Empower People Managers to Improve Employee and Customer Experience

The restaurant industry is all about people. For a fast-growing restaurant brand like Tupelo Honey, having strong people managers is mission critical. Location general managers are one of the most important roles — responsible for brand, guest experience, food service, and more.

Back when Tupelo Honey was expanding to its second location, Caroline Skinner was the restaurant’s head of human resources, and she knew enabling managers was important to that expansion. Tupelo Honey has since grown to 24 stores, and Caroline has become chief operating officer of the restaurant group.

Caroline joined Illoominus’ CPO Roundtable on manager enablement to discuss how Tupelo Honey creates systems to equip managers across all those stores nationwide.

Caroline shared what she’s learned on that front over the past decade:

1. Let leaders lead.
   HR’s role is to create a supportive system that equips people leaders to do their jobs autonomously. Equip them with the correct priorities. Equip them with organizational values and frameworks to know what strategies to keep, kill, or start. In the restaurant industry, for example, equipping general managers to simplify processes can lead to improved guest services.

2. Help people managers be culture carriers.
   Make sure people managers know that part of their job is to shape and champion organizational culture. Has your organization fully communicated its values and culture to help ensure that employees, especially managers, are bought in? Tupelo Honey articulates that a critical part of a store manager’s role is to foster strong workplace culture. People managers know they’re accountable for the staff’s teamwork and success, and that’s led to better experiences for guests.

3. Build feedback loops.
   Staying directly connected with people managers is easier when companies are small. Throughout Tupelo Honey’s growth, Caroline has been intentional about setting up systems for regular feedback to be able to check the organization’s pulse efficiently. For example, when the leadership team is making a major decision, getting feedback from managers on how that decision could impact the field is important.

The HR function is most effective when it understands the business deeply, and part of HR’s role is to set people managers up for success. For industries with frontline workers like the restaurant business, that’s even more important.

Illoominus hosts invite-only roundtables for CPOs, CHROs, VPs and heads of HR to support and learn from each other. Click here to be the first to know about future community events.