Sharpen your Skills - Women Chefs and Restaurateurs · believe you didn’t give us notice! That’s something that would never have happened ten years ago. It’s such a different

A T O O L K I T T O L E A D

Sharpen your Skills

2A T O O L K I T T O L E A D

Table of ContentsIntroductionPage 3

Conversations with Ivy Knight

Resources for Best Practices by Kara Maciel Page 33 Guide to Creating an Employee Handbook - Page 35 Checklist for Defining Culture - Page 38 Evaluation Form for Employee Performance - Page 40 Guidelines for Responding to Employee Concerns - Page 46

Bonus: Pay Equity Interactive Map by Fisher Phillips, LLPPage 53

Page 4 Page 12 Page 19 Page 26


Women represent only 19% of chefs, and 7% of head chefs, across the culinary world. Beyond that, women chefs earn 28% less in base pay than their male counterparts.

For many years the restaurant environment has been rampant with bad behavior, toxic kitchens, and ego-driven leaders. While many continue to rehash the problems, WCR - Women Chefs & Restaurateurs seeks solutions and a new way forward. There is tremendous opportunity to affect real change, but oftentimes while seeing the challenges, we aren’t quite sure how to solve what isn’t working. A true shift will require us to address the root(s) of the problem—they are indeed systemic.

WCR has developed this Sharpen Your Skills: A Toolkit to LEAD for aspiring women chefs and culinary leaders, to help them navigate and address the challenges they face in the restaurant industry. The acronym L.E.A.D. stands for a pledge restaurants can take to make their culture more equitable—by:LISTENING to employees to identify issues and opportunitiesEMPOWERING women leaders on the team, both publicly and privatelyADDRESSING offensive talk in the kitchen swiftly and with repercussionsand DEFINING the culture they want to create and inviting their team to hold them accountable

Each of the narrative sections of this toolkit are framed and inspired by women in the industry, while bringing this acronym to life. We hope this toolkit will inspire and motivate you in your own journey, as we share the stories of women who face similar struggles. We also provide tangible resources to assist you in the implementation of best practices, and to support your creation of a dynamic culture of shared vision, values, goals, and leadership. A new day is dawning, a revolution is afoot, and we are on the frontlines. This is HERstory in the making. Join us— Women Chefs & Restaurateurs

In this together...



L I S T E N T O E M P L O Y E E S

- A M A N D A C O H E N

“We have to change the culture of restaurants and…make it feel more like a family.”


Ten years ago, Amanda Cohen opened an all-vegetable restaurant on New York’s Lower East Side and called it Dirt Candy. It had eighteen seats and a staff of five. Now, in its new location, it has forty-five seats and a staff of thirty. And while the growth has been exciting and necessary for the business, Cohen finds herself looking back to her restaurant’s earlier incarnation, and the lessons learned there, to inform the current operation.

She’s become very interested in communication, and it all started because of the labor shortage. “There are no cooks left. I don’t know where they are, but they’re certainly not in New York City.”

Cohen explains that she’ll have cooks come in, work for two months and then just stop showing up. “I cannot believe you didn’t give us notice! That’s something that would never have happened ten years ago. It’s such a different world.”

She spends a lot of time thinking about how to change the culture of her restaurant so that she stops losing people. “We are paying way above average and we are coddling our cooks in ways I never thought possible. The only thing I can figure out is that we have to make the job seem less disposable.”

At the smaller Dirt Candy the team knew each other well; there was no divide between front and back of house. Cohen is sure that if she can get that familial bond back that she’ll stop losing cooks. “Part of the problem is that we have to change the culture of restaurants and I think one of the ways to do that is to make it feel more like a family. And that’s what we’ve been trying to work on, really making it feel more of a whole—a place where people don’t just come to work, but where they want to spend their time.”

Open dialogue and blurring the hierarchal lines have helped the Dirt Candy team come into their own. “We have a brigade, but within that we’re pretty casual. We don’t have a silent kitchen—there’s a lot of back and forth and it allows people to express their feelings more easily so that it’s not this overwhelming thing when somebody has a problem.”

And problems do come up, in any workplace, but most especially in the high-octane environment of a busy restaurant. Restaurants are frighteningly fast-paced and there isn’t a lot of time to provide counsel if one of your cooks is feeling down, or a server got in a fight with the dishwasher. The old way of dealing with these issues was just to ignore them.

“Head down,” is a common refrain in the kitchen. It literally means to put one’s head down and get to work—no talking, no questions. That’s fine for getting tasks done, but it leaves real problems to fester. As kitchens evolve, being able to listen and respond to employees is gaining more importance than ever before. We all want to be seen and head; it’s human nature.



Jennifer Dewasha has spent her entire career working in a strict French brigade system, opening restaurants across North America for Daniel Boulud and Joel Robuchon. She is currently in San Francisco opening a six-story project on O’Farrell Street to be called ONE65. Helmed by Claude Le Tohic, a protégé of Robuchon, it is a massive undertaking. Dewasha, a disciplined French chef with twenty-two years’ experience remembers what she was like as a young chef: “I would get angry, but I didn’t want to be the sous chef who was barking. That doesn’t convey to the newer generation and that’s not who I wanted to be anyway.”

