Unlocking Success: The Power of Engaged General Managers
Why Engaging General Managers is the Key to Restaurant Excellence
Operators know restaurant engagement is essential for maintaining top performance. General managers are the connection between the main office, employees, and customers. Keeping them engaged should be a top priority for operators. Disengaged managers are much more likely to quit, costing operators more money and adding more issues to the overall health of the economy. Top brands understand that the key to best-in-class performance lies in general manager engagement.
Check out a quick video of Jamie Griffin, who offers his expert advice on the importance of engaging general managers.
How Do We Measure Engagement at the Employee Level?
(Video transcription)
“When I think about one piece of advice that you may not have heard about restaurant engagement or measuring engagement at the employee level, one of my really firm thoughts and ideas is that we focus on the general manager.”
“I think we should focus on their development, their selection, their cultivation. How their journey is to become a GM and how we keep them at high-performing levels. And if I had to put all of my eggs in one engagement measurement and management basket I would focus on the GM.”
“They are ultimately the person who take information, thoughts, and ideas from the support offices and headquarters of our companies and turns them into reality for our front-line workers and our customers.”
“So if you do nothing else, make sure you start there and get that equation with your GM as solid as you can.”
Biography
Jamie Griffin is the Founder and Principal of Good Workforce, a people advisory and technology company transforming how businesses measure and manage the world’s hourly workforce to better workers’ lives and improve the bottom line.
Before forming Good Workforce, Jamie spent 14 years at Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers helping it to grow into a $500M business with over 10,000 hourly-rate employees. He is a Baton Rouge Business Report Top 40 under 40, a frequent speaker at conferences and association meetings on a range of sophisticated business topics, and currently serves as President of the New Orleans Culinary & Cultural Preservation Society.
Jamie holds a Bachelor of Science from Louisiana State University and an Executive MBA from Tulane University, which he earned while commuting between Dallas and New Orleans. Based in Dallas, Texas, Jamie volunteers cooking meals at the Ronald McDonald House and serves on the Steering Committee of the IFA Dallas Franchise Business Network.