Culture is not just beers, pizza and ping pong.

Culture is not just beers, pizza and ping pong.

Running a good hospitality business takes good food, beverages, and service, but the culture makes a great hospitality business. People are everything within our business, and we must have an inspiring culture to ensure they work with intention instead of working for a paycheck.

 
So how do you create a good culture? Firstly it must start with a vision and a mission for your business, something inspiring that the team will want to embrace, something to keep them focused on a bigger cause. So they feel that they are working for a reason, wanting to create great experiences within your business and ultimately make you money.

 
Once you have established this, there is more to it. You can't write a vision and mission statement and think the job is done. You then have to be an inspiring leader to set the tone and lead and live by example in what you are trying to achieve. 

 
Working on your culture must be on your mind every week. What are you doing to improve your culture? Are you checking in with your team regularly? Are you talking about the mission that you are trying to achieve?

 
Here are four things that you can do in your business to improve your culture

1. Sit down individually with your team, and find out what is going well and what is not going well.
   Constantly discuss what you are trying to achieve in your business. Is it the ultimate customer experience? Is it vibrancy and fun? Is it community-focused, where everyone knows your name?
2. Train your team, and teach them things. People thrive when growing, and if your team feels they are learning something, they will be more engaged. 
3. Remember birthdays and know things about their lives. 
4. Employee appreciation week (my favourite) do something little for your team every day for 1 or 2 weeks a year.

Seeing culture in action in a hospitality business is an everyday thing. Think about every time you walk into an establishment and assess what the culture is like, the best places, the best culture, the best service, and the environment that makes you feel welcome, special, well looked after, and wanting to return.