When one thinks of the French system what comes to mind are chefs who are very rigid and precise; one doesn’t necessarily think of them as being good listeners or even open to any kind of dialogue. That has changed. “Most of the leaders are past that point,” says Dewasha. They’ve evolved, because they’ve had to. That kind of behavior doesn’t work with today’s cooks. It’s no stretch to speculate that that behavior might be one of the keys to the labor shortage in the first place.

Dewasha recalls a chef named Fabrizzio Salerni at DB Brasserie in Vegas. “He really opened my eyes to the fact that the kitchen is your family. He always made a point to talk to me. We would always have a connection. Daniel (Boulud) was the same way; if he walked into the kitchen, he would acknowledge you. It didn’t matter who you were, if you were the dishwasher or the chef, he would greet you in the same way and make you feel like you were all part of the same family. That opened my eyes. I realized that I liked being acknowledged. That was the atmosphere and environment I wanted to work in moving forward.”

Misti Norris is part of the next generation of chefs. She opened her Dallas restaurant, Petra and the Beast, this past April, and she has been diligent about creating a responsive culture since day one.

“When I came up, I was getting stuff thrown at me and being called names. It was abusive, but that’s just the way it was done. I feel it made me stronger but at the same time I made a conscious decision that’s not how I want my kitchen run, where you dread going into work and you’re on edge. I never want anyone to feel like that.”

Norris understands the high stress of the kitchen, that there’s not a lot of free time for thoughtful discourse. She makes sure her staff knows when they can talk to her. “I always try to check in before anyone goes home. I don’t want people going home and just dwelling on whatever happened, because that’s not going to be good for me, or them, or the business. I make sure they know that we can talk. I’ll stay late, I’ll come in early, whatever they need.”



As Dewasha has matured she has come to understand that being present, and spending more time in the kitchen, helps her to relate to her cooks more.

“I like to know who people are, I like to know their stories, how they grew up, where they’re from.” She cites staff meal— ‘family meal’—as the perfect time for this. “That’s really the time to talk about their lives. Maybe they want to show me something funny on YouTube or maybe we’re going to talk about a new cookbook. Family meal is the time I just want to sit down and talk to my staff, connect with who they are as people.”

All of these chefs are aware, too, that a kitchen isn’t a daycare; that at the end of the day, it is a tough job. “It took me a long time to realize that you can’t necessarily treat everybody the same,” Norris explains. “No one gets special treatment, by any means, but some people thrive on you riding them constantly. Other people just shut down.”

Cohen looks at the big picture. “It is going to take an incredibly long time to change this culture that has existed basically forever in kitchens. This is the beginning of something. It won’t change everybody, and it isn’t going to happen overnight.”

There is a revolution taking place, and nowhere is it more evident than in the wild west of hospitality. These three distinct chefs—at different points in their careers, at three unique restaurants in cities scattered across the country—all have one thing in common. They want change and they are willing to start with one simple, transformative idea: to listen.



Amanda Cohen is the chef and owner of Dirt Candy, the award-winning vegetable restaurant on New York City’s Lower East Side. After graduating from New York’s Natural Gourmet Cookery School Chef’s Training Program, Cohen worked in some of the city’s most esteemed vegetarian (and veggie-forward) restaurants

When she was ready to take the leap, Cohen opened her own restaurant, Dirt Candy—the first vegetable-focused restaurant in the city and the leader of the vegetable-forward movement. Its original location only had 18 seats and was open for six years, during which time it became the first vegetarian restaurant in 17 years to receive two stars from The New York Times. It was recognized by the MICHELIN Guide five years in a row, and won awards from Gourmet Magazine, and the Village Voice, among others. In 2018, Dirt Candy was named the Absolute Best Restaurant on the Lower East Side by New York Magazine, and One of the 100 Best Wine Restaurants in America by Wine Enthusiast.

Dirt Candy’s new location was the first restaurant in the city to eliminate tipping and share profits with its employees. The structure of the restaurant also backs up Cohen’s philosophies: all the equipment is LEED-certified; sustainable materials were used to build everything.

Cohen was the first vegetarian chef to compete on Iron Chef America, and is one of the Iron Chefs on Iron Chef Canada. She was a Semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chefs in America 2014, and a Finalist in 2018. Her comic book cookbook, Dirt Candy: A Cookbook, is the first graphic novel cookbook to be published in North America and is currently in its sixth printing. A tireless advocate for women in culinary, Cohen has penned several industry-shaking pieces, most notably in The New York Times and Esquire, about the culture of restaurants.

Amanda Cohen serves on the board of directors of Women Chefs & Restaurateurs.

Amanda CohenD I R T C A N D YN Y C , N Y

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Jennifer Dewasha brings her passion for high quality flavors and traditional French techniques to the role of Chef de Cuisine for the Bistro at ONE65. Dewasha’s vast culinary experience began as a teenager when she spent her weekends farming, gardening and hosting local community events. As a member of the Wahta Mohawks First Nations, Dewasha developed a deep passion for food through community focused events and celebrations, leading her to attend the Aboriginal Cuisine Program at George Brown College where she developed her techniques and broadened her culinary repertoire.

