Question:
How do you modernize the skills of older employees?
–
Answer:
The first thing that any excellent manager needs to do, regardless of age, is to engage employees in the mission. Get your employees to understand the importance of how their daily work affects the happiness of guests. Once you get to that point, everything else is sort of easy. It doesn’t matter if you have 20-somethings, 50-somethings or 100-somethings; we all need to stay focused.
The next thing a manager needs to do is set the expectations of staff very clearly. You want those employees who have fire in their bellies and are lifelong learners, irrelevant of age. We need to set those expectations and not allow mediocrity.
Training is setting the expectation and asking your employees to change their behavior according to the gold standard. That expectation can modernize the skills of all your employees. First, keep staff up-to-date on safety, and then quality of food and hospitality.
It’s really important to know what motivates employees. We need to be fair but understand what makes them tick and accommodate those motivations as best we can. The more we can understand our employees, the more we can meet their needs, and in turn they’ll meet our needs.
—Lynne Eddy
Associate Professor, Business Management
The Culinary Institute of America