#81: Making Better Decisions

In our borough we really want to support businesses because we want to support economic growth and we want to support you because if you're in you're in the in our community you're employing people and so therefore they've got money. We've put them in that situation in that job because they have the right ethos the right values we know that they're the right person for that job so they're never going to make the wrong decision. Look at the bigger picture so look at the restaurant in the context of a wider community and how is your decision going to impact on our reputation well again if they're humorous sometimes people pull out the bag under that type of pressure hello ruth hello lucy welcome to this week's episode of simply hospitality we are on our own no guest we haven't done this in ages so we've got something interesting to talk about well we're going to make it a mini episode just in case we haven't okay but it's going to be condensed so we thought it might be interesting to just talk about things that happened to us recently at work um and just some top tips really on how to tackle certain situations yes so do you want to go first no i think you go first and i'll um draw from what you're what you're saying okay right so we have having a restructure of our management team at one of our restaurants at the moment basically everybody is being promoted where one where the top person has moved um up and um and so i'm trying to coach the new general manager to have the confidence to make decisions for herself in situations that you can't kind of give a black and white rule on right this is what you do in this situation quite often when we're training people we like to give black and white fridge should be five degrees right not go above eight degrees those are rules exactly but in hospitality it's all very situational yes and it's a lot of operating in the gray and you can't think of every situation and every solution to every situation you absolutely cannot and I think when you're all of a sudden in a position where you are the general manager the buck stops with you you haven't got anybody to be like what should I do you have to just trust your instincts and go with it um one of the things I've been doing is first of all reassuring this manager that no matter what decision she makes she is making it based on the information she has available to her at the time and we back her yeah we can run through it debrief it the next day and say maybe next time we could do it differently if we need to but in that moment we absolutely back her and I think that's really important for your managers to know that the owners directors whoever it is above them have got their back in that way i agree because if you're if if you think if i make the wrong decision i'm going to get screamed at or i'm going to get the blame for it or it you can't make the same decision can you because you're making it in fear instead of in confidence yes exactly yeah and the one thing you need to be is confident yeah confident in your convictions at that level because everybody's relying on you even if you're confident that you may not have got it right but you've done best yeah but you know you're not going to get shouted at is you may be told it was wrong but it'd be like you made the best decision you could at the time like you say yeah maybe next time yeah i i that does make a difference yes and the reason it needs to be done is because we we found ourselves in a situation where we were having a running commentary in the middle of the height of service where a decision needed to be made and they didn't know what to do so it's like this is happening what should i do with this this is happening what should i do with this and it just needed to be like guys we trust you get on with it just do it yeah make a decision there is no wrong decision you know yeah oh there's a busker outside he's really bad should i tell him shut up i'm not there i don't know i can't hear him i don't know how the customers are reacting you know like you you've got all the information available to you we trust that you're gonna make the right decision we've put them in that situation in that job because they have the right ethos the right values we know that they're the right person for that job so they're never going to make the wrong decision which is what you you need your people to know that yeah so one of the tools that i've used um is to give this general manager a set of rules that she can use when she's making a decision that are kind of generic rules that she can run through in her head and she knows that if if she if her decision aligns with all of these kind of rules then she'll be making the right decision and it kind of helps her to be reassured that oh yeah actually it takes those five boxes therefore this is the right yeah should I share those five rules with you this is just specific for our restaurant um but you would need to come up with a set of rules that kind of like align with your own values um so they are number one go on what are your values um hospitality yeah family community and honesty okay so these rules are based around those values okay so number one customers are the priority yes number two create exceptional hospitality experiences okay i've put also in brackets wow we want to create wow hospitality experiences that might be something as small as giving their dog a bowl of water okay they need it or it could be something as big as it's your 30th birthday here's two glasses of champagne on the house in terms of cost it can be completely free yeah or it can be like actually we're gonna give them something that's gonna be a cost benefit to them um think of the team as family okay rule number three so whatever decision you make think about would you how is this going to impact them would you treat your mother this way your sister your aunt would you let somebody treat your sister in this way so if it's an abuse customer yeah should i kick them out well is this fair yeah is this a decent a respectable way to treat your family um honesty and transparency so if you mess up tell the truth basically yeah and people respect it yeah and are you being honest with yourself are you being honest with the person that you're having to give feedback to whatever it is and then um look at the bigger picture so look at the restaurant in the context of the wider community and how is your decision going to impact on our reputation so if you go if you if you decide to allow the um drunk person to keep on drinking how is that going to impact our reputation compared to if you ask them to leave yeah um so shall i give you an example of a situation yes pretend you're the general manager and you're going to use my five rules to make a decision right the example i'm giving you is you've got a seasonal member of staff does that mean they come in just occasionally no seasonal sorry it means they're working for you for the summer okay yeah okay um and they are trying to earn lots of money to um fund their university place okay and they've recently had a conversation with you about how they really need to have as many hours as possible because otherwise they're not gonna be able to go to university okay really trying the hardest to earn yeah um and they don't have any family support it's kind of like all on them and they turn up to work hungover possibly visibly hungover yeah it's a sort of the decision you've got to make is do i let them continue to work on this busy summer's day yeah or do i send them home run through your rules to make that okay so rule number one customers are the priority i'd need to assess to whether they would be able to either serve the customers or whether there'd be an alternative job that would be less customer affecting customers more so could they just clear tables rather than take orders is that a possibility could be so i could see if they could do something alternative that until they get past the worst okay so that's your customer's priority yeah creating exceptional hospitality moments okay so that's a problem isn't it if they're not quite with it unless they're particularly humorous in their hungover state that could be some added extra because let's be honest seasonal workers in hospitality probably will quite often be hungover yeah it's not not stereotype but it's not abnormal no no um and remember the wow in brackets well again if they're humorous whilst they're hungover sometimes people pull out the bag under that type of pressure yeah it depends what type of hungover they are but if they're miserable snappy and snarly then that wouldn't be a customer wow would it be the wrong wow but again could they just um clear tables and do a job that keeps themselves to themselves polish knives is if that's a job that needs doing then give them the job that's less customer focused i don't think there's enough knives to glasses to to keep you busy for eight hours um think of the team as a family now that could be a well as a family member you'd want to give them the opportunity because i was gonna say it's not their fault they're hungover obviously it's their fault they're hungover but you'd want to support them through it but then also does that mean the rest of the family have to take up the slack and that then could cause some resentment or do they go well it was me last week so do they rally together and support that one person okay honesty and transparency you're a bit hung over this morning and don't do it again great bigger picture have they been hung over before is there other issues going on and also you don you know if i let this one work with their hung over the next time it happens I role modelled that it acceptable So although I don feel like you particularly clear on your decision based on your answers because some of them have gone one way and some of them have gone the other way But what decision would you make then based on having run through all of that?

