How Are Your New Employees Really Doing?
And how are your long-time employees relating to them?
Food and beverage managers are busy people who contribute massive hours to keep a restaurant/club moving in a successful direction. If you are lucky enough to work in a seasonal business there will always be occasions to train new employees with proper amount of time for onboarding. And if not then you have your work cut out and time management skills are crucial.
A question every manager should be asking themselves is what are the existing employees telling the new employees? To gain that knowledge, intermittent walking around, observing and listening carefully to all employees will get you closer to the truth. It is the best method to finding out how your company’s culture is being fostered. You may not have that kind of time to investigate your current culture and how your employees effect it. On the other hand it would be well worth your while if you did.
What your workers say on the job and what beliefs are being communicated to new employees can be an ideal benefit or the object of your repeating nightmares. Your veteran workers who are happy people and grateful to have a job are never the issue and always stand ready to mentor new staff members.
But every business has their share of “sacred cows” or functional miserable people who feel insecure when new employees enter the scene. The most dangerous seasoned employee is the cunning and clever low self-esteem person. They know exactly when to behave appropriately in front of a supervisor and how to deflate a new employee behind a supervisor’s back. Management may never see the damage and then wonder why the new employee did not work out. I have mentioned in my blog how important an exit interview is to seek the truth when someone unexpectedly throws in the towel and quits.
If a new employee attempts to report the bad situation by talking to management it may not go well. The longtime, deceitful employee will usually be forgiven or a get a slap on the wrist because of their lasting service. It’s apparent that they were never made accountable for their actions. More times than not, the members or the most esteemed customers love that longstanding employee and never witnessed the intimidating behavior. So new employees either navigate a way around the abusiveness or look elsewhere for employment.
When management finally gets to observe the ugly behavior of the seasoned employee, are they willing to step up and do the right thing? If the owner of the restaurant, CEO or president of the private club does not agree with the offenses then it will maintain business as usual. The fear of losing a management position might stop any further corrective action.
As a successful and respectable manager you must not add to the spreading cancerous activities of the long-time employee. A supervisor should never be afraid of repairing negativity or reporting abuse of an employee because they face risk of losing their job. If proper documentation was recorded each time an injustice occurred then there would always be back up which protects you. Guidance should be provided for the troubled employee along with repercussions if no improvement is achieved in a specific amount of time. Do the right thing, your finest employees are watching to see what you do and waiting to perform their best.
