You Can’t Get Good Help These Days
Posted by estiator at 10 July, at 03 : 24 AM Print
MANAGING FOR SUCCESS By CONSTANTINE N. KOLITSAS Business Coach
IN my discussions with clients, friends and associates, I’m hearing the tired old excuse “You Can’t Get Good Help These Days” with more frequency than ever before. And while there’s an element of truth to the assertion, it’s all too convenient to place the blame game where, in fact, most restaurant managers and owners could take most of the responsibility for workplace malaise on themselves.
Truth: In the old days, the young workers coming out of the Hispanic countries to take restaurant jobs were more motivated. When I first started managing in the late 80s, I had dishwashers that were watching the chef’s every move, trying to learn as much as possible. They wanted to get ahead and improve themselves. If something needed fixing, it was common for one of the kitchen guys to volunteer to fix it (which had the added bonus of helping to stave off exorbitant fees for service calls). When a reach-in refrigerator needed cleaning, the entire unit was emptied, scrubbed carefully, sanitized, and put back together without me having to provide any direction. These guys made my life easy. They were grateful for the work and didn’t need me to scream to make things happen. All I had to do was treat them with respect, and set expectations.
Today, the lower paid kitchen employees may not have that same drive. But it doesn’t mean that they aren’t “good help”, it just means, they need to be managed.
For many independent restaurants, “managing” means manning the cash register and greeting guests. It means, reprimanding staff that step out of bounds, and being on top of your vendors. Too often, it’s expected that staff should know what to do and just do it. The amount of resources put into training (just about zero) tells the entire story: We’re not training our employees, we’re not actively managing them, and we expect the same results from this generation as we did from the generation of workers that started at the bottom twenty or thirty years ago. Wishful thinking…
Today’s entry level workers – most of whom fall into the much hyped and dreaded “millennial” generation – require training and require managing. And they need to be inspired. The key to getting good work from people – especially people working the undesirable positions – is satisfaction, or happiness, or gratification (choose your term, they’re nearly interchangeable in this case). And while this has always been the case, the baseline for “happiness” has changed, and as managers, we need to understand this and modulate the way we manage.
The immigrant coming out of Latin America twenty years ago was so grateful to escape poverty and live in the United States, that there wasn’t much more needed for them to arrive at some kind of personal contentment. With the money they were making, they could support a wife and children back in their home country; they could build a home in their village to which they dreamed of returning; by sacrificing modern comforts in the U.S. they could survive on what they made and have money to spare. They didn’t need smartphones and noise-canceling headphones; they didn’t need streaming services and voice-activated electronic devices. They were happy getting by with a few changes of clothes and, if life was real good, an old run-down car.
None of this is true of today’s newcomer. And none of this could ever be true of a millennial, regardless of where her or she was born and raised.
You Can’t Get Good Help These Days
So, as the baseline for what gives us pleasure has shifted, so has awareness of what is happening outside of the work environment. If widespread computer ownership has been around for thirty years, it’s only ten years since smartphones first made it onto the market. Few dishwashers owned PCs or laptops so their access to the internet was extremely limited. Today, every dishwasher has a smartphone, is on Facebook or Instagram, watches soccer online, and is constantly connected to friends and information platforms. Their idea of happiness is now influenced by the same external factors as everyone else.
If this reads like a wistful longing to return to the days when employees were less engaged with the outside world, and easy to exploit, I apologize. This is not the intent, but, rather, an attempt to analyze the causes so as to approach today’s issue of employee engagement effectively.
And as the internet and social media create an environment of egalitarianism and social parity (none of us is above the other), we need to understand, as managers, that we cannot manage topdown unless we manage laterally as well, meaning that while we recognize our place in the job place hierarchy, we need to conduct ourselves as peers with all of our staff members. This is most effectively accomplished when staff is properly trained, and when we continually communicate standards, goals and expectations. All of this requires careful attention, planning and resources. It’s not difficult, but it’s something with which many independent restaurateurs have little experience.
So the solution to finding “good help” is not to look to the staff, but to look within yourself, to understand where your management deficits are and to seek training and help so that you can make self-adjustments that will have a positive ripple impact on your business’s work culture. There are good people out there, they just need to be coached into being good workers.
CONSTANTINE KOLITSAS is the president of CNK Consulting, a Restaurant Consultant and Coaching business. He can be reached at 203-947-6234 or at 203-947-6234 or at ckolitsas@gmail.com.
