How to make employees care
8 Min Read
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I was speaking about frontline employee performance at a restaurant conference recently when an operator raised his hand during the Q&A.
“I hear what you’re saying, Scott, but my problem is, my employees just don’t seem to care.”
I took a moment before challenging him with my response.
“Why should they?”
There was a brief silence before someone else chimed in.
“Because it’s their job.”
I smiled. He wasn’t wrong. A paycheck creates an agreement. Employees are expected to show up on time, perform their responsibilities, follow procedures, and treat guests respectfully. Every employer has the right to expect those things.
But the more I reflected on that exchange afterward, the more I realized the two operators were talking about different kinds of performance. One was frustrated because his people weren’t giving him everything they had. The other was describing what employees owe an employer. Those are two very different conversations.
Every restaurant depends on moments that can’t be required. A server notices that guests are celebrating an anniversary and creates a memory they’ll talk about long after dessert. A cashier walks around the counter to help an older guest carry a tray. A line cook sees another station falling behind and jumps in before anyone asks. None of those actions are likely to appear in an employee handbook, yet they’re often the moments guests remember most because someone chose to care just a little more than the job technically required.
I think of that as discretionary effort. It’s the willingness to invest emotionally in the work rather than simply complete the work. The question that has interested me for years isn’t why some employees naturally give that extra effort while others don’t. It’s what makes someone want to.
The experience behind the experience
Restaurant operators devote enormous energy to designing the guest experience. Menus are refined. Lighting is adjusted. Music is selected carefully. Operators monitor online reviews, test service standards, and look for every opportunity to improve what customers see, hear, and feel. They understand that hospitality doesn’t happen accidentally. It’s something that must be designed.
I’ve come to believe there’s another experience that’s being designed every day, whether anyone intends to design it or not.
What does it feel like to work here?
Not what wages are paid or what benefits are offered. What does it actually feel like to spend a shift working under this leadership team? What does an employee experience from the moment they walk through the back door until they leave at the end of the shift?
Anyone who’s managed a restaurant knows how easily those questions become buried beneath the demands of running the business. A manager may begin the day intending to spend time coaching a new supervisor or helping a promising employee develop new skills. Then someone calls in sick. A delivery arrives incomplete. The ice machine stops working. A guest asks to speak with the manager. Lunch arrives earlier than expected, ticket times begin climbing, and before long the shift is over. Every operational problem has been addressed, while the coaching conversation quietly disappears from the day’s agenda.
That usually isn’t because managers don’t care about people. It’s because operations have a way of demanding attention while people often don’t.
A broken fryer announces itself immediately. A backed-up drive-thru can’t be ignored. A guest who receives the wrong order wants to see a manager right now. Operational problems are loud.
Employees’ emotional needs are different. They rarely announce themselves. People don’t walk into the office and say they’re beginning to feel discouraged, overlooked, or disconnected. More often, they simply become quieter. They stop volunteering ideas. They become less willing to take initiative. Eventually, some stop believing anyone would notice the difference.
That’s what makes leadership so challenging. The issues that most influence culture are often the least likely to interrupt a manager’s day.
Change takes 15 seconds
Imagine a typical lunch rush. The dining room is full, the kitchen is working at full speed, and everyone is moving as quickly as they can. A young employee finds herself helping an upset guest whose order has taken much longer than expected. The guest is visibly frustrated, but the employee remains calm, listens carefully, apologizes sincerely, and resolves the situation so well that the guest leaves satisfied.
Within minutes the restaurant returns to its normal rhythm. Another guest steps forward. More orders arrive. The moment disappears almost as quickly as it happened.
Now imagine two managers.
The first never says anything. Not because he didn’t appreciate what happened, but because he never actually saw it. While the interaction was unfolding, he was handling staffing issues, answering questions from the kitchen, checking inventory, and trying to keep the operation moving. His attention was exactly where most managers’ attention would have been.
