Pizza Today - April 2021 - 12

M I K E 'S M O N T H LY T I P

MIKE BAUSCH

The Employee Hangout
Set standards and enforce them

ou're in your business all the time,
surrounded by the same four walls
day in and day out. Even if you own
multiple locations, you're seeing the same
people over and over again, and that's not
a bad thing. They're the people that you
chose, the people that you stand behind.
They're the people you support, and it's
normal and natural to want to do right by
them and protect them. That's all well and
good, but it takes a turn for the worse when
you start to value their comfort over the
restaurant's health. When that occurs is
when your business stops being a business
and becomes an employee hangout. That's
when you're seeking an employee family
funhouse rather than a team.
A family is a blood relation, meaning
no matter what happens, you can't undo
that connection. That is not, nor should it
be the case for your business. An employee
hangout dynamic can quickly occur when

your restaurant becomes the hangout spot
for staff to come and chill before and after
their rush. It makes their rush that much
more lackluster. The restaurant should
have peaks and valleys, but with a hangout,
you have people standing around openly
wasting time on the clock. You also have
an owner who's more concerned with staffing liking them rather than having highly
efficient staff. The goal should be efficient
and focused work from your team. They
should see the owner as someone who cares
a lot about them and the business. Hard
work manifests respect and, in turn, breeds
loyalty.
To combat the employee hangout,
standards must be king above all else. There
must be a known standard to start, and that
no one, including the owner or any manager, is above that standard. When you work
this way, your work choices are made for
the business's health rather than an imme-

diate self-benefit. I don't work for a business
of me. I work for Andolini's Pizzeria, and we,
as a team, do what needs to be done to protect
Andolini's Pizzeria's health. When you work
for the business, the business works for you.
When you have standards and don't abide by
them, you discredit the ideals and disrespect
and disenfranchise those who would ever seek
to comply with those standards.
Here's an example. You have a staff member who hasn't requested off in advance and
calls in to say that " They're not feeling it today. " They want the night off. Now you know
you need at least three servers on your floor,
but you figure the other two can " handle it, "
and they'll probably be okay. You want to do
right by this one server because they helped
out a lot in the past. Now, you've undervalued your standard of having three people in
your rush. The other two servers feel like that
standard doesn't matter now, and they have to
do extra work to cover for this person. All the
while, the customer gets lackluster service and
is that much less likely to come back to your
restaurant. All because of your shortsighted
theoretical loyalty to a singular employee.
Hangout dynamic starts slow and builds to
erode the fabric of a successful restaurant. The
correct answer would have been, " I'm sorry.
You're not feeling great tonight. You've got
to get a cover. That's the standard. You got to
figure it out. Anything I can do to help you,
I will. But we need three people on the floor
tonight. " It's not cold or emotionless; it's
respecting the standard and with a standardized answer. As a result, people appreciate it
because that's the rule. When everyone buys
off on the rules and abides by them, they feel
secure. That doesn't occur with fake rules
or loose guidance. When people know the
rules will have their back, they respect them.
In this case, the other two servers, who now
have an incomplete team, may grow demoralized. There are always exceptions that take
judgment on your part to determine the call.
When constant exceptions occur, they're not
exceptions at all. Instead, they become your
standard, even if you didn't choose them to be
your standard.

MIKE BAUSCH is the owner of Andolini's Pizzeria in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Instagram: @mikeybausch
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Pizza Today - April 2021

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