For Hourly Workers, Building a Culture That’s Motivating and Gratifying

BY Mary Pieper | March 26, 2024

Monigo Saygbay-Hallie, Ph.D., is the chief people officer at Checkers & Rally’s Drive-In Restaurants. She reflects that at 15, she cried on the first day of her first job at Mr. Jim’s Pizza due to stress because the telephone was ringing off the hook as a steady stream of customers called in their delivery orders.

However, by her third month on the job, she was an assistant manager closing the restaurant by herself on Sundays. The woman who owned that Mr. Jim’s Pizza franchise “believed I had more potential than I thought I had,” she told moderator Lydia Dishman in a fireside chat at From Day One’s March virtual conference.

“She gave me more responsibility each and every day. That’s what I love about the restaurant industry. They take chances on many people,” she said. Saygbay-Hallie would then go into HR because “I learned that I really love the human element of what drives businesses in developing and growing people and making them better leaders.”

Motivating Hourly Workers

When it comes to motivating employees, managers should remember that “at the end of the day, everybody wants the same thing, whether you are frying fries at the grill or developing a marketing strategy,” she said. “You want to be heard and valued, and you want an opportunity to grow.”

In the back of the house of a Checkers and Rally’s restaurant, “we have huddle meetings every day where we talk about how we’ve made sales,” Saygbay-Hallie said. “It’s like, ‘Great job, thank you.’ It’s high-fives.”

The company’s IT team sends an email every week to the manager of each restaurant to let them know which employees at that store have upcoming birthdays or anniversaries. The email also offers ideas on how to celebrate the milestone, such as cupcakes.

A Sense of Belonging

When workers feel like they belong, “they put that extra effort in, that extra love in your food,” Saygbay-Hallie said.

Lydia Dishman interviewed Monigo Saygbay-Hallie of Checkers & Rally's during the fireside chat (photo by From Day One)

Checkers and Rally’s does a quarterly survey, asking employees if they feel like they belong, if they appreciate their supervisor, and if their supervisor appreciates them.

“That measures our culture,” Saygbay-Hallie said. “And from that survey, we then go back and develop action plans, talking with each of the employees about what we can do more or less in order to make this a place where they want to stay.”

Communication is Key

Most of Checkers and Rally’s management hires are internal promotions, “so they were once a team member in that very store,” Saygbay-Hallie said.

These fledgling managers need to learn how to communicate with the employees they are now supervising, she said. For example, they must be able to instruct team members on how to do their jobs and have conversations with them about their performance. Therefore, Checkers and Rally’s created the Leadership of the Future program, which teaches all these skills.

One thing Checkers and Rally’s teaches its managers is how to recognize when a team member might be struggling with something in their personal life that is affecting their job performance.

“You want to have grace, but you also want to have standards,” she said. “So, it’s really communicating if you see someone come in late constantly, or if they’re not giving their best effort, it’s a one-on-one conversation.” This allows managers the opportunity to offer support rather than blaming the employee.

Encouraging Career Development

Shift managers and assistant managers at Checkers and Rally’s restaurants do quarterly check-ins with their team. Saygbay-Hallie says 75% of those discussions are about employee performance, while 25% is centered on career development.

“In my visits to the restaurants, I’ve talked to women, in the spirit of Women’s History Month, about them moving on to be a keyholder, where they're a general manager,” Saygbay-Hallie said.

Some hourly employees who speak English as a second language say they don’t think they have the English skills to communicate as a manager, she said. That’s why Checkers and Rally’s offers free language classes.

“We don’t want any barriers to anyone,” Saygbay-Hallie said.

Mary Pieper is a freelance writer based in Mason City, Iowa.

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