How to Get Ahead of Restaurant Employee Burnout

Restaurant employee burnout may seem inevitable. With long hours, unpredictable schedules, benefits that leave a lot to be desired and demanding work, it’s no wonder that four in five hospitality employees feel burned out. 

Add a pandemic and labor shortage into the mix, and the effects of burnout become more severe. For restaurant operators who manage multiple venues, burnout-related understaffing and productivity loss scale up and become costly problems.

The good news is, if you identify burnout in time, you can ameliorate it before it gets out of hand and implement safeguards to prevent it from becoming a systemic problem. 

Burnout refers to work-related stress and physical and emotional exhaustion that leads to productivity loss and underperformance. At restaurants, burnout inevitably affects the guest experience. According to Mayo Clinic, burnout also involves a “sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity” for employees.

A number of factors contribute to burnout in the hospitality industry, including:

By identifying the symptoms of burnout, you can get ahead of it and give employees the support they need to feel good at work. Pay attention to these signs of burnout among your management, front-of-house (FOH) and back-of-house (BOH) teams.

You won’t be able to eliminate restaurant burnout overnight. However, by creating an anti-burnout strategy that addresses the problem from different angles, you can systematically reduce it over time.

Automation can help staff do more with fewer resources. For example, a mobile order-and-pay solution can remove taking orders from servers’ plates so they can focus on building relationships with customers. Inventory management software can alert BOH staff when it’s time to reorder, so they can spend less time manually counting inventory. Marketing automation software, like SevenRooms, can put email outreach on auto-pilot so managers can devote more time to employees and customers.

Only 45% of restaurant workers get paid sick leave, compared to 73% of workers in all industries. By giving staff more paid time off, they’ll be able to take care of themselves and be more productive when they’re back at work.

Creating consistency in staff members’ schedules helps them plan their personal lives and take care of obligations outside of work that could otherwise impact their productivity on the job.

A lack of manager recognition is one of the main causes of turnover in the hospitality industry. Improve retention by implementing an employee-of-the-month program, give kudos and gamify performance to make staff feel appreciated.

Restaurant staff can become burned out when they can’t see a future for themselves at their workplace. Hospitality groups should promote internally to give employees a trajectory for growth.

Equip employees with the tools they need to do the best job possible. If someone is struggling, give them more training time. Create resources and guides they can reference if they need help. A one-on-one mentorship system can also alleviate burnout by providing guidance and kinship.

If possible, give employees a wellness stipend they can use towards a gym membership or therapy. Doing so will help employees bolster their well-being outside of work which will help them at work.

Unlike a management role, which has opportunities for respite, staff who are on the front lines have to constantly be “on.” Implement more breaks to give staff more time to unwind during their shifts.

Consider creating a tip pool for FOH staff or giving tips to BOH staff to make everyone feel like they’ve contributed to the restaurant’s success.

Keep an eye on customer feedback surveys and public reviews to see if guests complain about specific staff members. If they do, check in with them to address their performance and learn what support they need to thrive.

Your restaurant management team often carries the heaviest workload. From managing the daily operations of service to employee hiring and scheduling, turnover is common at this level. Implement these retention strategies to reduce manager burnout.

If your managers are flying solo and feeling overworked, hire assistant managers to provide support.

Managers wear many hats, but not all tasks may be worth their time. Consider outsourcing admin-related tasks, such as accounting, to free managers up.

Incentivize performance by giving managers bonuses for achieving sales goals or meeting other quotas. If providing added financial incentives isn’t possible for your restaurant, give top performers the opportunity to oversee or open a new location or work their way up by creating new roles on the executive or senior level. 

While it’s natural to want to blame employees for underperforming when they feel burned out, it’s more helpful to examine how workplace expectations and culture contributed to this issue. Only after seeing burnout as a problem can you combat it effectively and reduce it at scale.

SevenRooms can automate many tasks to help your team do more with less. Request a demo today.

Good employees quit restaurants due to burnout and a lack of growth opportunities. When employees feel overworked and underappreciated and don’t see a way to develop professionally at a restaurant, they’re more likely to leave.

Unfortunately, there’s no fast fix for restaurant burnout. Instead, addressing this issue requires a multi-pronged approach consisting of more paid time off, hiring more staff, implementing automation and giving employees more avenues for professional growth.