Last week we spoke to Jason-Candid about Healthy Hospo, this week we discuss how he implements healthy work environment practices in his own role as a manager in the gastro industry. Find out his number one tip for improving the workplace without spending a cent.

Naomi (The Cocktail Balance): As an advocate for Healthy Hospo and mental health in the workplace, do you find that employers want to make changes and want to invest in their personnel or do they need convincing? It's easy to think theoretically that healthy employees means better business, but you still have to make that initial investment. There are always excuses, there's never enough money.

Jason: It’s a difficult situation because we live in a very challenging economic situation and obviously it always hits the bottom line first. Hospitality is one of the first trades that gets hit, and we could feel this specifically in the UK, not only Covid and post-Covid but also adding Brexit on top of that. Where do you find the finances if they are tight?

We need to understand the reality that if you don't invest in employees and if you don't have a forward thinking mindset, you won't survive. We need employees who are resilient and can actually carry your business through tough times. So you as a manager, as a leader, as an owner, whatever type of key position you might have in a business, if you do not make sure that your staff is doing well, they won't be able and they won't want to make sure that the business is going well. So you can see it goes hand in hand.

We need to make sure that our staff is happy and healthy, and then they can perform. A staff member that comes in with high energy, super motivated, kind, smiley, curious, that person does three to four times more revenue than someone that just comes in and does the job. Then when we compare the cost vs revenue of paying four terrible staff members versus one incredibly good one, then you realise that the cost of staffing terrible people is much bigger than investing into them.

There is a beautiful piece of research being done by Deloitte, quite a big international company with a big seat in the UK as well, and on the last analytic report, it showed a return of investment into the health and well-being of staff of one to five or six. So then suddenly the conversation is very different, right? If you invest one pound in someone or 1000 pounds in training for your team, how much return are you going to get? There's nothing out there in hospitality that gives you such a big return on investment consistently.

So back to the question of how do you find willing employers? Well, you find the people that understand numbers and understand what is important in business and understand that a successful business is connected to a successful team. That's the people that you need to find. Those are the people that want to do something positive in hospitality.

What do you find are some of the common major challenges in hospitality?

This is very personal, everyone thinks a little differently, but what I come across the most is “hospitality is challenging, get a grip”. There's a lack of understanding that while hospitality is stressful, we actually make it more or less so. Yes, hospitality is stressful, but that doesn't mean that when my staff members are at work, they need to be stressed from beginning to end, five or six days a week. That's not sustainable.

So if you look at data across different industries, we can say that every single job is stressful. Stress is part of life. What's important is to understand what stress is, understanding the good stress and the bad stress, reducing the bad stress and increasing the good stress. We all know that hospitality is stressful and sometimes it's very stressful. The main thing is to lower these numbers. Some stress is fine, but it can't be severely damaging to our psychology.

So how can we make this better? First of all, understanding types and sources of stress. It might be individual. One of my staff members was very stressed due to personal finances. When he joined us, he was very open, saying that a big salary was not what he was interested in but he had a large debt, and this impacted his mental health. OK, what can we do? In our venue, we employ people to 80%, about 34 hours a week. An 8 hour shift with an unpaid break but fresh food etc. So you're normally in the building for 9 hours, four days a week. However, because we understand the financial situation, our staff members get 90% rewarded instead of 80%. And they're also getting tips on top of that. It’s up to them to decide what they want to do on their third day off. Exercise, cook, study, etc.

But if somebody is struggling with money we can be flexible. Maybe we can't give you more work because all of the positions are taken, however, we can give you an extra shift in another one of our venues. But not permanently. We talk about the particulars, the numbers, the timeline together. Then we fix a period where that person can work more, get more money and pay off the debt. And now that person is back to 80%. That person is happy and then they can perform without the financial stress. And now that person can take more time for themselves.

Do you take such an individual approach with each of your employees?

Yes. I think that's super important. There’s some ground rules, of course.

We do not only provide jobs but also a safe space for our staff members. We provide opportunities for them. We provide a place where they can talk about everything. All of my staff members will come and talk to us about whatever is happening. One staff member recently just called me up in the middle of my Healthy Hospo day. But that's fine, they can always call me. He explained that his brother is trying to commit suicide. So I responded right away, give me one minute to cancel my next meeting and I'm with you. I cancelled my meeting, I'm back on the phone and just taking time to understand the situation. We're here for you. What can we do for you? Where do you need support? Do you need more time off or do you want to actually work more because sometimes working can take your mind off things?

There are so many ways and so many different things that people might need that we are not aware of. So it becomes very individual and I find it quite interesting that according to recent data, in terms of stress money is at sixth place. Money is not usually a disturbing problem.

While everyone speaks about how hospitality is a shift industry and it's stressful and pay is low, what people really need is to be heard and individual action taken according to whatever their needs are. Sometimes we can meet them and sometimes we can't, but at least we try to find a direction to give them so they can find the answers or whatever they might need for themselves.

There's a parenting book I read about listening, and after I read it I realised I can apply those principles not only to my children but also to my husband, and then actually, I can apply this to everyone.

Yes, fully. Connection is a big topic and part of it is understanding yourself and understanding what you need. We call people that talk to themselves crazy but the reality is that we constantly talk to ourselves. Our brain is talking to ourselves. It's telling us things. That's one thing. But how does your gut actually feel? How does your body feel? And then the next step is connecting with other people. How are you? How are you feeling? Have you been eating well? Have you gotten good quality sleep? I realised your focus isn't where it normally is, is something going on?