I would keep them if I could give them a job that they weren't gonna upset the customers I'd keep them or send them away and come back later send them away and come back later sounds good if it was all if they were in an awful condition possibly gonna throw up then off you go come back when you've got past the worst of that yeah and what about the honesty bit because I would use that to kind of be like when you said about you know you're hung over don't do again but also saying to them explain to them why oh yeah yeah yeah because just being really transparent about look i know i know you need to earn loads of money to go to university this doesn't need to be something that happens again but the honest the reasons for this it are you know it doesn't look good for our customers it's not fair on the rest of the team yeah it's not personal don't go home and worry about this and lose any sleep over it sleep off your hangover and come back tomorrow without one thank you very much so was that helpful to make that decision having those rules i think rules are good to make a decision when they're not black and white rules yeah okay so what have you learned this week or what have you been working well i was just because we were talking about rules i was just um i met an environmental health officer the job i do i tend to come across businesses that are struggling with their environmental health officer either they're not doing things right or they're not getting the relationship they need with the environmental health officer so i met one last week who it was refreshing to hear because he said primarily our job is to protect the public protect the health of the public this was the eho this was the eho he was with the business owner so it's me him and the business owner and then he said but also he said in our borough we really want to support businesses because we want to support economic growth and we want to support you because if you're in you're in the in our community you're employing people in and so therefore they've got money and i then added and then they they've got money so money means you've got access to better health because you can get better housing better oh i love this ripple effect yeah better food better you know everything and then if ever and that and that was just refreshing to hear and i can you tell us which borough this was because it was in wales oh lovely um should we credit the whole of wales for that we're not going to because i'm just going to tell a joke he's in public all right i'm just going to tell a joke that somebody recently said i was talking about somebody and i said oh you know we've got a thing about teeth haven't we people with like teeth with teeth well with teeth which we're not keen on and this friend went oh has he got summer teeth and I was like what do you mean summer teeth what do you mean summer teeth wow some are yellow some are missing this particular borough of wells had a lot of people with summer teeth anyway so they need to earn a job to get in a job to pay for their dentistry so it was just nice that you and I I've always believed that that's our job but I I am coming across so maybe it's the same rules and I don't know how many eho's listen to this but it's about yes we do need to protect the public but if if when i when i audit you guys i go i look at something i go what is the risk what is the risk to food safety if somebody has got one or two cracked tiles on the floor is that a risk to food safety not really because if the food falls on the floor you're gonna put it in the bin one hopes so it's about being proportionate to the risk i suppose and if i just using a bit of sort of like common sense and reality so you've got a few chips on your floor and it's a bit old but then it's like what's going to be this what's going to be the cost to the business as a result of a few chips which are cracks on the floor it's not really a high risk of food to food safety so could you not work with that business and go look we did highlight the floor last time we don't think it's got any worse but what are your plans for the future how are you going to resolve this what are you going to do to do this to get a better floor in place rather than then just coming down hard and going serving a notice and going you've got to do it and you've got to do in four weeks it's not going to happen is it you potentially without having the discussion i suppose we've said many times it's all all about communication isn't it so it's just those questions if i make this decision am i really protecting the public health or am i just taking a box and or am i just causing this business causing this business to potentially spend thousands of pounds for a very low risk issue which could mean that those people in that business now they go i haven't got the money for it especially right now i haven't got the money for that let's just shut the doors and that's four people out of work well you think well what even one person out of work one person out of work is the employment rates going up they're less likely to get a job it not like they could you know post drivers could walk out one job and go get another one straight away it not it not the same anymore and then the ripple effect of that like we you were just talking about you know because he did this and yeah that