If you’ve spent a painfully slow winter dreaming of reopening your pub, bar or cafe, the recent announcement of the roadmap to lifting the winter lockdown and the Budget’s support package offered, will have come as welcome news.
We wish you all the luck in the world. Give it everything you’ve got. Just make sure to avoid one thing - burnout.
From 2020, Burnout Became a Globally Recognised Disease
From the 28th of May 2019, The World Health Organisation added burnout to its International Classification of Diseases.
The definition given reads:
“Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”
The key word here is ‘managed’.
Your people invest themselves in growing your business. You owe it to them (and yourself) to protect their physical and mental health.
Burnout in Hospitality Is Tough to Spot.
“How Will I Know if My Team Is in Burnout?”
Here are the 3/3 signs to look for:
1) Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion.
2) Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job.
3) Reduced professional efficacy.
Burnout is especially hard to spot in hospitality. It can be TIRING, both mentally and physically. We all have a rough shift, or drop the ball with service.
’Reduced professional efficacy’ might be a lack of training. ‘Mental distance’ might be a lack of proper integration of new team members.
THE KEY IS: Spotting when all three signs are consistently present.
3 Ways to Avoid Burnout After Reopening Your Pub, Bar or Cafe
Before you let your teams loose among the action, think about how well you’ll be ticking these three boxes.
1. Don’t Juggle Too Many Plates with Too Few Hands
We get it, you’ve got bills to pay but don’t lose sight of the human cost because you’ve overfocused on staying lean. Recruit the right numbers.
Research shows being a waiter is more stressful than being a neurosurgeon. Spread a small team too thin, and burnout will flatten them.
Book a demo and get the growyze app and make it your team’s star player to crush the chore and admin of stock control, waste management and ordering that often starts once service is over.
With the Growyze app, your team can take care of those things on-the-go, to finish up on time and get some rest.
2. LISTEN to Your People, and SHOW them You Listened
‘Leadership’ author, Andy Stanley, is often quoted saying… “leaders who don’t listen will eventually be surrounded by people with nothing to say”.
‘Listening’ means more than nodding and smiling. It means taking action. Don’t dismiss their complaints about feeling overworked or undertrained.
Give them the rest they need, the right tools for the job, and keep detailed documentation of completed training and skill gaps to be filled.
The more friction you remove from their work, the less hard-work everything becomes, and the faster your post-lockdown recovery will be.
3. Hire Managers with Soft Skills, Not Just Business Acumen
Work cultures trickle down from the managers.
Those who lead with only authority and ignore the human side bring a toxic culture where burnout thrives.
Trusted managers care about people’s welfare, so hire for soft skills, not just hard business performance.
Ultimately, the customer satisfaction on which your business and reputation are built are the net result of teams that gel through mutual trust and that means genuinely caring about people.
Could Be a Red Hot Summer of Hospitality Bounce Backs
We know loss-prevention. It used to be part of growyze Founder Kati’s former job title!
Book a demo and get started with the growyze app and let it remove the burnout from manual back-office tasks that your team can complete effortlessly while they’re among customers.