There's a beautiful quote saying that God gave us two ears and one mouth, so we can listen to double the amount of what we are meant to speak. And I think this is beautiful. We need to talk less and listen more, which is definitely one of the most important things that I believe in. Meanwhile, it's always very ironic because I do talk a lot when I have conversations about Healthy Hospo. However, when you find me with my people, unless its a briefing or sharing information related to business, I actually don't talk a lot.

For employers, what are some low-cost baby steps to start with in order for an employer to improve the environment for their employees? Maybe they don't have a lot of financial resources, or don’t know where to start. What can they start with?

In a situation with really no budget, the first word is listening; listen to your staff or, we can say, collect the data of your own business. Data is numbers, for example, what revenue staff is making and staff turnover, staff sick days. That's the first piece of data to look at, and compare that to previous years, understanding where we are, where we were before, where we uptrend or downtrend but most importantly where we are right now at this moment. Where are we now? Who are we with and what do they need?

I worked a lot in five star hotels and learned a lot of structural things that I brought back into a neighbourhood restaurant bar, which didn't have any of these structures. A hotel has a performance review every six months or one year, plus a chat before your probation period ends, which is normally three months. So you talk before they start, then three months in, six months later, and then another six months later again. That’s how it works in the corporate world most of the time. This can also be applied to small venues. And we do this here as well.

These talks really help us understand where you are right now not only from a performance angle but more importantly, on a mental level. I've created a performance review file called ACT. A stands for attitude, C is culture and T is technical. Attitude starts with basically everything in your brain. Culture refers to how you blend into the culture of the establishment that we want to build. And then last on the list is technical. When we hire, I don't really care a lot about what you've done before, I care more about where you want to go. So it starts there.

So having conversations with my staff members is paramount, understanding where they are right now and how they feel and where they want to go and what we can improve. And then, it's a safe space, so they can tell us all the things they want to do, most importantly how they feel about the venue, how the culture of the venue is, etc.

Collecting data on a personal level is really helpful, but it will not give you all of the things that people want to say, especially when someone is a little newer. They'll be more careful with what they say. Another way of collecting data is through surveys, which can be made in an anonymous way, asking if you could improve one thing or change one thing, if you had all of the power, all of the money, whatever needed. I love this question because right away they tell me what bothers them the most, and then the first thing I ask is “why have you never said this?”. And the second thing is, then let's change it. But you’ve got to take the lead on it because this is your one thing. So you are the leader on this now.

It’s interesting that you welcome critique but challenge them to be responsible to make the change.

Yeah, if this is what bothers you, I'll give you all of the tools that you need to change it - if we can change it. Sometimes things are a little tricky, of course. But it should come from that place of actively involving your people in the change and in the shaping of the venue and the culture. You can also see leadership skills, you can see how people tackle tasks.

Back to the surveys, it can be that question, what would you change if you could change that one thing, because maybe not everyone will tell you exactly what they think. Other questions are a bit more anonymous, like a rating of how do you feel when you work? How good is the staff in your opinion? If you could choose, would you prefer to keep the venue schedule set as it is, or would you close one day or maybe even two days and if yes, which days would that be? Gives us a bit of an indication of people's understanding that the whole staff, no one of the staff members wants to work on Sunday. As an example. So then why wouldn't we consider closing it? Because on Sunday it's a pretty low day. We could do this. Sundays can be considered a sacred day for some people, but some people love to work on Sundays. So ask different questions to better understand how people feel and how you can drive or change your business, taking their responses into consideration.

It's easy to complain about something and then complain that changes haven’t been made, but when you have to make the changes, then suddenly you realise the obstacles that may lay in the way.

Just recently I asked one of the team members if you could change one thing, what would you do? Instead of a back bar, we have a clear window behind the bar. We are very minimalistic and through the clear window you can see the chefs in the kitchen making the food. But because of the light from the kitchen into the bar, once it gets a little darker, especially in winter, it's too bright and the atmosphere of the bar gets broken. So we put a red foil on it that you can still see through, but it dims the light. And last time I asked one of our chefs what he would change, he said he would remove that. I explained we actually can't remove it but we can change the foil to a different colour, for example yellow, that would dim the light but not be so obvious.

So I said, look, this is your task. If you really want to change it, it's up to you now. He hasn't done anything about it. That also gives me a few indications. The first indication is that it can't be that bad. And second of all, if this is the biggest thing that you would change, then we are doing ok. So consistently asking the team these types of questions gives me an indication of where we are and where we're going.

Jason, thank you so much for taking the time to talk. I'm glad we managed to connect and have a chat.

Thank you very much for your time and I really, really appreciate it.

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Jason-Candid Knüsel is an award-winning bartender who has developed an arsenal of skills in hospitality over more than a decade in high-end environments. Jason's heart beats for food, drinks and people within hospitality. He has expanded his knowledge around Nutrition & it’s impact on health. In 2022 JCK joined forces with founder Tim Etherington-Judge to bring Healthy Hospo, a nonprofit organisation with the mission to create a healthier & happier hospitality, to new heights.

Healthy Hospo works around the world to build healthy workplaces that are more profitable, resilient, deliver better customer service & much more enjoyable places to work.  The services offered are practical & actionable, sharing solutions through workshops & the digital platform to help hospo heroes personally & professionally.

On a day to day basis, Jason runs the acclaimed Restaurant-Bar concept named Bar Lupo, based in the beautiful city of Zürich, Switzerland, where he oversees the daily operation and drinks development.

Jason-Candid Knüsel: Conversations with my staff is paramount

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Jason-Candid Knüsel: Healthy Hospo, mental health for hospitality workers