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Performance Management

Being A BRG Leader

Leadership is no easy task, and one of the most difficult yet rewarding parts of our jobs is the management of our teams and their performance. Helping them achieve success, coaching them through opportunities, and fostering growth is a big part of being a great leader. Finding your management style and voice is essential in being effective. We have to continuously evaluate how we deliver messages to our teams to make sure they are understood, respectful, and get the most out of our ‘internal guests’.

As a management team, it’s our job to create a comfortable, professional, educational, and fun environment for the staff. Boka Restaurant Group prides itself on maintaining positive morale amongst all levels of our staff. It is essential that you cultivate a family environment where you are an approachable, genuine, considerate, focused manager that always works to bring out the best in your staff. While building a positive relationship with your staff is crucial, you must maintain your leadership role and make sure your staff knows, at the end of the day, you make all the final decisions. While being consistent and respectful, you must firmly administer the policies and procedures set in place. Follow through with disciplinary actions while considering staff’s privacy and dignity.

One of the most important qualities we want all of our managers to demonstrate is consistency in all aspects of the work you do- treatment of staff, maintaining policies and procedures, guest experience, and your own work ethic. We expect consistency from all of our staff, so it must start with the standards you set.

Know Your Team

One of your first orders of business when you join the Boka Restaurant Group is to get to know all the staff you will be working with. Carve out time to meet with the entire management team and front of the house staff. You should schedule 15-minute one-on-ones with all staff you will be managing. Every person in the restaurant learns differently, responds to feedback differently, and may react to you differently as a new leader. While it is important to be consistent, your success with your team will depend on your ability to adapt to the needs of your team members so they understand, respect you, and become willing to follow your lead. Remember: “Great teams don’t win one for the trophy, great teams win one for the coach!”

Be an Effective Communicator

Understanding that everyone communicates differently will help you to be a better communicator. Different approaches will work differently with different people. If you find that you aren’t getting through to someone, try changing your approach and see if that helps. Communication is the key to happy, healthy teams. Be a good listener. Be approachable when a member of the team needs to speak with you- if you often seem ‘too busy’, they will start to lose faith that you care about them. Be direct and honest with your coworkers. Don’t be afraid to have the tough conversations- but if you do, remember to maintain your composure and always be looking for a positive result!

Email, Phone and Text Etiquette

The restaurant business is a people business and handling your written and phone communications is key. Emails should be responded to in a timely fashion- and written professionally. Double check your spelling and punctuation before you hit send! Avoid writing emails while upset or angry- you cannot take them back once sent!

Having pleasant phone manner, especially while answering the phones at your restaurant is a must. Your staff will look to you as the gold standard for how to do this- always smile through the phone and take a helpful, pleasant approach.

Text messages with your team or coworkers should always be kept positive and professional. If you need to give a team member critical feedback, text message is not a good vehicle for this. Feedback is best given face to face. Refrain from texting things that you would not want others to see, or things that are not work related and professional.

When in doubt about using ‘reply to all’… DON’T.

We all have busy email boxes- and while the person who crafted the email will appreciate a reply that you have received and understand the message- the other recipients will likely not need to see your response. Only use Reply to All when everyone on the chain will benefit from the information in your response. You can also simply respond to the sender and copy in other key players as needed.

Any disciplinary conversation or one that involves an emotional exchange should be a face to face conversation. If a team member is upset or needs to be heard, make the time to meet in person.

Training- Teaching, Coaching, Mentoring

A very large part of being a leader is being a teacher, coach and mentor. Understanding that members of your team learn in different ways will help you to get them on the same page. Having good systems of training is the number one way to ensure that the team knows the right way to do things. Explaining the ‘why’ in your training will help team members to put it all together. Ongoing training will keep your team invested and engaged. Training materials should be clear, easy to understand, and kept diligently up to date. Every staff member should be given their training materials to study on their first day and you should explain to them the expectations to study and know their stuff! Nothing is more frustrating to new employees than not being given the tools to succeed, or to be given training materials that are incomplete or out of date.

Training should always be an ongoing process. Preshift is a great time for this. You can have games or contests to make learning fun, coupled with wine or spirit tastings, or demonstrations. Encouraging your team to lead a training session from time to time is a great way to get them involved and shine in front of their peers. Challenge yourself to make each day educational in some way!

Understanding performance management

How to navigate Corrective Action

Opportunities for Growth and Development

We pride ourselves on being a company where people can learn, grow, develop and move up! We encourage our people to push themselves every day to improve and move forward- and believe that we can all grow together! It is important that your teams know that opportunity is always there for those that work hard, have a positive and solutions oriented attitude, and take great care of our guests. Encourage your teams to speak with you about their goals for themselves. It is important to note that if a team member wishes to transfer to another restaurant or a new concept in our group that we have a protocol for these situations. The staff member should always speak to their GM or Chef first to express their wishes, then if scheduling and performance history allow- they will be given the opportunity to interview with that team for a position. It is important that we give people opportunities to try new things, but never to the detriment of the restaurant. It is important that we handle these situations with a lot of open conversation between the management teams at both locations and the individual, so that a sensible timeline and plan is in place.

Conducting Performance Reviews

Performance reviews are such an important touch base and time of self reflection with our team, so it's vital we give everyone the same opportunity to give and receive feedback that is meaningful, fair and actionable.

The process should follow these steps:

1. The manager who will be conducting the review schedules the review with the team member with enough time for both parties to thoughtfully fill out the review forms.
2. Stratex will alert the employee via Stratex inbox message that it is time for their review and will prompt them to complete their self-review. Please coach them to be as thorough as possible. This self-reflection is such an important part of the process, and it is a big part of understanding if the reviewer and the reviewee are on similar pages. For example- if the two reviews are very different from each other- have we not been clear enough in our feedback leading up to this point, etc?
3. Once the employee completes their review, Stratex will alert their direct supervisor, and prompt them to complete their review. The manager types the review, making sure all areas are completely and thoughtfully filled out.
4. Send the review to the Operations Team member for review- so they may add any feedback they may have. Please give us at least a day before the review is scheduled so we may be diligent in our part of the process. It's difficult to do so if we receive them an hour or two beforehand.
5. Conduct the review with both the 'reviewer' and 'reviewee' comparing their notes together section by section. The Ops manager will be present for all manager reviews- so the two of you can game plan how you'd like to deliver in advance. Make sure they have opportunities to share their thoughts on their own performance and goal setting. Give good attention to the goals section of the review- make sure they are fair and attainable and make sense within that persons’ job description.
6. Once completed- Stratex will prompt the reviewee to ‘e-sign’ their review. The review will be accessible to all parties under the ‘performance’ tab of the employees Stratex profile.

Sometimes we have to give feedback that is constructive, and that's ok. We should make sure the point is to redirect those actions and give positive redirections. It's about the action, and not the person. On the other hand- a glowing review with little to no information on what a person can work on to improve isn't giving them much to work with either- it's a delicate balance and part of the reason we like to look them over with you ahead of time and make sure our messaging is consistent.

Salary Review Template - Summer 2022 docx.docx

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