How to Manage Your Restaurant's Employees During a Pandemic

By Heather Redding, Contributor

Over the past couple of months, COVID-19 has hit all businesses hard, including the hospitality industry. Restaurants, in particular, have had to make significant changes to their operations, and most of them are yet to reopen.

Restaurateurs abound are revising their protocols to curb the spread of the disease while continuing to serve customers. A major challenge, though, is managing restaurant employees during this pandemic to ensure everyone remains safe.

Additionally, some employees are working from home, and managing them can be tricky.

Here are a few useful tips for effective employee management during a pandemic.

Open & Honest Communication

Most of your restaurant’s staff are probably at home until you resume in-house dining operations. A few, like those in the marketing and accounting departments (if your restaurant is that expansive), can still work remotely.

Employees can feel apprehensive as they watch the news from their homes of how COVID-19 cases are escalating. Since you need them back to continue being a part of your business eventually, you’ve got a duty to keep in constant touch with them.

Here are a few tips to guide your communication practices:

• Communicate early and frequently: While you might not have every detail, it’s important to stay ahead of the concerns. Communicate what you know, acknowledge anything you don’t know, and commit to revealing more as the path before you becomes clear. Besides, communicate often; even if you don’t have something new to relay, updating your staff through a weekly video or email can help reinforce understanding.

• Listen and respond: Listening is a crucial part of communication. Do whatever you can to gauge your employees' questions, opinions, and concerns, so you integrate them into the organization's decision-making and capture it in your subsequent communication.

• Be clear but calm: Steer clear of heavy medical jargon without providing context and definitions. Keep your messages clear and inclusive. Besides, keep the messaging actionable and factual and avoid using alarming language to perpetuate fear.

• Assign authority: Workers prefer to hear from the company’s executive so they can feel safe. Thus, determine who’ll be in charge of talking to the employees regarding the coronavirus. This approach does not only build trust, but it also helps to provide a reliable and consistent voice through uncertain times.

Address Restaurant Staff’s Health & Safety

The coronavirus is spreading fast, and the last thing you want is to hear one of your employees is sick. Here are guidelines to help you manage your team’s health and safety:

• Instruct workers with COVID-19-related symptoms to notify their immediate supervisors. Advise anyone who’s sick to stay at home and adhere to the guidelines by the CDC on what to do if you’re sick with COVID-19.

• If one of your workers gets sick at work, send them home without delay. If other individuals within the facility were close to the infected employee (within 6 feet), consider them exposed too.

• Having a robust paid sick leave policy will keep sick staff from coming in when they shouldn’t, potentially exposing the rest of your team, third-party delivery partner staff, and your guests.

• If you confirm that one of the employees has COVID-19, inform the other employees of possible exposure to the disease, but maintain confidentiality.

• Instruct employees who feel healthy but have been in contact with someone who’s tested positive for the coronavirus disease to inform their supervisor and follow the required safety measures.

Implement various CDC-recommended workplace controls to minimize the disease spread among workers. The controls include:

I. Pre-screening: Employers ought to measure the temperature of employees and evaluate symptoms before starting their shift. Carry out temperature checks before an employee enters the premises.

II. Regular monitoring: If employees don’t have symptoms or an abnormal temperature, they ought to self-monitor, and the employer should facilitate an occupational health program to supervise it.

III. Wear a facial mask: Employees should always wear masks while at the restaurant. It’s the employer’s duty to issue masks or approve the staff’s cloth face coverings whenever there are shortages.

IV. Social distance: Employees should stay aim to stay six feet away from each other and continue practicing social distancing while dispensing their duties at the restaurant.

V. Clean and disinfect work surfaces: Routinely disinfect and clean all workspaces, including the tables, chairs, offices, bathrooms, shared electronic equipment, and all common areas.

Track Remote Employee Productivity

Most organizations have switched to remote work. Although most restaurants remain closed during a pandemic, a few departments, such as accounting and marketing, may continue to operate from home.

It’s critical to devise strategies to keep track of their engagements, but how do you achieve that?

• Consider a tool that monitors productivity: Whether you want to track employee productivity or time, you may want to use a monitoring app, such as Robohead or Hubstaff, and explore various coaching opportunities whenever your employees are working.

• Manage employee time: You can install tools, such as Harvest and TimeDoctor, on your remote employees’ laptops to aid in tracking time on different tasks. These tools are particularly essential for anyone who may want to track the number of billable hours. If you don’t need a time tracking app yet, leverage free timecard calculators to stay on top of employee work hours.

• Explore other technology solutions: When managing remote workers, you may want to make occasional video calls and discuss their progress, ask for feedback, and more. You can use video conferencing applications, such as Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams. It’s also worth considering additional security measures, such as multi-factor authentication and VPN, as you’ll be dealing with sensitive company information like financial statements.

• Make routine video calls: Emails are great, but they lack something critical – face-to-face interaction. A better way to change this scenario would be to implement video calls regularly to help keep your team engaged out of email.

Final Thoughts

As medical professionals and global governments continue to search for solutions to COVID-19, remote work is becoming popular across different industries. Employers should learn how to navigate these challenging times by managing remote workers effectively.

For those that choose to reopen their restaurant, the implementation of safety measures will help to protect everyone from the pandemic. 

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About the Author:
Heather Redding is a part-time assistant manager, solopreneur and writer based in Aurora, IL. She is also an avid reader and a tech enthusiast. When Heather is not working or writing, she enjoys her Kindle library and a hot coffee. Reach out to her on Twitter.

Hero image from Pexels.

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