Wondering how to help your kitchen staff avoid mental burnout? Here’s how to maintain work life balance in the restaurant industry.

How to Promote Work Life Balance in the Restaurant Industry

Running a restaurant is tough, and burnout among staff is common.

Restaurant jobs aren’t for the faint of heart. Kitchens bring on the heat and pressure and not only for the food. Staff burnout and mental health issues are rampant in the hospitality world. Restaurant owners and managers must form a tight bond with their crew to foster a healthy (and sane) work environment. If you want to protect yourself and your staff, you need to help everyone maintain a work-life balance in the restaurant industry.

These days mental health is a high priority in much of the business world. We hear a lot about team building, taking breaks, and maintaining staff morale. Yet, for many restaurateurs, chefs, and staff, work-life balance in the restaurant industry remains a topic on the back burner. Commercial kitchens are intense places filled with heat, pressure, long hours, and stress. If there’s no outlet, your business will eventually suffer.

Over the past few years, the restaurant industry has seen several high-profile suicides and deaths. Emotions run high in the kitchen (just watch any kitchen reality show), and the pressure for perfection is often too much. Combined with a hedonistic environment and constant access to alcohol, drugs, and unhealthy foods, it’s no wonder the culinary industry is boiling over.

Maintaining a healthy work-life balance in the restaurant industry is no easy task. As a restaurant owner, you’re often focused on the logistics of operating a business—food costing, customer service, innovative and new approaches to dining. The last thing on your mind is how everyone in the kitchen is “feeling.” Yet, the health and stability of your staff can’t be understated. A happy, healthy kitchen will help your restaurant become more successful. Here are five excellent ways to avoid burnout for yourself and your staff.

5 Secrets for A Work-Life Balance in the Restaurant Industry

1. Lead a Healthy Work Environment

A team of chefs work in a restaurant kitchen, all wearing white chef coats and hats, working at their own stations. A chef in the foreground tosses food in a flaming wok over a stove.The most essential part of running any successful restaurant business is effective management. As the owner, work-life balance for you and your staff begins with YOU. Practice what you preach by maintaining a healthy lifestyle and caring for yourself first and foremost.

Recognizing the impact running a restaurant has on your entire life is important. Restaurants typically run long hours and have a way of consuming every aspect of your everyday life if you’re not careful. This is an industry of margins, and the need to be constantly diligent takes its toll. A study conducted by PCMA found 38% of people with demanding jobs like hospitality missed important life events and moments due to poor work-life balance. This pressure impacts family life, support systems, and friendships.

While a myriad of statistics prove work-life balance is necessary, it’s no secret that the consequences of a work-work majority are detrimental to any business. The majority of workers who quit their jobs cite poor work-life balance issues such as childcare issues, disrespect at work, no schedule flexibility, and working too many (or too few) hours. Again, proving a healthy work-life balance is essential and beneficial for your business, for you, and for your employees.

This means you should maintain your health and check in regularly. Make quality time off a priority, and schedule breaks and vacations. Allow your staff to do the same. Nickle and diming paid personal time off may seem important to a tight bottom line, but a refreshed, healthy team will be more productive and happier. You are literally investing in the well-being of your staff and yourself, so you can all continue to do a great job in the future.

2. Create a Clear Restaurant Culture

Are you running Hell’s Kitchen? It may be time to pull back on the reins a little and examine the culture you promote within your establishment. Many restaurant owners focus on the external aspects of their culture, from the food to décor, but are you focused on the culture behind the scenes as well?

One of the running jokes in the restaurant industry is chain restaurants that promote their “happy staff” are often filled with demoralized workers who don’t care about their “15 pieces of flair.” The culture mustn’t permeate just the look of your restaurant and customer experience but your kitchen as well.

A clean-eating restaurant may focus on healthy dishes, but does your staff embrace a healthy lifestyle? Include your most popular dishes during family meals (a critical bonding time for kitchen staff), so they can see what all the fuss is about. Get your waitstaff stoked about your great farm-to-table ingredients by letting them sample the best of the best. Meet with new purveyors and include all your staff in the discussion.

Never forget that the restaurant industry is all about the dining experience for your customers, but a positive staff experience is also important. Maintaining a work-life balance in the restaurant industry means keeping your team energized and excited about their work.

