Restaurant Operations National
How to Address Employee Mental Health When You’re Already Swamped
When you’re overseeing a team in the kitchen, it can feel like there is always more to do than can be done. Working in the hospitality industry can drive you to make sure your customers have the best experience possible, even if that means exhausting yourself in the process. But pushing too hard can cause high turnover rates, and finding and training new team members is time-consuming and expensive. But if you could prevent burnout and turnover by prioritizing mental health at your restaurant, how would you get started?
We sat down with Dr. Jordan Wright, the Founding Director of the Center for Counseling and Community Wellbeing at New York University and partner of Southern Smoke Foundation’s no-cost mental health program Behind You, to get some tips on how you can foster better mental health at your restaurant while reducing burnout and turnover — all without adding anything extra to your to-do list.
Quick Tips for Improving Team Mental Health
When it comes to bringing mental health awareness into your restaurant, Dr. Wright has a three-pronged approach. These tips involve communicating, providing resources, and fine-tuning your workflow to ensure that your team has a safety net.
- Make mental health a part of the everyday dialogue: Make sure that you, as the restaurant owner or manager, are checking in on your workers to see how they’re doing. This can help you sense if they’re feeling overwhelmed from one day to the next.
- Make information available about what options are out there for reduced-fee mental health services: Whether you have fliers pinned to a board or want to send emails to your team, keep them informed about ways they can find care if they need it. That includes directing them to Behind You, Southern Smoke Foundation’s no-cost mental health program, currently available in 11 states and growing.
- Build in better support for your team: Think through your everyday policies and procedures to see where you can be a support for your team. For example, Dr. Wright suggests having them start their shifts 30 minutes earlier to build in a 30-minute break to recharge before you open to the public. You can also ask them if there are any changes in their workflow that could ease their stress and see if they have any preferences about their shift timing.
A restaurant owner at [a moment of crisis] doesn’t need to be a therapist. They need to be a supportive ear and a conduit to some sort of support services.
How to Spot Burnout and What to Do When you See It
If you’re not sure if someone is going through a hard time, here are some signs of burnout:
- Missing shifts or they’re consistently late: This should tell you that they’re feeling overburdened.
- Have a short fuse: When we are stressed, we get irritated, frustrated, or angry more quickly. “In the restaurant industry and bar industry,” says Dr. Wright, “our fuses are tested constantly because the expectations are high. Patrons can be unkind at times, and the requirement for workers is to maintain their cool is higher than any other industry. When we start seeing fuses get shorter, and people getting angrier or reactive, that tends to be a sign they are overstressed.”
- Isolating themselves: If they’re isolating from their friends and coworkers, that is a sign they are likely entering a burnout phase.
We know it may feel challenging to suddenly have to worry about the mental health of your workers when you have so much on your plate already. You aren’t a trained doctor or therapist. But if you recognize these signs or see someone struggling, Dr. Wright says, “When people are in crisis, they may not have the bandwidth to do the research and reach out to a mental health professional or find a phone number for suicide hotline. A restaurant owner at that moment doesn’t need to be a therapist. They need to be a supportive ear and a conduit to some sort of support services.”
Better Mental Health Starts at the Top
When you feel resilient, you can better support the people who work for you. This is why it’s important to consider your own mental health, too. “Unfortunately,” says Dr. Wright, “bar and restaurant owners often don’t acknowledge the importance of their own mental well-being — the worst thing you can do is talk about how you always sucked it up and how everyone else should, too.”
Maybe this was once how it was in the restaurant industry, but no longer, especially as younger generations are becoming more attuned to self-care and mental health concerns in the workplace.
The bottom line: People who are burned out will quit. And by prioritizing your mental health, you’ll have the bandwidth to be there for your staff, and a staff that feels supported is more likely to stick around, feel energized, and provide memorable hospitality.
Southern Smoke Foundation’s no-cost mental health program “Behind You” is currently available in California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. to all food and beverage workers. Learn more here.
*Opinions and views in articles shared on Resy OS are presented for the purpose of discussion and commentary on topics of interest in the restaurant industry; they should not be viewed as substitutes for advice given by professionally engaged business consultants and advisors.