means that they can afford to pay for their dental treatment yeah yeah or whatever it is or just food rent out of a job what does that mean for his family yeah his you know yeah well yeah that's one person let's say they don't get a job that's another person on benefits that's another drain on the government that's their rent being paid that's their children on free school didn't you know all of the extra additional costs because you've gone that floor has got a crack in it do you know now if you employ somebody who's been on universal credit for x number of months you get a lump sum payment as an employer there is i know that um i don't know if they're still doing it but i know there's a council near us that was doing the kickstart scheme you know you had the if they've been on universal credit for a long time but so the council are paying the wages of this person so at the end of covid they did kickstart where you'd where i remember this yeah because i went to one business that i don't work for anymore they owed me a lot of money and went bust and they had trouble with their ehl not supporting them anyway it wasn't it's usually a few things anyway they had um they had some kickstart kids and you could tell but anyway you can get um you can't i don't know who else is doing it but i know there's a council nearby doing it and then um i heard the other day that the young if you get kids there's a new scheme coming out if you employ the kids the needs they're not in employment or education or training you're going to get three thousand pounds but again this is this was just recent universal credit thing oh well it's a recent thing yeah attached to it yeah i think is that not positive discrimination there's a young people there's a risk well i think it's because there's a lot of young people who are not in not in education employment or training they're just at home doing nothing but is there a risk that you're going to choose that candidate over a candidate who can do the job better simply because you're going to get three thousand pounds yeah also could i employ them and then sack them what are the safety nets oh i bet that they're a bit no they must be i imagine six months employment yeah something like that it's like when you have an apprentice they do it in two lump sums they give you like because they give you a thousand pound or they used to give you a thousand pounds they give you five from the power beginning and then when they're completed you give they give you the other five okay oh so they might only give you three thousand at the end maybe so yeah well yeah that's that's really um i suppose it comes down to conversation so if you are having i don't know if the how this is top tips isn't it it's about if you have an environmental health of again cost of enforcement to local authorities is greater than spending an hour with an hour or two hours with a business educating and supporting them if they've got a problem if they're not clean why can you not go right you're closing we'll do it informally we'll do a voluntary closure i'll be back tomorrow you need to clean this this this and this instead of the business already agreeing to close and then they still go to court so there's the cost of the court how much has that cost the council and i know they claim their cost back but then that's a claim on the business as well isn't the better outcome where you've gone you're going to close you're going to clean clean up this is what and this is what i need from you and i'll be back next week you only got to pop in for another hour half hour to make sure they're doing what they said and you treat them on a special measures type situation where you do spend so all of those five hours that you've spent right in witness statements could be spent with the business yeah yeah supporting the business but also it's like yeah that but also the preventative angle as well so it's like why don't eho's have a certain proportion of their time allocated to educating and going in not to do the audits well we know that we had a recent conversation with somebody who was the business development person for a council who who discussed i was like why don't you get support from your environmental health department and they were like they do the exact opposite so you've got two departments within one council working against one another you've got one that's trying to support local business and encourage and grow and then you've got the other that's just preventative it's just bonkers to me it's like backwards yes it's like it's like when you're looking after a member of staff and it's like oh i'm just going to punish them for doing it wrong it's like no no teach them how to do it right first and then everyone wins yeah yeah it's not rocket science is it no so i've just that's that's my life should we call it rant rant mine was a rant mine was more of a rant but but also it was it's interesting it's insight it's very insightful very insightful thank you very much i really enjoyed that going back to our roots thank you maybe we should do some more of these just us two maybe i'm still going to do a pot wash shift.

I was going to do a pot wash shift and record it. Yeah. I think that that would be brilliant. We're in need at the moment.

Oh, are you? Okay. Over and out. Thank you very much.

Thank you.