These instances are not all sacking material, and some are at the lower end of the scale of seriousness; like texting to advise non attendance when the rules require a phone call; but, in many instances it becomes clear that the rules are not well articulated to employees by management and therefore possibly not well understood.

If you wish to take disciplinary action against someone who breaches your rules, you must ensure first that the staff member concerned knows what the rules are, even seemingly obvious things like taking food home. If others do it and get away with it, a person being disciplined for this could claim that he/she thought it was OK.

It is really important in our industry, with our reliance on having enough people on deck at the right times, the importance of appearance and behaviour toward customers, and the security of our very slender margins on food and drink that your standards, expectations and policies are written down and understood by your whole crew.

Things like how and when a staff member’s inability to attend their rostered shift must be notified and to whom and where and when the roster for next week will be posted and whose responsibility it is to make changes or substitutions and how they get recorded.

Then there are the rules around uniform, piercings, footwear and music in the restaurant, plus policies about staff consumption of food and beverages – payment or non payment and at what rate. Are staff permitted to attend the restaurant when they’re not working? And if they do, do they get a discount? Are they permitted to serve themselves under these circumstances?

We’ve even come across complaints about staff taking food home without paying in an organisation that allowed staff purchases of meat and beverages – do you allow this?

Anyway, different rules will work for different businesses, but whatever they are, if you want to be able to effectively enforce them, and punish breaches, they must be written and communicated. You should, in an ideal world, obtain every new staff member’s signed acknowledgment that they’ve seen and understand them – then ignorance can not be used as an excuse.

"Most companies don’t exercise patience during the hiring process. There is no development system that is going to compensate for making a bad hire."
-Eric Foss
CEO of Pepsi bottling

USEFUL INFORMATION
The Restaurant Association has available for members a template Employee Handbook which, once tailored to your business, will help you to articulate your policies and house rules. These are available FREE of charge by phoning 0800 737 827.