Motivating your team: how to get the best from your staff

Written by: Paul Knowles

Let’s admit, right off the top, that this is not an exact science. There are at least two apparently contradictory approaches to employee motivation: the competitive style, which offers rewards to top performers; and the collaborative style, which treats the employees as a team, and rewards excellent team performance.

It’s likely that each approach has its place. And it’s important for managers to recognize the value of each, and to develop their own personal synergy, combining both approaches.

To get some perspective, we talked to a Flanagan District Sales Manager who is a major proponent of the team approach.

Mitch Pepin is Flanagan’s District Sales Manager, Sudbury Division. He has been with Flanagan’s for nine years; prior to that, he managed a fast food restaurant for 13 years.

His motto, when it comes to staff motivation, is clearly stated: “Promote teamwork.”

Motivation is a challenge in the fast food industry, where the pay scale is usually not the primary tool available. Mitch’s approach has always been “to make them feel part of the team,” and he says this philosophy translated well into his present role with Flanagan Foodservice, where a team of eleven reports to him.

One key, he says, is “to make team members part of the decision making.” In a restaurant, that can be as simple as asking, “How many salads do you think we need today?” And while that may seem like pretty basic stuff, he notes that he often received important information from staff members in response to such a query “I received good information from everyone,” he recalls, including details such as a sports tournament he was unaware of that was guaranteed to boost business that day.

It cannot be an empty exercise, he says. “You have to genuinely listen to their ideas, and give them credit when you use their ideas.”

Nothing kills motivation like a manager “stealing ideas” from a staffer. Nobody is going to be happy hearing their own thoughts stated without credit by a boss. Mitch says managers need to lose that kind of insecurity, right away; no one should be threatened by good ideas coming from team members. This “team approach” works, he says. In the fast-food business, known for its revolving staff door, “my full-time staff turnover was very low.”

That’s important, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is sheer cost. A recent survey of restaurant staff replacement costs compiled by the Wall Street Journal suggests that replacing a shift-ready manager costs between $2,900 and $10,000 (all figures US dollars); kitchen employees, $775 each; hosts, $685 each; servers, $474 each; and bussers, $362 each. Motivating employees to stay is obviously a cost-effective endeavour.

Mitch points to a number of other non-financial motivators for staff. He says that managers can be as accommodating as possible concerning working hour’s “without hurting the business, of course.” If a valued staff member needs to be home to welcome his or her children from school, and that can be done then do it.

Part of the employee motivation package starts at the initial interview, he says. Even in filling low-pay-scale positions, Mitch looked for self-starters. “If they had to ask, ‘How do you do that?’, I wouldn’t hire them,” he says, candidly.

Once they were hired, he felt it important to instil a sense of urgency in his team - a motivation to get the job done. He always stressed that “the customer is number one,” and he says that managers have to lead by example: “You can’t tell them to do it and then not do it yourself.”

He expects that example of personal maturity and responsibility to be contagious, and he stresses that “I don’t baby people.”

And as he insists from his two-word motto, he believes strongly in rewarding the team, not specific individuals. He’s uncomfortable with individual rewards based on competition. “I want to give something to the team for meeting their goals.”

It must be said that not every expert spurns the idea of individual rewards and competition. Plenty of motivational consultants stress the competitive nature of servers, for example, and even encourage methods such as posting results such as average checks for each server, and then giving the top servers the best, busiest shifts.

There is plenty of focus on money, too, with experts developing pay systems based on increased sales. However, studies show that money may not be the key factor in employee satisfaction, often trailing behind job security, a happy working environment, or recognition for doing a good job.

So while individual motivational, cash-centred approaches may at times seem effective, it is hard to argue with Mitch’s motto, “Promote teamwork”. Because, as any hockey coach can tell you, a star player is a great asset, but it takes the entire team to win the cup. A motivated team that has a commitment to the success of your business on the path to the best results in the long term.