tantamount to firing someone. But the logic behind gradually ramping up the consequences is sound, and when used properly can be a key weapon of choice in battling all manner of trouble.

Generally Accepted Recipe for Progressive Discipline

1: Verbal Warning

2: Written Warning

3: Consequences

The idea is that AFTER you've coached someone on the issue, you initiate progressive discipline. You don't use the process on a new employee...that's silly. You don't even use it on someone who's slipped up (to this day, I miscount things, use the wrong tool, not pay close enough attention to something...and I don't think that warrants a formal warning). You have to mark a pattern of sub par behavior that hasn't been affected by your normal coaching.

Once you've done that, you issue a formal verbal warning. Sit down in the office, step into the walk-in, take a walk outside. Take the situation out of the normal ebb and flow of the store, away from distractions. Lay down what's going on, why it's a problem, and what the employee has to do to correct the situation. Afterward, track the date and discussion somehow, in case you have to ramp up the process...you'll want to be able to cite when the verbal warning happened, and how the discussion went, in any written warning (I like the idea of having write-up forms where you can check a “Verbal Warning Only” box).

Then you wait. Hopefully, this is enough to correct the behavior. In a best-case scenario, the employee realizes you're serious about the issue and it goes away. But sometimes...that's just not going to happen, for a wide variety of reasons.

That's when a written warning comes in. You write out the situation, the fact it's been previously discussed, and what the employee needs to do to correct the situation. Have a space for their rebuttal, or any comments they want to make regarding the issue. If there's something they need you as the manager to do (change their scheduled start time to allow for the bus route, be more specific with instructions, etc) this goes in the employee comments. Clear consequences for the continued behavior as well as a timeline of events (“corrected immediately” is a popular one) should be included. Both of you sign and date the form, preferably with a witness.

If this doesn't correct the issue, you can either repeat the written warning step (appropriate if it's a relatively minor issue, or if there's been a fair amount of time before the relapse) or escalate further. This is where suspension or termination comes in. (Notice how far down the post we start talking about firing someone). If you feel there's potential with the employee and they're just blowing off the write up, take them off the schedule for a week. Especially with younger employees that sort of hit to the wallet can really make them reevaluate their behavior without sending them looking for another job. However, if this seems like something that simply isn't going to be corrected...you can terminate for cause that's been well documented.

There's probably a hundred different ways to do progressive discipline. Almost every company has their own take on the topic, and each system has it's strengths and weaknesses. But not one of them is any good unless the management team uses the system, consistently and justly. A rusty saw isn't gonna cut anything, and a machete used at random in a cornfield is just expensive.

Office Organization

It's just after the end of the rush. You're trying to get the store put back together, get people off the clock, do cash drops, till changes. Time is flying by, things are chaotic, decisions are being made in split seconds based on routine and a dash of information. To say time is a precious commodity is to call China a well-populated nation.

Jimmy comes up to you, reminding you about the vacation time he wants to use. That means finding the approval form in the office.

Right. Finding...the approval form. In the office.

You walk into the office, and there's papers and small wares everywhere. A new spatula for the promo sandwich starting next week is on the printer. New PoP materials are half out of the envelope, sitting on the desk chair. Cash reports, last week's Key Business Items sheets, applications, employee files, and a coffee cup are all laying at random in the 4 square feet that make up the work area. Post it notes with random, unexplained numbers are stapled to the wall. Notes about schedules, requests, product outages—dammit, looks like you need to find some more ketchup packs to transfer in—are everywhere they'll stick.

The filing cabinet is jammed shut and won't open. That's where the vacation request forms are supposed to be...but considering there's a Gamer's Monthly magazine in the Nightly Paperwork in/out tray, you're fairly sure nothing is in it's right place.

By now, you've got three other employees looking for guidance, a customer wants to “talk to the manager,” and Jimmy needs to go to his second job. Oh well, maybe you can get the form in tomorrow and still be ahead of the cutoff for vacation hours...

You don't have time to hunt for things. Not on the line, where you'd never think about starting the rush with utensils missing and the food in a different spot every day. You have even less time to spend in the office, going “Where are the I-9s? The work permits? I know I have seven orientation packets left...where did they all go?”

