When restaurant staff are ready for a promotion

People love to work somewhere they can grow. Most employees want not only a job, but a career. Right beside that, employers understand their business cannot grow without great people. So, putting both together — giving people the opportunity to grow along with your business — sets up a long-lasting relationship.

Of course, that leads to an obvious question: How do you decide who those great people are? The ones who will lead the rest of your team and help grow your business?

Core beliefs

Nick Bogacz, founder and president of Caliente Pizza & Draft House in Pittsburgh

For starters, it helps to establish a culture based on your business’s core beliefs, those non-negotiable values and behaviors that you expect from leaders in your company and, of course, yourself. But first, how do you determine your core beliefs? Simple — they’re the same core principles that you live by and helped you to start your business.

An example from my restaurant:

• Integrity: Know and do what is right.
• Respect: Treat others the way you want to be treated.
• Responsibility: Embrace
  opportunities to contribute. Learn more.
• Sportsmanship: Bring your best to all competition.
• Servant leadership: Serve the common good.

Promoting employees simply based on seniority is a slippery slope. Just because someone on your team has been there longer than others does not mean that they have leadership skills or truly demonstrate your core values.

Instead, pay attention to how members of your team interact with each other. A key component to the core values is how people treat each other. When you have members of your team who not only meet those expectations but exceed them, that’s when you begin to identify leaders in your organization.

More employee promotion considerations

Core beliefs are a good start, but they are not the only things that get people promoted.

I like when someone buys into the company, is team-first, and recognizes that although we may be in the pizza business, we truly are in the people business. I have honest conversations with the ones who exhibit these qualities, explaining to them what advancing to the next position or level exactly means. It’s not only about what the job entails, but what the pressures may be and what’s expected of them.

Promoting from within is great, because it creates an environment of appreciation, but it’s not always possible. There may be times when someone left unexpectedly, or growth is occurring at a high rate. In these instances, you must go outside of your four walls to hire — and do so very thoroughly. Interview based on your core values and look for superior people skills. It also helps to have some of your team do a portion of the interviewing so that they feel comfortable with the new person coming in at a higher position, provided that the interviewer is in an equal or higher position than the candidate.

In the next installment, we’ll return to inside our comfortable four walls, discuss what it takes to set up a smoothly running pizzeria — and what to do when all appears well.

Nick Bogacz is the founder and president of Caliente Pizza & Draft House in Pittsburgh.  Instagram: @caliente_pizza