The Ten-Minute Manager�s Guide to ... Creating Community at Work

SOME OF THE BEST-RUN foodservice businesses also are family-run operations, with members of various generations filling key staff roles. One secret to these businesses� success is that employees care about each other as well as about their guests.

By Derek Gale, Associate Editor -- Restaurants & Institutions, 6/1/2007

SOME OF THE BEST-RUN foodservice businesses also are family-run operations, with members of various generations filling key staff roles. One secret to these businesses’ success is that employees care about each other as well as about their guests.

Matching the natural camaraderie and sense of belonging felt by family members may be difficult for larger companies to achieve. It can be done, though, and operations that aim to make employees feel part of something akin to family and let them know that their efforts and opinions count often enjoy lower turnover and higher levels of productivity and success.

Cultivating that type of culture begins at the top. “We want to have the kinds of relationships and experiences and a place to come to work where people feel a part of it, not just like they are a cog in the huge machine of Chick-fil-A,” says Andy Lorenzen, the Atlanta-based chain’s manager of human resources.

Go Fish

With its 700-person staff, Campus Dining & Shops is the largest employer at the State University of New York at Buffalo. To promote camaraderie, boost morale and improve service and results, the department instituted a “fish philosophy,” adapted from “FISH!” by Stephen Lundin, Harry Paul and John Christensen (Hyperion, 2000).

The four key components of that philosophy are “Play,” “Make their day,” “Be there” and “Choose your attitude.” The first involves incorporating fun into work, which the department does by staging events or hosting theme days, such as Wacky Hat Day. Participants receive “fish chips” that they can spend at an annual auction by participating in team-building events and being responsible for outstanding service moments.

“It’s a way employees are recognized for doing great work or doing something out of the ordinary,” says Ray Kohl, Campus Dining & Shops’ marketing manager.

Pass-Along Praise

At Poste Moderne Brasserie in Hotel Monaco, a Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group property in Washington, D.C., General Manager Michael DeGano and his team recognize effort above and beyond the call of duty through a “kudos” program.

Staffers nominate praiseworthy colleagues, and the candidates are discussed at quarterly meetings. Those who give or receive kudos get to spin a wheel that features prizes ranging from an order of truffle frites to a paid day off or weekend at a Kimpton-owned hotel.

DeGano believes this type of recognition connects line employees with managers. “We use the word ‘empathy’ a lot around here,” he says. An appreciation for everyone’s responsibilities helps prevent employees from “judging people and getting upset about things,” he adds.

Quarterly meetings, at which financial details are discussed, also help bring team members together, DeGano says. “Everyone has a different role, but no one is more or less important. We talk about everything—positive and negative—so they can be a part of problem solving.”

Time Well Spent

At Canlis restaurant in Seattle, managing owner Mark Canlis seeks to hire “people who could ride in a car across the country with my mom and not get thrown out.”

The Canlis family tries to learn all it can about those asked to join its team, from their families to their hobbies to their struggles. Mark Canlis speaks of a “relationship with your staff [that is] infinitely deeper than your relationship with your guests.”

That relationship is what has helped Canlis maintain low staff turnover: The average employee has been with the restaurant for more than six years.

Spending time outside of regular work hours with staff members is key to building community, Canlis says.

Company activities have included holiday decorating parties, outings to the Canlis family’s beach cabin and snowshoeing trips. Recently, staff members traveled to a nearby farm that provides produce to food shelters. “We were hoeing, [moving] manure and weeding,” Canlis says. “Eating a sloppy sandwich and sweating in the fields is a different experience and [builds] a different kind of camaraderie than walking around in a suit as the restaurant manager.” Regardless of what the team is doing, doing it together is unifying, he adds.

