Here’s a situation every landlord knows: you have a staff member who isn’t quite pulling their weight. Maybe their service is a bit slow, they’re often late, or they just lack that spark you need behind the bar. What do you do? Most managers resort to a quiet word here and there, hoping things improve, until the issue becomes so significant that a formal warning is the only option left.
This reactive approach is stressful for you and demoralising for your team. True pub staff performance management isn’t about punishment or just dealing with problems. It’s a continuous, proactive process designed to develop your people, improve their performance, and align their individual goals with the success of your business. It’s the difference between managing a team and leading one.
Forgetting to actively manage performance is like forgetting to restock the cellar—eventually, you’re going to run dry. This guide will provide you with a practical, powerful framework to manage your team effectively, ensuring everyone from your newest glass collector to your most experienced chef is working to their full potential.
The Problem: The ‘No News is Good News’ Trap
Many managers operate on a simple principle: if you’re not hearing complaints, everything must be fine. But this hands-off approach to performance management is a trap. It creates an environment of uncertainty and neglect, where critical issues are left to fester.
When you don’t have a structured process for managing performance, several things go wrong:
- Staff Lack Direction: Your team members don’t have a clear understanding of what they are accountable for or what ‘good’ performance looks like. This leads to inconsistency and frustration.
- Good Performance Goes Unnoticed: Without a system for feedback and recognition, your star performers can feel unappreciated. As one document notes, every person wants to feel appreciated for what they do. If they don’t get that, they’ll look for it elsewhere.
- Poor Performance Festers: Minor issues are ignored until they become major problems. By the time you address them, it’s often too late to coach the person towards improvement, leading to a difficult disciplinary process or a resignation.
- Development Stagnates: Performance will not improve unless there is continuous development of individuals and teams. A hands-off approach offers no path for growth, contributing to the high staff turnover that plagues the hospitality industry.
This reactive management style ultimately leads to low morale, poor service, and a constant, costly cycle of hiring and re-training.
The Solution: The Performance Management Cycle
Effective performance management is a holistic process that brings together all the elements of successful people management. It’s a continuous cycle, not a one-off event. A highly effective model, based on the work of management expert Ken Blanchard, breaks this cycle down into three simple, memorable stages:
Plan, Coach, and Review.
1. Performance Planning: This is where everything begins. It’s the process of agreeing on goals and objectives with your team members so they have a clear direction. It’s about defining what you expect them to achieve and the standards they need to meet.
2. Performance Coaching: This is the day-to-day work of a leader. It’s the ongoing process where you, as the manager, work
for your employees, giving them the guidance and support they need to be successful. It involves regular progress checks, praising good work, and redirecting performance where needed.
3. Performance Review:
This is the more formal meeting where you and your team member sit down to discuss their performance over a period of time. It’s a chance to recap their progress, celebrate achievements, and set goals for the future.
This cycle aligns the organisation’s resources, systems, and people to its strategic objectives. In your pub, it means ensuring every team member’s work is directly contributing to the overall success of the business.
Deep Dive: Performance Planning
You can’t expect your team to hit a target they can’t see. The planning phase is about setting the bar and making sure everyone knows where it is. This is the foundation for the entire performance management process.
It starts before you even hire someone, with a clear Job Description and Person Specification. A good job description gives a clear and precise idea of what you expect, outlining the key responsibilities and accountabilities of the role. The person specification then defines the ideal candidate, listing the essential skills, knowledge, and behaviours needed to succeed.
Once a team member is in their role, performance planning involves setting clear individual goals. These goals should cascade down from the pub’s overall corporate goals. For example, if the pub’s strategic objective is to improve its reputation for food, a chef’s goal might be to “reduce food wastage by 10%” or “achieve an average 4.5-star rating for food on review sites.” A useful tool for this is the
Personal Development Plan (PDP), which helps identify an employee’s learning needs and agree on development actions.
Deep Dive: Performance Coaching
This is the heart of effective leadership and where you’ll spend most of your time. Performance coaching is a continuous, often informal, process of observation, feedback, and support. A brilliant framework to guide your coaching is Hersey and Blanchard’s
Situational Leadership II Model. This theory suggests that there is no single “best” style of leadership. Instead, a great leader adapts their style to match the development level of the individual they are managing.