Upon graduation and in search of opportunities to explore the world of fine dining, Dewasha located to Las Vegas where she began working with Chef Daniel Boulud at DB Brasserie, in the Wynn Hotel. She then joined L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon, then finally onto the three Michelin-starred Joel Robuchon in the MGM Grand Hotel where she met ONE65 Executive Chef and Partner Claude Le Tohic who was Chef de Cuisine at the time. Ready to return to Canada, Dewasha took the opportunity to open the Ritz Carlton Toronto and shortly thereafter rejoined Daniel Boulud as a crucial player in opening Café Boulud at the Four Seasons Hotel Toronto. In 2016, Dewasha moved on to take the role of Executive Chef of Colette Grand Café with Chase Hospitality Group, where her passion for local agriculture, sustainable products and traditional preparations, was heavily reflected in the menu she created.

Dewasha has been inspired through her culinary journey to highlight any and all ingredients, especially using vegetables to highlight main dishes using simple and traditional techniques. She is known for her extensive flavor profile, precise techniques, and appreciation of locally sourced ingredients.

Jennifer DewashaO N E 6 5S A N F R A N C I S C O , C A


From the first taste of her grandmother’s boudin, North Carolina native Misti Norris knew she wanted to cook. She started learning everything she could about cooking and took her first food job at a retirement home in Cedar Hill. Since then she’s worked her way through a string of increasingly impressive positions at critically praised restaurants, such as: Nonna; Bijoux; FT33, where she was Sous Chef; and Small Brewpub, where she was Head Chef. She is now the Chef and Creator of Petra and the Beast, which started as a series of pop-up dinners with a focus on the use of farms, foraging, fermentation, and fire, and is now a brick-and-mortar restaurant.

She accomplished all of this without formal training. She did go to culinary school in Dallas briefly but dropped out after a few courses. Instead, she has learned from mentors in the industry. At Nonna she began learning charcuterie and butchery. The first thing she made was lardo, which piqued her interest; she’d always had an interest in butchery. Then David Uyger at Lucia showed her how to break down a whole pig. When she got to FT33, she was in charge of butchery and the charcuterie program.

She opened Small Brewpub with Joshua Dawn and fellow FT33 alum Benj Pocta. There she had the creative license to work with unusual ingredients like chicken feet — and her favorite, pig tails. Her stint as Executive Chef at the critically acclaimed restaurant, earned her a nomination for 2016 Rising Star of the Year by the James Beard Foundation. About being a young woman who’s into butchery, she says, “I don’t like the fact that I’m being grouped in or almost put in this category based on me being a woman,” she says. “I’ve busted my ass for years and found something I really love. But at the same time I think it’s meant as a compliment.”

Misti NorrisP E T R A & T H E B E A S TD A L L A S , T X



E M P O W E R Y O U R T E A M

Adrienne Cheatham’s mother, Susan Tentler, did not want her to become a chef...


Adrienne Cheatham’s mother, Susan Tentler, did not want her to become a chef. Working in restaurants her whole life, Tentler had seen it all, especially the toll the job exacted. “She saw a lot of her friends burn out during their time in restaurants and not really have anything to fall back on career wise. They’d be locked into it and couldn’t escape and then weren’t equipped to work in any other environment.”

So when Cheatham finally did go into the business, she went in at the top and got herself one of the most prolific and sought after mentors in the game. At Le Bernardin, the 3-star Michelin restaurant, chef and co-owner Eric Ripert is a dedicated Buddhist and that greatly informs the way he runs his kitchen. “Chef Ripert treats everybody with a level of respect. I got to see what a kitchen could be like and it was such a game changer. Kitchens can run well when people are respected and not cursing and yelling. This can be done. You can create high level cuisine without tearing people down.”

Cheatham went on to work with Marcus Samuelsson at Red Rooster, was the Top Chef Season 15 runner-up and founded the lauded SundayBest pop-up series that started in Harlem. She’s thought a lot about how to empower women in this industry, having experienced firsthand what it was like to have her authority disregarded because of her gender. Kelly Fields agrees. “That’s how we’ve gotten to the state we’re in in this industry.”

“I’ve had superiors who would cut my authority in front of cooks. That does nothing to make me a better manager of people. With women, especially in a male-dominated environment, a lot of men look for reasons to not take you seriously. Even if it’s just one time, if the guy above you undermines you in front of your cooks it can start to erode the team’s confidence in you.”

The screaming, abusive chef has become a caricature of pop culture, but it is a perfect example of bad practices being passed down through poor mentorship. Our field is not one where learning is solely restricted to books and classrooms, it is one in which anyone can begin work with no education whatsoever. Because the bar to entry is so low, a wide variety of people can be found in a kitchen at any given time. Mentorship—this real time in situ education in which experienced chefs train less experienced cooks in the culinary craft—is the way we train staff. In other fields it would be an adjunct to an education, in culinary it often is the education. The informality that makes it so accessible also means that certain unacceptable behaviors are allowed to flourish to the point where they are normalized and then become the status quo.