When you have off-line time, it needs to be maximized. Whether you're stepping into the office for a pen or sitting down to do a food order everything needs to be where it can be found. Nothing will destroy your lunch or dinner rush faster than stepping into the office to grab some sort of training aid...and then not coming back for 15 minutes because you had to dig through four drawers to find it.

Organize the work place, including your office. This is a challenge in part because most companies don't offer guidance. They assume (correctly) that if you're smart enough to run a multi-million dollar operation on a day-to-day basis, you can keep a tiny closet-sized office tidy. The hard part is the restaurant itself...the office is for people like you to worry about.

The other part of the issue is the management team. When you have four or five people using the same space, you'll have problems. Someone doesn't feel the pens should be kept in a holder on the desk—pens should be left in their box in a drawer. Or “I work too hard when I close to put everything back where I got it.”

You're the boss. It's your office. It's gonna be you explaining to your boss why the place is a wreck, or why you haven't filed the XYZ paper (because you have no idea where the blanks are). You're responsible for what goes on the office, and that gives you the authority to say how it goes. That's not the say don't take the management team into account—as with anything, there's no advantage to alienating people. But if you have a part time shift supervisor who refuses to put her nightly paperwork where everyone else does...go ahead and use progressive discipline.

For the love of all things good, lead by example. If you clearly make an organized office a personal priority then it's harder for everyone else to blow it off.

And trust me, you want to make it a personal priority.

Don't Run the Team Ragged

Your people are there to help you run the business. They aren't there to run it FOR you.

You may have the most competent assistant manager in the company. Does that mean its ok to leave them understaffed in order to free up labor dollars for you? I don't think so.

Your best closer never fails to set you up in the morning. He puts every other closer to shame with his skillful stainless steel polishing. Does that mean you work him six nights a week? Not the best idea.

Everyone has a point where they reach peak productivity. Too few hours or too little responsibility will leave your team members feeling unimportant or bored—which leads to a lack of motivation. Too many hours, shifts that are scheduled poorly (a close, a day off, followed by an open for instance), or too many duties will burn out your team and send them to the want ads. You make the big bucks because you can see when people are hitting their peak, and adjusting your operation for that moment.

It takes extra effort, but for the love of all things good in the world rotate your people. Spread out the workload. Develop your less experienced people so they're able to handle more of the load. It ties into the Always Hiring mentality...just as you constantly need to reseed your labor pool, you have to tend the people who are already there.

As tempting as it might be to lean on a competent or even gifted team, you're hurting yourself and the company in the long run. They'll notice your short hours, your light workload, and it'll breed resentment. Use your team, by all means: no one should work themselves to death when they have the ability to keep a healthy balance.

But balance means staying in the loop, keeping productive, and not taking advantage of your subordinates.

Hiring

If you run a QSR restaurant you are always hiring. You're always taking applications, you're always interviewing, you're always wracking your brain to find enough hours to train and keep a new hire.

Why? Because if you ever start thinking, “Hey, I'm fully staffed!” then you'll be caught flatfooted when your best register guy decides to start skimming from the till. Or you won't have a backup when your primary closer gets in a car wreck. Or maybe that family your predecessor hired all at the same time, the backbone of your schedule, will decide to start playing games and demanding special treatment...and you'll have to give in, because you have no one in place to take over. It's a pain in the neck to fit training, interviewing, and those extra hours into the schedule...but just remember the last time you had to do all that while you were short staffed. Which is the best option?

But for the love of all things good and happy, don't just hire anyone. The whole advantage to thinking ahead and hiring BEFORE there's a crisis is you get to hire for personality. You can take your time, review the application, ask questions about the last couple jobs, the employment gaps. Talk to the person about who they are. You can think about whether or not they fit with your current team, if they'd complement the people you already have (or hope to have). Set 'em up for a second interview to get another impression. You have time, so take an extra couple days to make the right call.

If you don't have a subordinate manager or shift supervisor to help with hiring, fix that. Start developing them to spot good applicants. Teach them the questions to ask when handing over the application. Make sure your people know the staffing goals...what hours are you hiring for? What positions? Pay, benefits? If you're the only person who can answer these questions you're setting yourself up to get burned out, or to miss good people who don't want a run around (yes, “Come back at 3 to ask these basic questions” is a run around).

