With Summer here, preparations are needed to ensure you have a busy, yet successful period for your family entertainment center.
Over summer, there’s plenty of opportunity to maximize your visitors, but if you’re thinking about summer, it's likely your staff are too… It’s no secret that Summer can be notoriously unproductive as beach, pool or social plans take priority. It’s a good idea to plan ahead for this, giving your staff opportunities to enjoy their Summer as well as ensuring that the levels of productivity are still kept high.
Motivating staff throughout this period may seem like a challenge, but it’s important to gauge the staff and use methods to motivate them to get through the season.
Here are some of our tips to keep employees focused and motivated right up through Summer.
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Lead by example.
One of the easiest steps but often the most overlooked. Are you behaving the same way you want your employees to?
Are you on-time for work, taking the correct break times and staying until closing? What about your attitude; are you maintaining an enthusiastic approach to your work and your staff? Behavior is infectious, so it’s up to you to decide how everyone can feel.
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Plan the roster!
Encourage the time off to be taken in the next couple of weeks or months so employees have the time to embrace Summer. Within the Summer periods, make sure your team has plenty of notice on which of the specific weeks and days they will be unable to take off. While you are organiZing the roster, remember to be attentive to scheduling. Look back to last year to assess how busy you were during the season. With people going on holidays or taking their leave you will have to be adaptive and stay on the ball. Make sure you’ve adequately rostered staff in accordance to predicted numbers and peak hours.
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Employee perks.
Many businesses offer extra breaks during busy periods (just an extra 10-15 minutes for a snack or coffee). Think of other ways you can include some perks to work in your business for the season. Summer is often a time of to have events and people to be out and about, which can be incorporated into your own business through organiZing small work events for your team to keep the morale up. This doesn’t mean you have to organize a large events every week, but having a special lunch, or after work drinks can go a long way in keeping employees relaxed and motivated in their roles. .
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Acknowledge a successful year.
Whether you are planning a party, office drinks or an out-of-office activity day, let your team know their hard work has been recognized and appreciated throughout the busy period. Another way to show appreciation is thank you notes. This can be done in an email or in any other suitable method. It is important to appreciate the people who you work with and at the end of your busiest period is a fitting time to do so.
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Be understanding.
This may be the most important time of the year for you as a manager to relate to your team and be attentive. Employees may encounter difficult customers or situations overwhelming to them. Make sure you are available to handle any issues and smooth over any disruptions to the daily routine. With the added load of extra customers and work, staff can be easily stressed and smaller problems can become larger issues much easier than at any other time.