A New Restaurant

I recently read a piece that someone had written about a problem that every restaurant owner has to deal with: silverware being thrown into the trash.  The writer suggested that on way to deal with this problem was to offer rewards for employees who found and recovered the utensils from the trash cans.

While his suggestion seems like it has the possibility of working, the reality is, that kind of reward will have the opposite effect; it will actually encourage your staff to throw the silverware in the trash.  By putting a reward on finding the utensils, they will start putting things in the trash so they will be able to “find” them, and collect the reward.  While you may see a reduction in the amount of silverware you lose, you may not see any savings.  By the time you are done paying out the rewards, the program may end up costing more than buying the replacement silverware.

Rewarding behavior is a risky thing.  Corporations spend large amounts of money making sure that what they are rewarding actually encourages the desired behavior, and not some unforeseen behavior that is the exact opposite of what they want.

The process starts by looking carefully at what you want to happen.  This can not be a general result you want to achieve.  You need to be as specific as possible.  In the scenario above, it is reducing the amount of loss that comes from silverware being thrown in the trash.  However, the reward didn’t address that problem.  The reward was for pulling things out of the trash, not for stopping the problem before it reaches the trash.

The other problem with this scenario is that by rewarding silverware recovery with cash, you are eating into any savings you would get for reducing the loss of silverware.  Another option is to figure out a way to give non-cash rewards to the staff for achieving certain goals; in this case, for reducing the amount of silverware loss to a specified level.  In this way, you are rewarding desired results, and not a specific behavior.  there would be no incentive for employees to throw away silverware so they can later “find” it fo the reward.

Be careful of reward programs.  If done right, they can work wonders for your restaurant.  If done poorly, it can be throwing good money after bad, and that does not help your chances of success.