That’s how we’ve gotten to the state we’re in in this industry.” As Chef/Owner of Willa Jean in New Orleans, Fields has made sure that mutual respect is part of the culture of her restaurant. “There’s room for everyone to be themselves and be human here, and if there’s a violation of that on any level, it’s just zero tolerance.”

And as far as gender goes, Fields has a somewhat unique approach in these times of heated conversations around sexism and equality. “Gender has no place in a kitchen. Everybody at Willa Jean has equal opportunity and the same access to the same resources and the same opportunities for growth. It’s a matter of who takes it, not what gender they are.”



Gender did inform her decision to found Yes Ma’am, an organization devoted to mentorship and education for Southern women in hospitality. “A lot of it had to with my own experience in the industry—seeing all these men having really great mentorships, and opportunities that women didn’t necessarily have. I wasn’t privileged with really strong mentors as a young chef cooking in the South. So my goal is to try to ensure that’s not the reality for anybody else coming up in this business.”

Fields chose the name Yes Ma’am for a reason; it was her way of turning a negative into a positive, of giving authority to a practice that undermined her for decades.

“For the last twenty years in a kitchen, even in management roles, even in an ownership role, I was called ‘ma’am’, while any male sous chef or other male in the kitchen was called ‘chef’. And it used to drive me crazy. So I finally decided just to own it. Yes ma’am! Okay, that’s what I’m calling our foundation.”

Both Cheatham and Fields take the mentorship aspect of this industry very seriously. Fields has been focusing on the business side of things with her sous chef Yolanda Torres. “We’re working on setting goals for labor costs and food costs. Learning where every dollar is spent and how to do it better.” Fields also addresses the bigger picture of mentorship, citing Torres’ presence in the community: “she’s starting to do events on her own and learning how to talk to people so she can become a leader, and a mentor, for the younger generation in New Orleans.”

Fields is the mentor to everyone on her team but that doesn’t come free with the job for the cooks in her kitchen. There are strings attached. “I’m not just teaching them how to make béarnaise—that’s the easy part of the job. I’m teaching them to become mentors themselves. Yolanda is my chef de cuisine and my mentee, but she’s also a mentor in our kitchen and to other young women in the industry in New Orleans.”

Cheatham understands one can only learn so much from a cookbook. “I look for people who want to learn and move up, who take the job seriously, not someone who thinks the end game is to be on television.” While she admits there are opportunities that TV represents, she stresses that the focus needs to be on the craft. “I look for someone who really appreciates the beauty of cooking, who is okay with repetition and knowing that consistency is the most important thing. I look for people who appreciate the skill and the craft, who stay late to sharpen their knives.”



While Susan Tentler worried that a career in this industry would be a dead end for her daughter, Cheatham has shown what can happen when young women in restaurants start out with great mentorship. And now, at this point in Cheatham’s career, how does her mom feel about it? “She’s cool. After I worked at Le Bernardin for a couple of years it was pretty clear that this was what I was going to do, so she came around.”

Fields sees changes for the next generation; changes that conversations like these will help to bring about. “We’re all in this together and we do it because we love it. So how do we become more supportive in general? There are so many different outlets to this industry, so many different ways to do it. And frankly, there are so many bad examples out there that have been set for so long. We have the opportunity to show people how to do it right, how to do it healthy and sustainably.”

It’s about so much more than making béarnaise.



Chef Adrienne Cheatham grew up in the kitchens of the restaurants her mother managed in Chicago. After graduating Magna Cum Laude from Florida A&M, she started working as a line cook at a busy seafood restaurant in Orlando. Wanting to learn all aspects of kitchens, she then worked in pastry production at the Sandestin Resort on the Gulf of Mexico before moving to New York City. There, Cheatham bartended at night while working for free during the day for chefs around the city, and enrolled in classes at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE). Cheatham was referred to Chef Eric Ripert’s kitchen at Le Bernardin, where she started as a commis and eventually became Executive Sous Chef. She also worked with Chef Ripert on his television show, Avec Eric, as well as the cookbook of the same name, testing and editing recipes. In 2014, Cheatham was a part of the planning and opening team of his Aldo Sohm Wine Bar and Privé.

Cheatham became the Chef de Cuisine for the Marcus Samuelsson Group, opening Streetbird, where she received a Bib Gourmand from the Michelin Guide, and Marcus’ Bermuda before being promoted to Executive Chef at Red Rooster. Cheatham curated special tasting menus, including the Black History Month menu at Red Rooster, a multi-course menu inspired by female African-American chefs. Samuelsson tapped Cheatham to test the recipes and cook/style all the food that was photographed for his Red Rooster Cookbook.

