Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jarred Hoffpauir on October 11, 2009 at 6:50pm

I am curious if you have an employee handbook with your rules and regulations clearly spelled out. Also do you use a write up system or a written documentation system for employee training, discipline, and conversations? If not you need to start there. In my experience the handbook and the documentation of training discipline and conversations are equally important.

For now I have one suggestion that may help you out. Try taking your busiest day of the week and schedule yourself for doing nothing but management tasks. Make sure that you do not have to work behind the bar or register. You can do some little stuff to keep yourself moving around the shop but your entire goal should be to document what you see happening. Do not take any actions until the end of each employees shift and then have them clean up about a half hour early. If you have concerns about their actions ask them about it then. Let them explain what they were doing and weather or not they think it was wrong or not. Either coach and train them to encourage new behavior OR discipline if coaching or correcting would just be repeating something they already knew. BTW this is also a good time to take note of good things they do and praise accordingly.

Permalink Reply by John Walker on October 11, 2009 at 8:45pm

Wow
Those are the same words that could describe the same challenges we have in Qld.

And I concur with Jarred's comment.

I found what worked for me, was to spend the time trying to duplicate myself.
Split the managing role into several smaller jobs and put a different person in charge of each role.
Then spend your time teaching and coaching those four or five people.
It also gives them a sort of 'ownership' in the job outcomes.

Of course sooner or later most are going to leave anyway, and you may ask yourself.. 'Why do I spend all that effort and time in training, when someone else is now going to benefit?'
Instead, you should ask, 'What if I dont train people, and they stay?'

By making a commitment to being a long term player in hospitality, you are making a commitment to searching for, and training, supervisors and leaders, and then watching them move on.

Your big test as a manager is, how well the team does, when you are not there.

Permalink Reply by Jay Caragay on October 11, 2009 at 9:09pm

I'm presuming you've set a standard for your staff of live up to. By all means, speak to them and try to correct their mistakes and encourage them to fall in line and complete the task list set for them. But go out on Craigslist and put up an ad for resumes.

Then start firing for performance failure. A staff member continually skimps on the details? Fire that person. Without mercy and with extreme prejudice.

Doesn't matter if you've got long hours and lots of people, making it difficult to gather everyone for a staff meeting. News of the firing will spread like wildfire. Everyone will know, and usually within a day. More importantly, you will demonstrate that you are serious and that there are serious consequences for failing to perform to standard.

Now, grab those resumes and get to hiring replacements.

Permalink Reply by John Walker on October 12, 2009 at 2:53am

So true, Jay.

At the end of the day it is a numbers game.
I have 18 people on the roster. Eight of them for more than 18 months, and 4 of those for over 3 years.
Last year we had 81 staff in total. Up from 63 the previous year.

I must be a tough guy to work for, just ask about 50 of those 81.
The staff who do think you are great, are the 8 or 10 'permanents' who know you are doing what's best for the business, the customers service and their own job security.

Permalink Reply by Jarred Hoffpauir on October 12, 2009 at 9:21am

Jay, that has to be the worst "off the cuff" management advice I have ever seen. It shows no management or training skills. That kind of an attitude sets up a difficult work environment at best and at worst will run you out of business with turnover and poor customer service.

Jay Caragay said:

I'm presuming you've set a standard for your staff of live up to. By all means, speak to them and try to correct their mistakes and encourage them to fall in line and complete the task list set for them. But go out on Craigslist and put up an ad for resumes.

Then start firing for performance failure. A staff member continually skimps on the details? Fire that person. Without mercy and with extreme prejudice.

Doesn't matter if you've got long hours and lots of people, making it difficult to gather everyone for a staff meeting. News of the firing will spread like wildfire. Everyone will know, and usually within a day. More importantly, you will demonstrate that you are serious and that there are serious consequences for failing to perform to standard.

Now, grab those resumes and get to hiring replacements.

Permalink Reply by Jarred Hoffpauir on October 12, 2009 at 9:27am

John, The idea of only having to train a small group of 4-6 people and then having them each train a small group of their own VS training a large group is often called "span of control" there is much written about it found just about everywhere. Its a great way to operate in most circumstances.



