When is it time to promote an employee? That question could cost you a lot… a lot of time, money and energy. The reality is, not every employee wants to be promoted, even if you can see their leadership skills developing. Plus, for the ones that want to move on up, there’s no sure path to working with hourly employees to develop their leadership skills and get them to the place you’d feel comfortable offering up a promotion.
Staffing is one of the biggest challenges a business owner overcomes. There’s a lot of juggling between interviewing, training and maintaining employees. The stats are in favor of promoting current employees when hiring managers with exceptional characteristics and work ethic.
The less time as a business owner you may have to spend seeking out new management, the more time you’ve got to begin hiring and training hourly employees to grow with your business.
So, what does it take for an hourly employee to look and act ready for a promotion into management?
They’re self-managed.
There’s a lot to say about an employee who arrives on time, takes care of business and is always solving problems for themselves in a professional manor. From the get go, it’s usually easy to see what standout individuals are a part of your team.
They lead in a way they’d want to be led.
Among the restaurant industry, there can be a lot of personalities which sometimes result in some unpleasant moments in the back of house. An employee ready to manage carries themselves in the way they’d want their own manager to handle conflict and works to keep themselves clear of causing personal conflict. Whether it’s getting along with every employee or you use her or him as an example of patience, performance and productivity – employees working towards promotion lead by example.
They invest their time with quality employees greater than themselves to learn.
It’s been said that you are the cumulative sum of the five people you spend the most time with. Outstanding team members tend to hang with people who they can learn from and look up to.
They set goals and achieve them.
Leaders set goals and develop a roadmap to accomplish them. And when they need help to accomplish their goals? They ask! Look at your timecards… who is putting in the hours during the busy days and during the times it is somewhat inconvenient to work, whether that be holidays or evening. The best future manager you can hire is the one who puts in the time today.
Working to identify and continue developing leaders within your staff who can grow with you and become a manager is one of the most stressful yet rewarding roles of owning a restaurant.
What’s been the top way you’ve been able to identify todays leaders that will be tomorrows managers?
