Your restaurant employee handbook can be a powerful tool. It can be used to speed up the onboarding process for new hires, make confusing company policies easy to understand and serve as a reference manual for common tasks.
Of course, it can only do any of those things if it’s written and formatted in a way that makes sense to employees. And that’s not always an easy task—especially if you’ve never written one before!
That’s why we’re going to show you:
But, before we get into those topics, let’s take a moment to make sure we all understand what a restaurant employee handbook is and its importance to your business.
A restaurant employee handbook is a document that contains all of the major rules, policies and guidelines for your employees. It can also include information on things like your restaurant’s mission and values.
We know that it can be hard to imagine how to structure and include all of that information in one place. So, let’s now look at what you should include in your handbook.
A good restaurant employee handbook includes the following sections.
Introduce your employees to your handbook by writing a welcome note and brief history of your restaurant.
Next, you’ll give employees an overview of your restaurant’s mission and core business values. This information helps ensure your employees know how to do things, like:
Sometimes, your employees will need a place to reference what is and isn’t acceptable behavior. So, in this section, make your expectations clear. Outline standards for conduct on things like:
Be friendly in your tone to not seem patronizing. But, in this section, you may also choose to include information about the consequences for ignoring or breaking the code of conduct.
This section will likely be the one your employees refer to the most. So, it’s important it accurately reflects your restaurant’s policies as well as federal, state and local laws.
To do that, you’ll include information on:
In this section, outline how employees can view and request changes to their schedule. Be sure to also state clearly how much notice is needed for changes to be processed.
In addition to those things, you may also include information on:
You may already have a section on your restaurant operations and procedures in your restaurant operations manual. But you can also include it in your employee handbook for easy reference.
What type of things should you include? How-to information for all of your restaurant’s important systems (e.g. your Point of Sales software), routine tasks (e.g. opening and closing guidelines) and who on your team to reach out to for any situations not covered in the handbook.
You can conclude your employee handbook by stating how the rules and guidelines of the previous sections support the restaurant's mission and values. You can also include a note to recognize and thank your employees for being part of your team.
Simply including the information we just outlined isn’t enough to make a good handbook your employees will actually use and refer back to. We recommend making sure your employee handbook also has the following characteristics.
You and your employees may not fully be aware of it, but the long-term success of your restaurant depends on your company culture.
So, make sure your handbook clearly communicates your restaurant’s core values, long-term goals, your ideal customers, why you serve those customers and how you hope those customers describe your restaurant.
Don’t make your employees guess or assume anything when reading about the company policies. This isn’t a legal document. So, aim for clarity. Explain your policies in layman terms, avoiding unnecessary corporate jargon.
Your employee handbook is part of your brand. And how you design, format and write the content should reflect that. Here are some examples of things you can do:
No matter how good it is, your employee handbook can’t cover every possible situation. And you may have to review some issues on a case-by-case basis. A good employee manual makes that clear by demonstrating that certain policies can be modified if the circumstances call for it.
Since the start of the pandemic, the way you run your restaurant has likely changed a lot. And, unfortunately, it doesn’t look like things are going to fully return to pre-pandemic conditions any time soon.
So, make sure your employee handbook reflects how you and your employees work now. This is especially true if you’ve done things like:
Including this information in your handbook is especially important if you're also in the process of hiring new employees and rehiring former ones. Why? Because you don’t want them referring to outdated information.
Your restaurant employee handbook can become the go-to reference source for new and existing employees. But, first, you have to write one that covers all of the necessary information. Use this outline to write or update your employee handbook this year!