John Walker said:

Wow
Those are the same words that could describe the same challenges we have in Qld.

And I concur with Jarred's comment.

I found what worked for me, was to spend the time trying to duplicate myself.
Split the managing role into several smaller jobs and put a different person in charge of each role.
Then spend your time teaching and coaching those four or five people.
It also gives them a sort of 'ownership' in the job outcomes.

Of course sooner or later most are going to leave anyway, and you may ask yourself.. 'Why do I spend all that effort and time in training, when someone else is now going to benefit?'
Instead, you should ask, 'What if I dont train people, and they stay?'

By making a commitment to being a long term player in hospitality, you are making a commitment to searching for, and training, supervisors and leaders, and then watching them move on.

Your big test as a manager is, how well the team does, when you are not there.

Permalink Reply by Mike Spence on October 12, 2009 at 9:51am

I'll echo a couple items here - Aside from the employee problems (welcome to the role of manager!), there is the toughest part (in my mind) of delagating. When I ran our customer service department (different than a coffee shop but simular in management of people), the first two things I had to overcome were:
1) Delegate - I had to learn that while I needed to know every job back there, I didn't have to be the one to actually do them. After delegating a job, follow up and point out the good and bad in appropriate ways.
2) Being friendly is good but forget about being everyones buddy. This was really hard for me as I was promoted doing a job to managing the same co-workers. Over time I had a nice medium but it was difficult to get people to realize that I was their boss.

Permalink Reply by Jay Caragay on October 12, 2009 at 11:31am

Neal-

Still have my cojones? I certainly take that as a compliment!

You most certainly can have shave ice when you visit Baltimore - so long as you visit the third weekend of July when Jays Shave Ice re-emerges every year to do the Artscape music and arts festival.

I've always tended to be rather demanding on my staff. In turn, we seem to attract individuals who enjoy a challenge and don't seem to mind working for someone who can, at best, be overbearing. I believe that if we set a high standard for people to strive for, and empower them to achieve, they will work towards that standard. I think the way to go about it is to believe 150% that it is of utmost importance and stress that daily. It's not uncommon for me to bear down on my staff and grind on them - even if that person is three days away from leaving my employ.

One key, I think, is to hire selectively and make very careful choices about who to hire. Much of this today is based on intuition and my impressions of the candidate. Sometimes I will make a poor choice but I work with that person to see if he/she can excel. If not, then it is time to part ways. I will not hire just to "fill bodies" because that will cost you in the long run. Also, when the time comes to release someone, I don't ponder it for too long. I cannot afford to have my good people become disgruntled and perhaps leave because of the performance of an inadequate staff member. I have to eliminate the problem before the rest leave and I'm really stuck.

Permalink Reply by Jesse Bladyka on October 12, 2009 at 3:58pm

I agree with a lot of things said here. We operate two busy coffee bars in Laramie, WY (also a college town) and at any given time about half of our staff is composed of students, undergraduate, graduate, part time, full time. My biggest suggestion is to spread out the authority. We have one GM for both locations and a team of 6-8 supervisors (total staff of +/- 30). These roles are charged with tasks such as espresso training and quality control, food ordering, new employee training, retail ordering etc. If you can develop a system to deal with a specific responsibility, you should do so, then pass of the systematized task to someone you can trust. Having a core of supervisors allows you to hold an individual directly responsible for the completion of a task. As you're delegating, make sure that you recognize a job well done. When someone puts in extra hours on a busy weekend, or when they show up to cover a close that no one else would, we often toss them a gift certificate to a local brewery, or better yet, invite them to dinner and drinks at our home. Building a culture of hard work and quality with a few strong people will affect the rest of your staff. Give them something to look forward to, "someday I want to be head barista". I was a retail manager for a short time before moving to the wholesale end of our operations and I am so thankful to the systems that were in place and the supervisors that carried them out. As a manager you should have time to spend ON the business, not just IN it. Busy work should not be your job.