Above all, be persistent. Review staffing efforts at your manager meetings. Even when it's not a priority, make it clear that hiring hasn't dropped completely off the table. You have to get the right people on your team, and if you can't do that if you aren't looking. Turn over is a fact of life in the QSR industry, and while you can take steps to minimize it...the only defense is to be prepared for it.

You are always hiring. Period. Make it your mantra, and instill it down the chain of command.

Consistency is Key

Consistency is one of the quickest ways to make or break your restaurant. A lack of consistency—whether in policy, direction, or quality—will make your customers not know what to expect, your employees insecure, and your P&L number fly all over the spectrum from week to week. Being consistent, however, is how you generate a loyal following of customers, employees who are confident in their work, and stable financials.

As tempting as it can be to play favorites and make exceptions, it's generally a bad idea. The rules are there for a reason, and breaking them can have unforeseen results. Yeah, you know Janet is under a lot of stress right now, so you wink at her calling off once in a while. But Louis notices Janet not getting in trouble, and now he's starting to call off regularly. When you try and call Louis on the issue, he throws Janet's special treatment in your face.  Now what do you do?

Same thing with work duties. If nightly inventory is an issue only once in a while (instead of nightly, as the name suggests), or if stocking cups before lunch rush happens only if certain people are on duty it creates random fluctuations in service and control. If there's a set of duties that needs to be done regularly, it needs to be done regularly. You can't just let someone off the hook (including yourself) if they aren't in the mood.

Of course, there's a standard disclaimer. You're the officer in charge, the lead on the ground, the person with the answers. You know when to make exceptions, so make them when it's appropriate. It's assinine to fire someone because they've been throwing up for three days but can't afford to go get a doctor's note. It's unreasonable to expect a manager who worked an open-to-close shift to do a detailed inventory count. Just don't make exceptions the rule.

Because the rules, the policies, the procedures are there for a reason...if they aren't serving a useful purpose anymore, they should be changed once and for all instead of leaving people not knowing what to expect.

The Schedule

The schedule is what is going to make or break your experience in the QSR world. That's it. End of story. Period.

If you write a good schedule you'll be happy, productive, and profitable. If you write a bad schedule you'll be pissed off, unable to accomplish anything, and either out of business or changing careers. The weekly schedule is how you manage your primary set of tools—your subordinate team members. (On the flip side, the weekly schedule is THE central issue in their lives...but more on that later).

With enough exceptions to drive you to drink, rush periods can be predicted. Rush periods, by definition, are when large amounts of your business happen. Flipping burgers, this was lunch. Some days up to 75% of our business hit between 11am and 2pm. Slapping pizzas, I saw a lot of weeks when 50-65% of the weekly revenue happened in 5 hours every Friday. When you start talking large percentages of your daily or weekly business, you need to start thinking large percentages of your labor hours. If you short-staff your rush period you'll get nothing but pissed off customers, pissed off crew, and an alcohol problem for yourself.

Since you can't turn a profit if you work everyone all the time, pre and post rush hours need to be carefully considered. This is when the heavy lifting for your store happens. Before the rush, this is when your tomatoes get cut, your condiments get set out, utensils put in place, food stuffs readied for battle. After the rush, someone gets the trash and dishes out of the way, re-preps all the stuff you went thru before, keeps an eye on business to make sure late-lunchers don't go away feeling second rate. These periods will make or break your day, and you shouldn't give just anyone with a pulse these hours.

If you pay attention, you'll get a feel for when exactly your rush starts and stops on any given day. It's not written in stone. There are so many variables to when people eat, and sometimes the only way to win is with literally last-hour phone calls to keep people home or call them in. So while the labor matrix your district manager or operating partner or owner tells you to use is a very powerful tool...it is far from always right. That's why they pay you to write the schedule, and not a machine.

How do you write a solid schedule? Start by having everyone's current availability, in writing. Signed and dated. Nothing will destroy a good mood—or a good schedule—faster than someone coming up to you with a variation on, “But I told you every third Tuesday I have my back waxing appointment!” Be flexible, but when people tell you they can work a particular set of hours hold them to it. Knowing they've made a written commitment to be available for certain hours and days goes a long way towards keep people honest.

