On Hire Ground

Over the past few months, you've read about numerous ways to train and incentivize your staff to provide better service and build sales. We've discussed how incentives can be used to get the right people to do more, but are ineffective getting the wrong people to do the right thing. So, how important are the right people?

Apologies to all the trainers out there (me included), but hiring is the most important activity you do as a manager. The better the new hire, the greater the chance of success in your restaurant. The companies that score well in the eyes of the consumer—Chick-fil-A, Sonic, Cici's Pizza, Taco Bell, and others—seem to be quite selective in their hiring practices and creating an environment where performance is rewarded. As a guest, I certainly notice the difference in service levels at their restaurants.

At Cici's Pizza, the employees greet you from behind the register or salad bar as soon as you enter the door and ask if there's anything special they can make for you as you move down the buffet. They own the pizza buffet business in my area. Moral of the story: You can't train friendly—you have to hire it and the managers have to model it.

Think of a bad hire as polishing a piece of junk. It doesn't matter how great your training program is or how well you run your restaurant. When you are all done polishing, what do you have left? That's right, a shiny piece of junk.

You'll simply end up with a cashier/phone person whose idea of a greeting is "For here or to go?"or of suggestive selling is "Anything else?"

If you think I'm making this stuff up, Batrus Hollweg recently completed a detailed employee survey and discovered employees fall into 3 categories: 25 percent are in the Green Zone (never steal, break rules, etc), 50 percent are in the Yellow Zone (do what­ever management allows), and 25 percent are in Red Zone (break all the rules). By raising your hiring standards, you can eliminate the bottom 25 percent, and your sales and service levels will increase dramatically—it's known as "averaging up."

Once you raise the talent level of the new hires, you need to eliminate those currently working for you who are in the red zone. Otherwise, like weeds, they'll take over and the new hires will be managed down to their level.

As much as we want to believe people will do the right thing, people are dramatically influenced by their peers. As a manager, you need to create the environment to reward excellence and improvement so it gets repeated. It's not fair to those who perform (and cover for problems caused by others) to have to work with those who can't or don't want to be there and contribute.