Too often, restaurants and other businesses keep dead-weight or below average employees
because it’s hard to hire. Unfortunately, the good employees pick up the slack and often
make about the same money, or less in some cases, as the problem employees.

It’s easy to say run short-handed, but if it’s not presented right, you can force even more
work on the better employees. To further enhance the ‘Send Flowers to the Living’, you
can save some money, and improve the culture by losing the below-average performers.
The key is to recognize and reward performance!

If a below average employee makes $8 per hour and works full-time, they earn $320 a
week. Lose that person! Now, go to the rest of the team and offer them a challenge: run
the shift without this person and everyone receives a 25 cent bonus for every hour worked,
as long as we beat sales and productivity or lower costs.

The savings of $320 from one employee equates to 1,200 hours of 25 cent bonuses per
hour or 600 hours of 50 cent bonuses per hour for the rest of the team. How will these
good employees feel when they get paid an extra bonus to help you make more money?
Instantly, the attitude of those employees will change as they ramp up productivity and
sales.

Notice we aren’t giving raises. Bonuses tied to performance goals ensure performance
first. Raises don’t guarantee performance improvements. Keep the employees moving
sales and productivity by turning the investment from a dead-weight employee into
multiple bonuses for those who perform. They’ll appreciate it and so will your guests!

T.J. Schier is service professional, consultant and speaker with over 20 years experience in operations and training. Founder and president of Incentivize Solutions and podTraining, T.J. has helped numerous clients enhance their service and training programs and spoken to tens of thousands of managers, franchisees and operators in various fields. Visit http://IncentivizeSolutions.com/ for more info motivating today’s employees, training today’s generation and delivering outstanding guest service; or http://podTraining.us/, a unique new system and the foundation of ‘i-learning’ - using the device of today’s generation, the iPod - to train your workforce.

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