The restaurant business is one of the most challenging environments to work in. This work environment can lead to a vicious cycle of stress across the board. An employee or operator can easily reach their limits, get stressed out, and their quality of work steadily declines. Others are then left to pick up the slack and complete the job. They, in turn, start to reach their limits, get stressed and the cycle continues. Learning ways to de-stress staff can improve the work environment and quality of work at your place of business.
Here are three practical ways that restaurant management and staff can reduce stress at work.
Stay sufficiently staffed
Your restaurant should have an adequate number of employees at all times. Under staffing your kitchen or restaurant will create stress among workers especially when someone has to go on leave or leaves for good. Cross-training can also help alleviate the stress when you unexpectedly end up understaffed. When you cross-train, you will have a number of flexible employees at your disposal. They’ll be able to move around and fill in the gaps when necessary and reduce stress all around.
Have plans and processes in place
A restaurant can go down in flames (quite literally) without a good set of proper operational procedures in place.
These functional procedures prevent the need for quick and irrational judgment calls to be made. If your staff is trained and know these procedures, any employee will know the proper course of action in any situation. For example, if your restaurant has a power outage, without a proper procedure in place, your restaurant could turn into mayhem. If every staff member knows what to do in several emergency situations, there would be much less stress and panic if an unusual situation erupts.
Create a calming work environment
As an operator, you should provide a positive work environment for your staff. This means ensuring your staff get rest breaks, have opportunities to eat/hydrate, and creating an open environment for employee feedback. Restaurants can thrive or fail due to the work culture created and maintained for employees and guests. Hopefully, you already have a safe, supportive work culture, where your employees can prosper. In this type of environment, staff will enjoy working at your restaurant, help their fellow employees, respect their management and create an all around less stressful environment.
What are your most effective tricks to de-stress at work? Share in the comments below!
