Your Team Should Be Doing Things Differently

We know that experiences are important in hospitality – but too often we wind up treating our staff very differently. Yes, we’re paying them to be there whilst customers are paying to be there, but that doesn’t mean that your team aren’t people too, and that when they walk into work their behaviours, emotions, wants and needs all change. They don’t. Whether it’s the guest experience or the employee experience, it still boils down to one very specific feeling - fulfilment.

There are many possible reasons behind opening your business, but it’s very likely that one of those reasons was to realise a sense of fulfilment that you weren’t getting when you were employed. Even though your team don’t have their own business, they still want to achieve this same feeling - they want to feel fulfilled, like they’re making a difference in their own lives, that of their families, and that of their customers. I know it sounds a bit daft and the exact sort of thing that somebody would put in a book or a LinkedIn post, but it’s true.

People are an inherently social species and we actually feel better when we help each other out, and that’s because we’re all on drugs (bear with me on this one…)

Your brain releases 4 main Neurochemicals that give you a good “high”:

1.        Dopamine

2.        Serotonin

3.        Oxytocin

4.        Endorphins

Dopamine is more of a selfish chemical i.e. “I’ve achieved something / I’ve done something”. Serotonin is linked with mood, confidence and social standing - feeling respected or valued. Oxytocin is released through physical touch (like hugs and handshakes, not the sort of touch that’ll get you sent to HR), acts of kindness, collaboration, and genuine connection. Endorphins are usually thought of as natural painkillers and are released during exercise, laughter, or when pushing through something tough- think about how you and your team feel after smashing through a record-breaking day or week - you’re absolutely wiped but something just feels good about it.

There’s a bit of a theme between most of these chemicals; did you spot it? Out of the 4 main neurochemicals that your brain releases, only one of them is a reward for your own achievements and actions, the other three chemicals are produced as a result of how you make others feel (sidenote: I often tell my Dad that he’d feel like less of a miserable git if he was nicer to other people).

So, if you want to make yourself feel better, the scientific thing to do is to make other people feel better. I’m not saying that you need to run round giving gifts (although one of our clients did take their entire team to Dublin for a couple of nights which has had some astounding impacts on staff turnover and morale), but doing things like listening to your team and responding to them, praising them in public (and criticising them in private), acting when they tell you that something is wrong, and helping them to be better at their jobs are all things that cost nothing but a small amount of your time.

There’s another few points to note on this too - Dopamine is fleeting and doesn’t last particularly long, and Endorphins are strong but temporary whereas Serotonin and Oxytocin can last hours, if not days. Out of the latter two neurochemicals, Serotonin can last much longer, but Oxytocin has a stronger effect and is the better chemical for establishing loyalty.

We’re in an industry that struggles to keep hold of staff, so it makes perfect sense that we should focus at least some of our energy on providing experiences that create loyalty. The best way that I have found to do this is through collaboration and responsibility. With a couple of our clients we have very cleverly managed to tie an aspect of this in with the day-today operations of certain restaurants. Quite often, one of the biggest issues that a restaurant can face is menu stagnation. The chef wants to change the menu, and the owner also wants the chef to change the menu, but between ordering, prepping, and service there’s very little time for a complete overhaul. Hospitality doesn’t like to do things in bits either- they won’t look at a menu change until there’s a full menu to change. We got around this by having a set day for menu creation. We told every member of staff that they’d have the chance to have their dish on the menu. This included the front of house staff, and although not all of them could cook, we asked them to write down the recipe, quantity, instructions, and then we let them plate it up.

There were a couple of caveats though; every item that went into that dish had to be weighed and costed, and a recipe or spec needed to be written at the same time. We then printed off some comment cards and put them on every table in the restaurant. Once a customer was seated and ready to order, we’d explain that every Monday the team spends a whole lot of time creating new dishes and asked if they’d like to try one for a lower price than the standard menu. When the new dish came out of the kitchen, we’d explain what it was, who had made it, where the idea came from, and then ask them to fill out the comment card. We kept the comment card simple - a space to write the name of the dish, and a couple of tick boxes that gave the customer the option to select a score from one to 5, and to tell us whether they agreed with the price being charged.

There were quite a few benefits to this exercise; the chefs felt as though they had been heard, the front of house team felt included, customers really liked the ingenuity of the idea, and it inadvertently turned into a competition over who could come up with a new idea and who could get the best rating. The benefits to the business were also fantastic; they now had a shed load of fully costed recipes that were being built on week after week, staff engagement and morale crept up, and they had enough new dishes each month to rewrite the entire menu. One further benefit was that if the business then needed to use the services of a cheffing agency, then we already had a spec for every dish. Oh, and both sales and profitability went up as a result.

Now, I’d like to believe that it was my idea that led to the increase in profitability, but had the staff not taken the idea onboard, then it would’ve been dead in the water with an excessive amount of wastage being produced as a result.

I suppose that the message I’d like to get across here is this; if you start treating your team as you would your guests and give them a better experience of working for you, then they’re less likely to leave, more likely to get involved, and you’ll make more money as a result.