The second manager is every bit as busy, but a few minutes later he catches the employee as she walks by and quietly says, “I saw how you handled that guest. You stayed calm when it would’ve been easy not to. Nice job.”
The exchange lasts maybe 15 seconds before both return to work.
It’s tempting to think those 15 seconds matter because they contain praise. I don’t think that’s the real reason. They matter because they communicate attention.
When people believe their effort has been seen, they begin to feel that they matter. Recognition isn’t powerful because it flatters people. It’s powerful because it tells them someone noticed. That’s a very different experience from simply hearing “good job,” and it’s one of the reasons why thoughtful recognition leaves such a lasting impression.
The strongest workplace cultures I’ve encountered weren’t built through elaborate recognition programs. They were built by managers who developed the habit of noticing people. They caught effort before it became excellence. They acknowledged growth before someone became a top performer. They paid attention consistently enough that employees rarely questioned whether anyone cared.
Passing it forward
I saw this firsthand while owning Edible Arrangements franchises.
One of our managers eventually earned the company’s Manager of the Year award. She built exceptional teams, developed strong employees, and created a workplace where people genuinely wanted to do their best. Customers noticed the difference, and so did I.
I would have loved to have taken credit for her investment in the business. Maybe I deserve some. But I felt there was more to it. So, one day I asked her what she believed made her such an effective leader.
She didn’t talk about personality or natural talent. Instead, she described a manager she’d worked for years earlier. He had invested in her, coached her patiently, challenged her to improve, and made her feel that her success genuinely mattered. As she talked, it became obvious that she wasn’t consciously copying his leadership style. She was simply recreating for her own employees the experience she had once received herself.
That conversation changed the way I think about hospitality. And the way I think about management, and my role as the owner.
We usually think of hospitality as something employees extend to customers. But before employees create memorable experiences for guests, they’re having experiences of their own every day at work. They’re learning what respect feels like. They’re learning whether feedback is delivered with dignity. They’re learning whether mistakes become opportunities to improve or reasons to feel embarrassed. They’re learning whether someone notices effort before noticing failure.
In many organizations, the guest experience eventually becomes a reflection of the employee experience. Leaders don’t just teach hospitality; they model it. Employees absorb that experience, and many eventually pass it along to the people they serve.
Creating the conditions
None of this suggests accountability is any less important. Restaurants need high standards, honest feedback, and managers who are willing to have difficult conversations. Accountability protects the guest, the team, and the business.
What accountability cannot do is create discretionary effort.
Managers can’t require people to care. They can’t schedule it, demand it, or build it into a checklist. They can’t write a policy that causes someone to notice an anxious guest, help a struggling coworker without being asked, or stay a few extra minutes because they genuinely want the shift to succeed.
What leaders can do is create the conditions where those choices become much more likely.
Those conditions are built through hundreds of ordinary interactions that rarely seem significant while they’re happening. They’re reflected in how employees are greeted at the beginning of a shift, whether coaching is delivered respectfully, whether managers remain composed under pressure, whether good work is acknowledged before poor work is corrected, and whether employees leave work believing they were valued as people instead of simply managed as labor.
Those moments accumulate. Over time, they answer a question every employee is quietly asking, “What’s it like to work here?”
Restaurant operators spend tremendous energy asking another question: “What’s it like to eat here?”
The two questions are inseparable because one experience shapes the other.
Hospitality begins earlier than we think
The operator who told me his employees didn’t care wasn’t wrong to feel frustrated. Every leader has experienced that feeling. But before concluding that employees simply don’t care anymore, it may be worth asking another question.
What experience are they having while they work here?
Hospitality doesn’t begin when the first guest walks through the front door. It begins much earlier, in the everyday interactions between leaders and employees that shape how people feel about coming to work. Long before guests experience a restaurant’s culture, employees already have. And sooner or later, guests almost always receive whatever employees have been experiencing all along.