Cheatham made it all the way to the finale of season 15 of Top Chef and finished second. She has been featured as a speaker at Cherry Bombe’s Jubilee and was the subject of the New York Times Tastemakers series. Passionate about nutrition, she works with Schwan’s as part of the Chef’s Collective to develop healthy food for school lunch programs. Cheatham has appeared in Food & Wine, US Weekly, Sports Illustrated online, People, Grub Street, Eater, and AM New York, among others. She is the founder of SundayBest, a pop-up series held in secret locations around Harlem.

Adrienne CheathamS U N D A Y B E S TN Y C , N Y


Kelly Fields is the Chef/Owner of Willa Jean in New Orleans.

Growing up in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, Fields discovered her passion for cooking and baking at an early age. After baking for iconic New Orleans chef Susan Spicer and graduating from Johnson & Wales in Charleston, she returned to New Orleans where she began working as Pastry Chef at Restaurant August. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina forced her to leave and she pursued international travel, landing in San Francisco where she helped open Martin’s West.

After working as the Executive Pastry Chef overseeing all pastry programs within the BRG Hospitality Group, Kelly fulfilled her dream of opening a Southern-inspired restaurant and bakery in 2015. Willa Jean celebrates Southern sensibilities with fresh, local ingredients, and has received local and national recognition, such as Louisiana Cookin’s Bakery and Beyond award and Travel + Leisure’s list of its favorite bakeries around the world.

Fields has also earned significant praise in Bon Appétit, Saveur, and National Geographic, among others. In 2016, Fields was named one of Southern Living’s Southern Kitchen Magicians, was nominated for a James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef, and won Eater New Orleans’ Chef of the Year and Reader’s Choice Awards. She has been named one of the most influential people in the South by Garden & Gun and one of the Top Ten Pastry Chefs in America by Dessert Professional Magazine. She was a 2017 and 2018 Finalist for the James Beard Award for Outstanding Pastry Chef.

Fields has worked to make a positive impact on the city by developing relationships with local farmers and working closely as a mentor for many of the Chefs Move! scholarship recipients. In 2017 she launched the “Yes Ma’am” Foundation to inspire, encourage, and mentor the next generation of women in the hospitality industry.

Kelly Fields is a member of the board of directors of Women Chefs & Restaurateurs.

Kelly FieldsW I L L A J E A N , Y E S M A ’ A MN E W O R L E A N S , L A



D E F I N I N G C U L T U R E

“We don’t believe that training stops; there has to be continuous training and dialogue at all levels.”

- M A R T H A H O O V E R


In 1989, a former sex crimes prosecutor opened a restaurant in Indianapolis. She had never worked in a restaurant in her life, she also didn’t know she was pregnant at the time.

“We didn’t have a template of traditional restaurant culture,” explains Martha Hoover. “I created a restaurant that was automatically inclusive and fair with an environment that was respectful and nurturing. I didn’t know any better.” Since then she has opened thirteen more restaurants, is a James Beard Award Semifinalist, was named Restaurant Empire Builder of the Year by Eater, and runs a staff of over four hundred people—many of whom have been with her for years, some of them counting their tenure in decades. No small feat in the hospitality business.

“What should have been a recipe for complete disaster; me having never worked in a restaurant, not knowing I was pregnant, and coming from a different field of perspective; those are all things that have really created what is now a model for long-term success in my own company.” She sums it up: “What most restaurant organizations are dealing with now—having to correct culture—we never had to.”

The career that Hoover had before becoming a restaurateur may seem worlds away, but as extreme as it was, sex crimes taught her a lot about humanity.

“What I learned while prosecuting is that people justify their own actions—homicide, rape. If people can justify those acts, then we need to correct that justification.”

And that’s where inherent bias training comes in. Another lesson Hoover learned in the courthouse was that it wasn’t enough to prosecute someone for rape. “We have to start talking much more deeply and seriously about how men treat women. Rape is a system of inherent biases about it being okay to objectify, malign, and devalue women.”

Most companies with a sexual harassment policy focus on what happens when someone contravenes it. Hoover starts with defining consent and helping her people to understand what the inherent bias component of sexual harassment in the workplace is. “It usually comes from somebody who believes they don’t need consent and that their actions are not offensive. We teach that it doesn’t matter what that person believes their actions are, or are not; if somebody deems them offensive, we address it.”

A D D R E S S H A R A S S M E N T


Kristen Nesbit is a labor and employment litigator who deals with discrimination, harassment, and wage claims in the workplace. A Los Angeles native, she has been practicing law for thirteen years. “Nothing surprises me anymore,” she laughs over the phone from her office in downtown LA.

In talking about restaurants, one argument she hears a lot is, “This is how we talk to each other. This is not inappropriate.” That doesn’t fly. “Even though someone may not have complained, the fact of the matter is, they don’t have to complain.”

Even if another employee overhears something that you may think is innocuous, but they feel is offensive, then that could constitute harassment. Nesbit’s advice? “Don’t say anything at work that you wouldn’t say in front of your mother, your grandmother, your grandfather. Treat everyone with respect and how you would expect to be treated.”

The first thing she advises when an employee reports an incident is to identify exactly what type of harassment has taken place. “Is it truly unlawful harassment or not? Are they being picked on or harassed because they’re in a protected category? Is it severe and pervasive? Is it offensive to a reasonable person? And, have they suffered some sort of harm or adverse employment reaction as a result of the alleged harassment action?”

