Carrot and stick beats ranting

May 2 2008 by Bill Oldfield, The Journal

BEING in the food industry, you’d expect me to believe in the carrot and stick approach to management, but not everybody in my position seems to agree.

I’ve never been one for threats, believing that respect and continuous encouragement wrapped around praise and guidance is the better way..

Everybody likes a bit of friendly encouragement. While a donkey might consider the reward of a carrot to be just what it needs to do as it’s asked, and the application of a stick on its backside if it didn’t, a more appropriate motivational term for us humans might be the indexed-linked- pension and redundancy approach or, possibly, the hedge-fund-manager’s- enormous-bonus and slightly-less-of-a-bonus management method. Either way, no matter how unsophisticated or otherwise the encouragement, the basic idea has been proved to work.

But it was an eye-opener when I first gained experience in catering to discover that some of the management techniques were prehistoric. There seemed little thought as to how to get the best out of people, particularly in the kitchen.

I was told that there was little point in being nice to chefs because they were only going to leave, without notice, when they felt like it. Sure, there has long been more jobs than good chefs. But normally, based on the laws of supply and demand, you’d expect that this would result in above- average wages. It never has.

Very few seemed to grasp that if you treat someone with respect you will sometimes, if not all of the time, get some back in return.

While some things have improved, unfortunately, there are still too many in our industry who shout and rant and rave. I’m sure the telly has some influence.

We’re lucky at Oldfields in that our staff turnover is significantly lower than the industry average and I like to think that it’s because we do respect each other. I’m absolutely delighted that we have staff commuting to Durham from Tyneside while waiting for us to reopen a restaurant in Newcastle. They’ve proved they’d like to stay. Very satisfying.

There’s a nice little carrot and stick approach being used now in County Durham. We’re all aware that there have to be standards maintained in the kitchens and therefore we’re inspected by the local authority. If found wanting, and unprepared to do anything about it, we’re punished.

But as a carrot to the environmental health officer’s stick, County Durham Tourism Partnership has recently announced a scheme where premises such as ours are judged on a number of criteria, including cleanliness, the food on offer, warmth of welcome and commitment to local produce. And if we’re any good, we receive a rating, have it trumpeted by the tourism authorities and customers come flooding in, which sounds like an incentive to me.