ELECTRONIC HOUSE CALL - July 27, 2001

Halfway through two weeks at home. Terrific weather, very civilized!

I feel another rant coming on . . .

WE'VE GOT A SHORTAGE, BUT IT'S NOT HOURLY LABOR
I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that the labor shortage we face in our industry is not caused by a lack of bodies at the hourly level, but by a lack of enlightened management at the executive level.

I am led to this conclusion by the discouraging number of e-mails I receive from managers who are fed up with trying to deliver high levels of service under the restrictions created by their company policies, who are frustrated when percentages are emphasized at the expense of hospitality and when substandard, even disruptive, staff behavior is repeatedly tolerated because "it's too hard to find good people."

Unit managers, at least the ones who write me for advice, hold little hope that the thinking "at the top" will ever change, so they only see two options. One is to scrap their standards, knuckle under and become good little company soldiers. The second is to leave for a more humane working environment, often in another industry. Those that do sell out to the corporate line then create oppressive working environments . . . that drive their good workers into other restaurants and, increasingly, into other industries.

My problem is not with unit level management. In general, I think unit managers are close enough to the realities of the business to (usually) know the right things to do at the right time for the right reasons. The problem is that the system these managers have to live with -- indeed, that everybody on the staff has to live with -- is really created at the corporate level and often does not give unit managers the latitude to do what they know needs to be done.

The corporate climate, in turn, is created by executives who often have little or no operational experience and who are several steps removed from the daily functioning of the restaurants. If these key execs do come from operations, it was long ago in a totally different set of market conditions. Often, they are more concerned with the price of their stock than with the experience their restaurants are delivering to the public. They are in the business of restaurants, focused on numbers . . . which is distinctly different from being in the restaurant business, focused on hospitality.

This insanity, while most obvious in a corporate setting, is often repeated by absentee owners with a well-intentioned sense of what is "right" and what is "wrong" and a "my way or the highway" attitude. While I acknowledge that we all have the right to screw our own lives up any way we want, I am concerned about the message that we are delivering to the young workers of today who we need to grow our industry in the new century. Will they stick around long enough to "get it" or will we send them running to other opportunities?

People don't leave companies, they leave managers. If turnover is an issue in your organization, you need to do some serious introspection . . . while you still have an organization to examine!

. . . I feel better now!

[ Home ] [ Top ] [ Email Restaurant Doctor ]

© 2001 Restaurant Doctor