Assisted Service Mode
Get your team involved
Your team plays a key part in your energy saving and sustainability strategy, so it’s important that roles and responsibilities for energy saving are clear. Sustainability is likely to be a passion for many of your staff, so encourage an open dialogue in team meetings for sharing ideas to implement in your business.
“We’re engineering the behaviour we want people to have in their working practices rather than assuming they will just become efficient. We have systems like daily management sheets that spell out whose job it is to do things like turn the lights off and their performance is measured and returned in their reviews. If you manage it and engineer it into a business and you have the right culture then it’s a positive thing.”
Peter Weeden, Head Chef of the Duke of Cambridge & Head of Sustainability for the Culpeper Family Hospitality Group
Encouraging your team to be more sustainable and energy efficient can be as simple as:
- Putting up signage above switches and on doors can act as a helpful prompt for all staff to switch things off
- Encouraging staff to only turn on stoves and hobs just before service and ensuring appliances like dishwashers are only used when fully loaded
- Delivering effective staff training on energy and food waste management
- Initiate some healthy competition amongst staff and encourage your teams to get creative over ways to reduce energy consumption, food waste, etc.
- Assign responsibility for launching bigger initiatives to team members and build savings into team objectives so everyone has an interest in making changes.
No two businesses will have the same sustainability journey – it’s about starting somewhere. Successful initiatives often result from bringing teams on the sustainability journey, no matter their level. Getting staff and your community involved is vital to staying up-to-date with the most relevant eco trends and encouraging different kinds of thinking.
“Our planet is so important to us and the youngsters get it and they’re learning about it in school and they’re learning about ways they can save money, so we give them little projects. Peter from the washing up recently had a project to look at how much water he is using when he fills up a basin every day and he came back to work the following day and had worked out how much water he was using and said ‘we’re using X many cubic meters of water and then times that by 17 and that’s how many we use in a day’. He then owned the problem which is fantastic. So, then we actually said to Peter ‘what can we do to reduce that?’ and Peter said ‘I think if we use a washing up bowl, instantly we’re going to save X amount of cubic metres of water and if we use another washing up bowl to soak things that need soaking for longer we’re going to save even more water’. That’s the passion we’re getting from our staff members.”
Sara Bird, The Camelot
