Retaining Your Restaurant Employees: Motivational Programs
Motivational programs can help restaurants improve sales, control costs, encourage good attendance, recognize loyal employees, and strengthen food-safety practices. Effective programs are simple, fair, and offer rewards that employees value.
Some ideas include:
- Bring-a-Friend: Provide a small reward such as cash or food discounts to servers or other employees when a friend uses a promotional offer they distribute.
- Perfect Attendance: Recognize employees who maintain excellent attendance with a gift card, paid time off, or other reward.
- Length-of-Service Awards: Celebrate employees with awards at milestones such as three, five, or ten year anniversaries.
- Employee Referrals: Offer a bonus when a referred employee is hired and remains employed for a specified period.
- Suggestion Program: Reward employees whose ideas produce measurable cost savings or improve operations. Consider offering a reward up to 15 percent of the savings realized.
- Sanitation Challenges: Use short-term contests based on cleaning, food-safety, and sanitation standards in anticipation of the next Health Department inspection. The winner receives the cash placed in the pool.
Remember the Wage-and-Hour Rules
Not all incentive payments are treated the same under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Many promised, nondiscretionary bonuses must be included in an employee’s regular pay rate when calculating overtime. Certain discretionary bonuses and qualifying gifts or awards may be treated differently.
Because state and local laws can also apply, restaurants should review incentive programs before putting them into practice.
Finally, motivation doesn’t always require cash. Public recognition, extra time off, meals, gift cards, preferred scheduling, and team celebrations can be powerful incentives. Keep contests time-limited, communicate the rules clearly, and recognize employees for behaviors that contribute to great service, teamwork, safety, and profitability.