Next is how the situation is dealt with. “Investigate. Handle it swiftly and treat both the person who complained with respect, as well as the person who is being accused.”

Launching an investigation quickly on a harassment claim is of vital importance. “By taking swift action, the employer has limited their liability and also reduced any potential adverse publicity that could occur. It could also go far in terms of mending employee relations. The longer you wait, the longer it exposes you as a business owner to liability and could expose the company to punitive damages.”

She breaks it down further “If you turn a blind eye and say it will go away or take care of itself, you could be punished for that type of behavior.” By ‘punished,’ she means by a jury. In a courtroom.

So now that you’re suitably scared and ready to take harassment claims seriously, here is exactly how to deal with them in the moment: “When the complaint comes in, you always want to reach out to the complainant to get information and let them know you received the complaint; that the company’s going to be evaluating it and will get back to them shortly. Also advise them there will be no retaliation for the complaint. And then immediately reach out to the individual who’s been accused of the alleged harassment, let them know there was a complaint made against them. It’s going to be investigated, but in the interim, you cannot retaliate against anyone regarding the investigation, and you cannot interfere in any way with any of the witnesses that we may potentially talk to regarding the allegations.”



The companies Nesbit has seen that deal with these incidents successfully are the ones that have an infrastructure in place to gather all the information from the complainant and then immediately investigate. “Where it falls off is when companies turn a blind eye and hope it all works out. The best things I see in terms of my clients: when they hop on a complaint fast; are thorough and impartial; and they come to a resolution and figure out an action plan to move forward.”

That is exactly the kind of protocol that Hoover has in place. When she received a complaint from a customer reporting hearing anti-Semitic talk from two servers in one of her restaurants, she acted fast. “This happened on a Friday afternoon. I got in touch with an expert who does diversity and inclusivity training and hired him. On Monday afternoon we mobilized and started a really intense program at all our locations. We take our training very seriously—whether its culinary or cultural. And we don’t believe that training stops, there has to be continuous training and dialogue at all levels.”

Nesbit acknowledges that the restaurant business is a fast-paced environment and that, realistically, one can’t start launching investigations in the middle of service. This is why an infrastructure is so important. If a host comes to the GM with a complaint during peak hours, and the GM deems her complaint to be unimportant and lets it slip through the cracks—that’s when you could have a major problem on your hands.

“Every complaint should be considered a big deal,” Nesbit counsels, “Until it’s determined that it’s not a big deal.”



As former sex crimes and domestic violence cases prosecutor, Patachou Inc. owner Martha Hoover had excellent, if unorthodox, training for the restaurant business.

She’s created a successful collection of dining establishments—Cafes Patachou, Petite Chou Bistro, Napolese Pizzeria, Bar One Fourteen, Crispy Bird, and a nonprofit restaurant and microfarm, Public Greens Urban Kitchen. The restaurants reflect her lifelong passion for food and joie de vivre. A pioneer in the farm-to-table movement, Hoover’s restaurants now support over 30 local farms and purveyors and serve hundreds of people a day.

In 2013, Hoover created The Patachou Foundation with the mission to feed healthy meals to at risk and food insecure children in the community—now serving 1000 such meals a week. The Patachou Foundation is partially supported with 100% of the profits from Public Greens, which makes this restaurant unique in the country. The Foundation started small, adhered to smart growth strategies, and made an impact; in keeping with Patachou’s 2020 vision, it is a radically different and radically better organization.

Hoover’s restaurants have won countless awards, and she herself was a 2016, 2017, and 2018 Semifinalist for the Outstanding Restaurateur James Beard Award. She is planning to open a female-only co-working space called the Box Office (double entendre implied), as well as more Patachous, a commercial bakery, and two more Public Greens.

In 2017, Hoover was named Eater’s Restaurant Empire Builder of the Year, with the tagline, “It’s not just the amount of restaurants she owns, it’s the way she runs them.”

Martha HooverP A T A C H O U I N C .I N D I A N A P O L I S , I N


Kristen Nesbit is a partner in the Fisher Phillips Los Angeles office where she practices employment litigation and client counseling.

Nesbit represents employers from case inception through trial or arbitration. She has represented organizations in multiple jury trials that have resulted in defense verdicts for her clients. Serving as a trusted adviser and strategic partner for her clients, she counsels them regarding a variety of labor and employment issues including the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN), Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), interactive process and reasonable accommodations, talent management and performance, workplace investigations, and wage/hour compliance.

Nesbit’s clients include startups, national companies, and public entities in various industries including manufacturing, trucking, hospitality, aviation, and technology. She is also committed to helping diverse business owners succeed in today’s marketplace by assisting employers who are recognized as a Disability-Owned Business Enterprise (DOE), Minority Business Enterprise (MBE), Women Business Enterprise (WBE), and/or Veteran Business Enterprise (VBE).