The model outlines four distinct leadership styles:
- S1: Directing (High Directive, Low Supportive): This is for the ‘Enthusiastic Beginner’. Think of a new bartender on their first day. They are keen but have low competence. Your role is to provide clear, step-by-step instructions: “This is how you change a barrel. This is how you use the till.” You tell them what to do and how to do it.
- S2: Coaching (High Directive, High Supportive): This is for the ‘Disillusioned Learner’. The team member now has some skills but may have lost confidence or motivation. You still provide direction, but you also provide lots of support, encouragement, and praise. You explain the ‘why’ behind tasks and solicit their ideas.
- S3: Supporting (Low Directive, High Supportive): This is for the ‘Capable but Cautious Performer’. Your team member is now competent, but they may still lack the confidence to work independently. Your role is to empower them, listen to their ideas, and help them solve problems. You facilitate and support their decisions rather than making them yourself.
- S4: Delegating (Low Directive, Low Supportive): This is for the ‘Self-Reliant Achiever’. This is your star performer. They are highly skilled and highly motivated. Your role is to trust them with responsibility and delegate tasks. You give them the autonomy to manage their own work.
As a manager, your goal is to help your team members move along this curve, changing your leadership style over time from directing to delegating.
Case Study: Tom the Bartender’s Journey
Let’s see how this works in a pub setting with a new bartender, Tom, and his manager, Sarah.
- Month 1 (D1 – Enthusiastic Beginner): Tom is eager to learn but has never worked in a pub before. He doesn’t know the products or systems. Sarah uses a Directing (S1) style. She gives him a thorough induction, provides clear instructions for every task, and closely supervises his work.
- Month 3 (D2 – Disillusioned Learner): Tom has mastered the basics, but he gets flustered during busy periods and his confidence has taken a knock. Sarah notices this and shifts to a Coaching (S2) style. She spends more time with him, praising his progress and giving him constructive feedback after busy shifts. She explains the strategy behind their new promotions and asks for his input.
- Month 6 (D3 – Capable but Cautious Performer): Tom is now a competent and skilled bartender, but he’s hesitant to take the lead on anything. Sarah moves to a Supporting (S3) style. She asks him to develop a new cocktail special for the week. She doesn’t tell him what to do but acts as a sounding board for his ideas and empowers him to make the final decision.
- Month 9 (D4 – Self-Reliant Achiever): Tom is now one of the pub’s top performers. He’s confident, creative, and fully self-motivated. Sarah shifts to a Delegating (S4) style. She gives him full responsibility for managing the weekly cocktail specials and ordering the necessary stock.
At his first annual performance review, there are
no surprises. Tom is fully aware of his performance because of the constant coaching from Sarah. The meeting is a chance to recap his incredible progress and set new, ambitious goals for his future development at the pub.
The Final Step: Running Reviews That Matter
The formal performance review is the final piece of the cycle. This is the official meeting where a person’s performance over a year (or six months) is summed up. However, if you’ve been coaching effectively, it should simply be a recap of points that both you and the employee already know.
To make your reviews effective, you need a clear process for monitoring and measuring performance. This can include a variety of methods:
- Customer feedback and satisfaction surveys
- Observations by the team leader or others
- Production or operational records (e.g., till reports showing sales per employee)
A good performance review should be a two-way conversation that covers past performance against objectives and agrees on future goals and development needs, starting the cycle all over again.
Conclusion: A Culture of Continuous Improvement
Effective pub staff performance management is a commitment to the continuous development of your people. It’s about being an adaptable, supportive leader who understands that your primary role is to help your team succeed.
By moving away from a reactive, problem-focused approach and embracing a proactive cycle of planning, coaching, and reviewing, you can create a high-performance culture. This is a culture where goals are clear, feedback is constant, and every team member feels valued and invested in the pub’s success. This doesn’t just reduce staff turnover; it creates a happy, motivated, and highly effective team that will keep your customers coming back for more.
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