Your kitchen staff and front of the house must function together as teams. The kitchen can’t be about barking orders and rushing through service. Instead, cultivate a culture of camaraderie and connections. Not only will your staff be happier, but this happy culture will also be apparent to diners.

3. Cross Train All Staff Members

A waitress and her manager stand at the bar POA system. The manager is showing the waitress how to work the machine.Restaurant success often depends on consistency. Maintaining consistency depends on cross-training your staff. Now, that doesn’t mean your dishwasher will fill in for your head chef or your bartender will jump on the line. Cross-training simply gives everyone a chance to walk in the shoes of their coworker (and truth be told, in a pinch, you may discover your dishwasher can run the fryer just as well as your line cook).

Your restaurant probably feels very different during lunch than during dinner service. It’s easy for everyone to fall into their various roles and familiar tasks. But a lunch customer should get the same quality service and dish, whether they order it at noon or 6 pm. If you have multiple sous chefs, they must cross-train.

The other benefit of cross-training is that your staff (and even you) may be able to take a well-deserved vacation now and again. Vacations and days off are key to maintaining a work-life balance in the restaurant industry. However, don’t skimp because you’re too dependent on your maître d to give them a day away from the door. You may burn your key staff out entirely and lose them once and for all.

Establish clear training procedures to cross-train your staff correctly. Rotate them into different roles occasionally and ensure there’s more than one person who knows how to do every job, from washing dishes to mixing martinis.

4. Learn How to Delegate

One of the most important words for maintaining work-life balance in the restaurant industry is DELEGATION. You’re only one person, and the fact of the matter is, you can’t do it all yourself! It’s vital to the success of your business to learn when to hand off tasks to free up your time. Management and leadership should do the same.

The ability to delegate tasks when a manager is away or an issue arises will save you from inevitable disaster. There are many tasks to juggle in a restaurant. Unfortunately, the pressure for perfection that drives food service also promotes a “do it yourself” attitude. There’s no better way to burn out than to think you’re the only person who can do it all.

Delegating tasks is a key trait of effective leadership. Sharing responsibilities not only prevents stress and burnout, but it helps every single person feel their contributions are essential and needed. An experiment conducted by the U.S. National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health found, “Delegation is closely related to empowerment. People experience psychological empowerment when they feel responsible for meaningful tasks. They also feel empowered when they believe they are competent and make a difference.”

This study proved the immense benefits of delegation. This study shows that delegating tasks improves productivity, but it’s also clear delegation done right “motivates subordinates to enhance their skills and expertise.”

To promote leadership in the kitchen, give your staff MORE responsibility. Let them take on new tasks and help shoulder the workload.

5. Set Goals and Celebrate Success

A team of three chefs stand around a table, holding champaign flutes, cheering a successful night in their restaurant.Most people need to evolve and grow in their jobs. Unfortunately, many employees leave a job if they feel their growth and professional development have reached a standstill. This is particularly true for the restaurant industry. A big part of growth is seeing success and setting tough-but-attainable goals.

When we set goals, we see successes and wins. Those successes should be celebrated and promoted to help build your team morale and form stronger bonds. For example, setting a “monthly customers served” goal, aiming to reach a specific cash flow number, or striving to cut restaurant costs are great attainable goals for building work morale. Achieving your smaller, more realistic goals on a monthly basis will allow you to regularly celebrate wins and acknowledge your team for their hard work.

Another reason to set realistic goals for your staff is to connect and bond. In the long hours of a commercial kitchen, you spend most of your time with the people you work with. Your coworkers often become like family; it’s one of the aspects of the hospitality industry that draws people to restaurant jobs. Working together to meet specific standards or achieve a goal will help further nurture and develop these close work relationships. Goals promote team spirit.

Success helps ease the demands of the high-pressure kitchen. If you’re looking to promote better work-life balance in the restaurant industry, helping your staff set goals and celebrate wins will bring positivity. Keep your kitchen culture thriving and growth-oriented. Not only will your staff be better off, but your customers will also benefit.

Preventing burnout for restaurant staff is a tall order, but it’s achievable with the right approach. The kitchen is busy and intense but also exciting. Help your staff succeed in hospitality by promoting a healthy work-life balance in the restaurant industry!


Featured image via Pxhere.