Also I agree with Jay, we are always "hiring" if there's a great resume that we get and subsequently we have a great interview with that person, we will hire them. There is always a weakest link and if you take the active role of hiring to replace that employee, it will send a message to your staff that you expect hard work and quality from them. However, while you're doing this, it's important to let your staff know that as long as they show up on time and work hard and do their job fully and proudly, they have nothing to worry about. Also, because we're always accepting resumes, when something (someone) does go south, we have on file 50 or so people who want to work for us.

We've tried peer reviews, but they mostly reflect the drama and friendships of the moment between staff members. We also conduct drink evaluations, which reflect on a staff members service skills as well as their skills behind the espresso bar. These are helpful as tools to back up any doubts you may have about a specific staff member. I think the best thing you can do is maintain high expectations and let people know directly when they are not meeting them. If someone is constantly screwing up, they probably know it. Keep asking your staff why they are working for you, if they don't say "because I want to work for the best" maybe they should look elsewhere.

As far as general messiness, it should not be tolerated at all. Even now as a wholesale manager, when I walk into our retail locations and see a mess, I clean it up. It's happened before in the evenings, I'll walk in and the condiment station is a mess and the buss bin is overflowing and two baristi are standing around with their thumbs in their asses. I walk behind the counter, grab a rag, clean up the mess, bring the dishes back and ask them politely to wash them. I then proceed to clean the grounds around the grinder, the counter under the espresso machine and before I can walk to the other side of the counter to order, they're saying "oh, let me get that" or "sorry, I meant to clean that up". Many of our employees have not had the opportunity to work in quality minded businesses prior to coming to Coal Creek. This puts the burden on us as a company, to uphold standards of excellence. If a barista sees me coming in after a 10 hour day in the roastery and doing their job, they will be embarrassed. If they aren't, they won't last long.

In regards to an employee handbook, I think it's a double edged sword. Sure you're spelling out exactly what you expect of them in black ink, but sometimes that doesn't allow you to imply that you want more. All of our supervisor job descriptions are written to the effect of "your responsibilities include but are not limited to..." We have a very simple mission statement: "To Provide Quality, Above All Expectations" Every employee knows this, and it makes it easy to call them on slacker mistakes.

Lastly, the quality with which you are able to do your job will be reflected in the quality of your employees work. It sounds like you are super busy, and having been there, you've probably hit the point where something gives. Slow down, insist on an office day within your 40 hour work week (especially if you are salaried). Again to the delegation, get as much off of your plate so that you can focus on management, not just upkeep. Good luck!

P.S. You should come down to the MRBC, Valentines day weekend. I hear it's in Ft. Collins, CO. ID wasn't represented last year! Let me know.

Permalink Reply by Mike Spence on October 12, 2009 at 4:21pm

Jessie - a lot of great comments here. I leared from a friend a long time ago that you need to be prepared to be "quick to fire and slow to hire". This does NOT mean knee jerk reactions to things but that when you need to let someone go - do it. There was a time (15 years ago) where we realized we were keeping someone because we felt sorry for them - well as soon as they found something else they dropped us with zero notice!



Also I agree with Jay, we are always "hiring" if there's a great resume that we get and subsequently we have a great interview with that person, we will hire them. There is always a weakest link and if you take the active role of hiring to replace that employee, it will send a message to your staff that you expect hard work and quality from them. However, while you're doing this, it's important to let your staff know that as long as they show up on time and work hard and do their job fully and proudly, they have nothing to worry about. Also, because we're always accepting resumes, when something (someone) does go south, we have on file 50 or so people who want to work for us.

Permalink Reply by Jarred Hoffpauir on October 13, 2009 at 10:13am

Neal,
Nice try but you cant dig your way out of a chauvinistic comment that easily. Trust me ive tried.

Permalink Reply by Andrew R. Tucker on October 13, 2009 at 10:21am

Ok,
So Overall....I have a bunch of great advice. Also, I have a BUNCH OF OFF TOPIC THREADS here. I'm about to pull this one, now I have the info I need to mull over. Thanks everyone for such great help with this problem.
ART