ROI AND TLC

The way Zane Tankel sees it, changing attitudes about employees can have a ripple effect down the service chain. “We need to treat everyone within our company as if they are a volunteer, not as if we’re paying them,” says Tankel, the chairman and CEO of Harrison, N.Y.-based Apple-Metro Inc., one of Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill & Bar’s largest franchisees. Tankel says he can greet most employees by name, and the company provides cars and cellphones for general managers and kitchen managers.

“Our philosophy is to create a dynamic, rewarding environment where dedicated and engaged associates [treat] each other with mutual respect, dignity, honesty and integrity,” he says.

Apple-Metro places its new managers—many hired from within the company—in a paid three-month training program. “In essence, it’s a semester in school,” Tankel says. The term begins with Apple Metro U, a three-day program in which new managers are treated as a client of each department of the company and asked to learn a little bit about each other.

At the end of the semester, managers move into a transitional period for two months. “So it’s a five-month investment in people before they start,” Tankel says. “Who would send someone to school for five months and pay them? Only your family would do that.”

He says the five months are critical because corporate culture is instilled in that time. “If we are successful with new managers as they come on board, that will filter to servers,” Tankel says. “We have approximately 3,000 people in our system, and almost all of them buy into the culture.”

Tankel contributes to the culture by making himself accessible to employees and having reasonable expectations. For example, no server in any Apple-Metro restaurant is responsible for more than three tables so that each server can provide optimal service.

“If we keep our staff happy, we don’t have to worry about the guests,” Tankel says. “You work much harder for your own family than you do for strangers.”

Growth Opportunity

Andy Lorenzen, manager of human resources for Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A, says the three things that matter most to crew members are culture, coaching and the deal they get by working for the company.

“If employees come to work and feel they are in a supportive, encouraging environment, and if they feel that what they do every day matters to customers and to the brand, that makes a big difference,” Lorenzen says. “It’s being a part of something bigger than themselves.”

Guiding employees toward developing their strengths helps cement a commitment to the brand and to the customer, Lorenzen says. And then there’s the deal: “We all work in exchange for salary and benefits, so we focus a lot on competitive compensation,” he adds.

With nearly 70% of Chick-fil-A’s 55,000 team members of high-school age, one key company benefit is the Leadership Scholarship program, through which eligible employees can earn $1,000 college scholarships.

Chick-fil-A also sponsors Team Leader Summits that allow selected crew members to travel to Atlanta to learn more about Chick-fil-A’s culture and history. Biannual workshops bring operators together to talk about topics important to the business.

“Something that creates the sense of community across the business [helps] people see a future with the company,” Lorenzen says. “For team leaders interested in becoming a franchisee, that’s an accessible opportunity. If they are able to see a future in what they are doing, that helps the people working for them do the same.”

Emotion Commotion

Sigal Barsade (r.), associate professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, differentiates between two types of corporate culture: cognitive and emotional. While cognitive culture deals with values like teamwork, she says emotional culture—the degree to which certain types of emotions are expected to be expressed or repressed—can be just as important, if not more so.

“Emotions travel through an organization by the facial expressions of their employees. [They] travel person to person like a virus. They can be conscious or subconscious, and can operate in both a positive and negative manner… Having a culture of compassion and affection versus one of anger can influence not only employee absenteeism, satisfaction, commitment and burnout, but also can influence perceptions of pain and quality of life,” Barsade notes.

She says the kind of emotional culture fostered also affects employee performance because “our emotions influence our decision making tremendously. Positive emotions are a help to creativity, accurate problem solving… all the good things people would want in an organization.”

Acting hand in hand with a positive emotional culture should be a culture of respect, Barsade notes. Treating employees in a way that shows them that their work, thoughts and ideas matter goes a long way toward them enjoying work more, exhibiting more positive emotions, exerting greater effort and not getting burnout, she says.

Put simply, “People can almost never get enough of being recognized for the good work that they do,” she says. Supervisors who embody this culture of respect and positivity help increase positive mood, she notes, while employees being micromanaged, belittled or taken advantage of leads to negative mood.