She has represented clients throughout California, in both Superior Courts and United States District Court and before the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH), the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE), the United States Department of Labor (DOL), and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

In 2013, Nesbit was named to the Hot List for Minority Attorneys Under 40 in the Western Region by Lawyers of Color Inc., which is comprised of only 100 attorneys who practice in the Western Region of the United States. In 2015 and 2016, she was recognized in Southern California Super Lawyers – Rising Stars and as a Southern California - Top Women’s Attorney by Los Angeles Magazine. Nesbit was also selected by the National Advocate as a Top 100 African American Lawyer in 2015 and 2016. In 2016, she received the Women of Influence Award from the business publication L.A. Biz for her accomplishments in the legal field.

Nesbit was also selected by Fisher Phillips to serve as a Fellow on the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity for 2015-2016. She is the firm’s Women’s Initiative Leadership Council (WILC) Ambassador for the Los Angeles office.

Kristen NesbitF I S H E R P H I L L I P S , L L PL O S A N G E L E S , C A




“Lead by example and pick employees who have an innate sense of decency.”

- K I K I A R A N I T A


In the late 19th century, Auguste Escoffier introduced the brigade system to the kitchen at the Savoy Hotel. This hierarchal template, which he’d picked up after years in the French army, quickly became the standard in kitchens everywhere and is still the way kitchens are organized to this day. Sometimes the best person to change a culture is one who is a stranger to it. In the case of food and hospitality, chefs and owners who come to the restaurant scene after careers and experiences elsewhere are showing the rest of us the myriad of different ways a restaurant can be run.

Michelle Battista spent much of her childhood in Virginia farm country. When she grew up she moved to New York and started a career in design. Some time later she met a chef and restaurateur, and together they opened a restaurant. When they split a couple of years ago, Battista, armed with her recent experience of the traditional side of things, was ready to do something different.

“I talk a lot about The Nightwood Society being a new vehicle for food,” she says of her two-year old event space in Portland. “We are not a restaurant.”

The Nightwood Society is less a restaurant than a culinary incubator project.

“A huge part of this is about changing people’s ideas around food and format, environment, design, art and music. And it‘s working.”

Kiki Aranita grew up in Brooklyn, Hong Kong, and Hawaii and she eventually came to restaurants from the world of academics. “I was in grad school for classics; Latin, and Greek, and it was extremely difficult. A lot of the lessons I learned were pounded into my head via humiliation. I’m also Chinese, so I’m very immersed in the culture of humiliation.”

During her time in grad school she also worked in restaurants where she hit the trifecta of ‘education through humiliation.’ “I honestly thought that was the normal way of learning things.”

Aranita met her partner Chris Vacca at Bryn Mawr. When they opened Poi Dog they were adamant that the culture they’d both experienced working in restaurants while at school not be part of what they were building. “There are no other Hawaiian restaurants here in Philly and we wanted every single person who came through the door to feel welcomed. And we wanted our staff to be capable, level-headed, and decent.”

In order to achieve that, they incorporated the spirit of aloha into Poi Dog: “Aloha is all encompassing—not just love and kindness but compassion. It is the fabric Hawaii is woven from. We wanted to be able to impart that to our customers, and I think the only feasible way of doing that is to lead by example and pick employees who have an innate sense of decency.”



When most people are opening a restaurant the first thing they focus on is the menu or the design. In Portland, the first thing Battista and her crew focused on was community. “We decided it would be about women.”

The second was culture. “We wanted to create a model that other people could replicate. I was really worried about finding the right women for the kitchen, because if they’ve already been working in kitchens they need to be willing to get on a path to a different place. I knew the feeling that I wanted the kitchen to have, but I wasn’t 100% sure of how to get there.

“I’m not back of house and I’ve never been a chef. I had limited knowledge, but I know what I’ve seen, what I’ve lived, and what I don’t want.” Battista found the right partners in Katie Reardon and chef Sarah Schneider, and together they began by defining their core values.

“There is no yelling, everybody does everything together, there are no definitive lines of hierarchy. Sarah runs the kitchen and everybody works for her, but alongside her. There is no dishwasher. We all do everything. If you need help you just call it out and somebody jumps in. That’s how we run every day.”

Poi dog means ‘mixed breed’ or ‘mutt’ in Hawaiian pidgin. “Our culinary vocabulary is informed by the sugarcane plantation culture of Hawaii. My family is extremely ethnically mixed, like many families in Hawaii are. And on the sugarcane plantations, you had all these different ethnic groups who didn’t initially know how to talk to each other. And they developed their own language called Hawaiian pidgin. They were forced to get along,” Aranita explains. “Aloha is not just hello, goodbye, welcome; it’s about not stepping on other people’s toes, about having respect for each other, and that is something I try to live my life by. And, naturally, that’s the only way our restaurant can be run.”

Battista has found inspiration in the work she’s doing at The Nightwood Society, and she is watching it inform the next generation. “A huge part of this project was not only how to create inclusivity and diversity in a kitchen, but also how to give women a voice, to teach women how to speak, and lead, in the workplace and in their careers. It’s incredible how little of that work is done with women, especially women in the culinary fields. So many women have come to us that have never been led or taught to lead. So giving them those tools is the most important part of this whole project.”