Stuff comes up. Doctors appointments, hot dates, family gatherings, once-in-a-lifetime rock concerts. The type of things we should be worried about, instead of work. Have a schedule request system in place for these situations—and use it. Giving someone a day off—especially if they're available five to seven days a week—will not ruin your business. It doesn't matter what the system is, exactly...but make sure it's written (so you and others can verify dates, track how many requests someone makes, etc), easy to get to for the crew, and something you can work into your schedule writing routine easily. I'm a big fan of a three ring binder, one page per schedule week. I worked for a guy who had a manilla envelope stapled to the wall next to the calendar in the office. Whatever works is what works.

Have a solid schedule routine. Start by scheduling to schedule, where you have a couple hours to just sit in the office or the dining room and write the schedule. This lets you focus on the task, do the labor calculations, make adjustments as needed. Resist the urge to “throw” a schedule together on the fly...you're not just putting numbers and names on paper, you're deciding the fate of your restaurant's next week.

Think “schedule” all week long. At least, have it in the back of your mind. If Susan is bucking for hours, coming in to help when there's call offs, make a note to reward that with more hours on the next schedule. If Billy has decided the post-rush trash run is more about his cigarette than the trash, make a note to yank those hours. The schedule is a great tool for motivating people...but only if you use it!

The needs of the business come first. Being flexible is admirable, and very necessary to keeping a happy workplace. At the same time, an employee who expects a full time schedule but can't work rush hours is not doing you any favors. A delivery driver who only wants to work Monday and Tuesday night? That's fine...except that driver had better understand he's only going to work 6 hours a week at most. Someone who wants to flip burgers only between 2 and 6pm? That's just taking post rush hours away from someone willing to come in at 10am and stay all day.

But at the same time, without employees who is going to take care of the customers? Remember everyone on your schedule has bills to pay, some more than others. It's not reasonable to use an adult with children to feed for a handful of hours if you can possibly help it. And while they have bills to pay, they have lives to lead too. You'd be pretty pissed off if you had to close, then come in and open. Or if you had a class to attend and your boss scheduled you to work at the same time. A little empathy, looking hard at finding solutions that meet everyone's needs instead of taking the easy route, will save you a lot of trouble in the long run with turnover.

Define Success

You can't get where you're going unless you KNOW where you're going. This is a key element in leadership—most of the books of the subject call it “vision.” Having the picture in your mind of what success means. Visualizing the landmark that lets you know you've arrived. Knowing what that is (and being able to communicate it to your team) will be the difference between greatness and mediocrity.

That being said, what the vision is happens as important as simply having one. I've been involved with many different organizations that all defined success differently. I've worked for companies where the sole goal was to make money for the owner. I've worked for companies where client satisfaction is the only thing that matters. I've worked for companies where the vision was broad—“We want to be the best in all areas”—and narrow: “How low were controllable costs this week?”

If you're a manager working for the company, it should be pretty easy to determine what the grand vision is. Your supervisor will probably tell you outright what's important. If not, the numbers you report to the office wants every week is a good indicator. The PNL or Key Business Items sheets are usually long and full of varied (and important) information...so pay attention to the items your District Manager asks follow up questions about. If you're always asked, “Why is your food cost such and such?” but never, “What are you doing to improve sales over last year?” then you've got a good idea where to focus.

If you own the place it's a little trickier: You have to decide what's ultimately important. You should have figured this out before opening the doors, really, but if you haven't give it some thought. Is superior customer service your key to success? Incredible food? Cleanest bathrooms in town? Is sales per labor hour your key metric? Cost per burger?

Once you know how your success is defined, you can plan on how to achieve it. If you feel that having the best customer service in town is your goal, you can hire friendly peppy people and based performance reviews on that. If cost per pizza is your key metric, you know to watch portioning.

You also know what can get a little less attention. If you feel that delicious food or fast service is more valuable to your customers than a smiling face, then you can hire a skilled person who isn't a “people person.”  You can clean the lobby once or twice a day instead of every hour.  You can spend more on the ingredients and less on the decor.

The point is, know where you're going. Then, you can decide (in a million small ways) the best route to get there.

New Blog In Progress

Starting next week, on Wednesday the 28th, I'm going to start blogging about the QSR industry.  The how's, the why's, the little tricks of the trade I've picked up by caring a little too much about a 99 cent industry.  I'm pretty excited about this new project, so...check it out :-)

Updates will be happening each week on Wednesday, so watch this space or subscribe to the feed!