Article

How to Keep Marginal Employees From Going Bad

by Matthew Mabel

The true test of a great manager is the number of employees they have turned around, not the terminations. You can fire all the people you want, but you are not going to be a successful restaurant manager until you learn how to take employees who may seem marginal, flawed or difficult and turn them into productive long-term members of your team.

The bottom line - literally - is that turnover is expensive. Once you factor in the cost of interviewing, hiring and training, finding a new hire and retraining them for a position is akin to paying them overtime for every hour they work until they get up to speed.

Management resources are limited, and that includes quality employees. Great restaurant managers learn to allocate their resources strategically, identifying the employees most likely to turn it around, and then making sure those employees receive special attention. That is not to say that great restaurant managers are incapable of making a hard firing decision when necessary. Some problem employees just can't be saved.

When you identify a problem employee, ask yourself if the challenges this teammate poses are more than can realistically be addressed. Every manager will have some issues that they just won't be able to solve. These are your "threshold issues," and may include substance abuse, drama from home that creeps into the workplace, lethargy or a tendency to challenge authority. Curing these go beyond your expertise and your "pay grade." That said, as this article illustrates, you can save some of your employees with a little extra effort and common sense.