kitchen staffIt is not just working mothers that worry about the balance of home life versus career these days.  Study after study has shown that employees that have a life outside of work have the best attendance records, performance records and are involved in less accidents at the work place than their over worked counterparts.

It may be very tempting in lean economic times to cut back the hours of your non-salaried employees and allow your salaried managers to pick up the slack.  While the impact on your bottom line may be a sort of instant gratification, the long-term result is likely to put you in the red more than you saved to begin with.

A few things to consider:

Stress- Just because a manager is away from home more with an increased schedule load does not mean that their responsibilities at home have decreased accordingly.  We all know the feeling of their not being enough hours in a day, and an over worked employee still has to juggle their home life.  Pushing tasks back into sleeping time will over time create a less than alert manager, causing reactionary time to fall dramatically.  Safety is a big issue- a tired manager is less likely to notice safety violations and less likely to be accurate in reporting, both of which can have dire consequences to your business stability.

Dissatisfaction- It may seem downright silly, but Little Johnny’s soccer game or Sally’s dance recital may be just as important as work.  Employees that are not given an opportunity to enjoy family events or handle personal problems at home quickly become resentful of their employment. An unhappy employee is an unproductive employee as a rule. Once the loyalty is shaken effort on the job is likely to decrease, the impact of which a restaurant owner will see translate to the bottom line.

Attendance- Even the most dedicated employee can only do so much.  While your plan to cut payroll may look like a smashing success in the first few months, the wear and tear on your salaried employees will show itself in time.  Emotional and physical wellness go hand in hand, and historically employees with adequate time away from work have less illnesses and injuries as a result.  Likewise, they are less likely to feel the need to “call in sick” to attend to personal matters if they have no reason to fear a backlash if they need to request time off work.

Even if your top-performing manager is eager to pick up the extra work, it’s beneficial in the long run to require and encourage downtime.  Balancing your scheduling needs while understanding your employees do have needs outside of the restaurant will result in happier employees. Happy employees get sick less and make less safety mistakes. Happy employees also provide better service.  Superior  service, as we all know, is the best recipe for a successful business.