So how do we change the culture? How do we ensure there’s no sexual harassment within our companies? How do we create a welcoming work environment? The answers to these questions are simple, so simple they tend to get overlooked, especially by larger organizations; positive change comes from the top. The owners and chefs set the tone that will be carried through the restaurant, until it becomes the culture of the restaurant.

And it works; from a tiny restaurant in Philly, where a woman with a Masters in Classics is selling Spam Musubi and fried chicken, to a female-centric event space with no brigade system, run by a former Adidas designer. With no great outlay of cost, just thoughtfulness and the strength of their convictions, they’ve managed to shake up the old way of doing things. They have simply taken the restaurant model we’ve all accepted forever and looked at it with a critical eye, unhindered by traditional patriarchal structures, and created it anew.

It’s actually pretty simple, but the results are revolutionary.



Michelle Battista is leading the helm of The Nightwood Society. She built her reputation in the design and marketing world, then a fateful product consulting gig with renowned chefs and restaurateurs ignited her love of food. In 2014 she co-opened an event space in NE Portland and a year later formed Stockpot Collective, a community of marketing + content experts in the world of food. This group of passionate, creative people working for the greater good works hard to ensure authentic experiences, growth, and a cohesive brand strategy through creative assets and product.

Battista knew the time was right to realize her dream of launching a new venture in food + design with an all-woman group of creatives. She gathered her dream team of butcher, bakers, and magic-makers and The Nightwood was born! The Nightwood is a collaboration of women passionate about kicking the status quo to the curb. They are farmers, butchers, and creatives banding together to produce extraordinary experiences around food and wine. This vibrant community space, creative studio, and bold experiment re-imagines experiencing food and drink and design in an entirely new way. The Nightwood produces private events, hosts culinary classes and creative workshops, styles and directs photoshoots, and nurtures new talent in food, art, and design by bringing in a rotating cast of culinary creatives.

The mission of The Nightwood Society is to grow ideas and encourage experimentation, all in service of an unforgettable experience around food and wine. This diverse community of women in food and design—a dream team of storytellers, seekers, and action-takers—who are passionate about thoughtfully-produced food, beautifully-designed spaces, and creative collaboration. Bringing people and ideas together has always been at the heart of what drives Battista.

Michelle Batista is on the board of directors of Women Chefs & Restaurateurs.

Michelle BattistaT H E N I G H T W O O D S O C I E T YP O R T L A N D , O R


Born Adrienne Kaiulani Aranita, “Kiki” was born in New York City but raised mostly in Honolulu and Hong Kong. She spent the summer after her first year of university in Mallorca with a friend’s Chinese-Spanish family where his parents taught her how to make several dishes. Aranita ended up subsisting on Tortilla Espanola and Arroz con Leche for the remainder of college. As a grad student she started teaching herself to cook because she wanted to recreate her favorite dishes from her childhood in Hawaii.

Aranita attended Bryn Mawr College in Philadelphia, where she obtained a Master’s Degree in the Classics and met her partner, Chris Vacca. Although trained for academia, in 2013 after working in restaurants and food trucks, they opened Poi Dog Snack Shop, a Hawaiian, Filipino food cart—with Aranita as Chef and Co-Owner. Poi Dog is a pidgin term meaning “mutt,” that refers to the mixed nature of their hybrid Hawaii-style food. Their menus are rooted in Hawaiian cuisine, but also draw upon cultures that have heavily influenced the food of Hawaii, such as Filipino, Japanese and Portuguese. In the years since Poi Dog opened, they have catered events from beer festivals to galas, taught cooking classes, and traveled around the Philippines learning to make regional specialties from street food vendors.

Poi Dog Snack Shop garnered the title of Philadelphia Magazine’s Best of Philly 2014 Food Truck and was so popular that after four years the duo created a brick-and-mortar restaurant from the concept. Poi Dog serves Hawaii-style plate lunches, fresh ahi poke, musubi, snacks and mochi flour—and everything is made or baked in-house.

In 2016, Aranita was showcased in the Knight Foundation’s “Who’s Next,” a feature that highlights some of the most dynamic young leaders in Philadelphia. Poi Dog won Philadelphia Magazine’s Best Fried Chicken 2017 and Time Out Philadelphia’s Best Restaurant 2018.

Kiki AranitaP O I D O GP H I L A D E L P H I A , P A



KARA M. MACIEL developed the following tools to be used as guidelines—preferred, standard procedures within the industry.

Guide to Creating an Employee Handbook sets forth those policies which are legally required and/or absolute best practices for an employee handbook.

The guide’s companion piece, Checklist for Defining Culture, outlines those policies which would help a restaurant define their culture and set positive expectations for employees—a best-case scenario set of procedures, even if not legally required by an employer.

Evaluation Form for Employee Performance and Guidelines for Responding to Employee Concerns form a protocol for evaluation, and together assist employers in creating a forum for listening to employees, empowering them, and addressing harassment in the workplace.

Resources for employers in the hospitality industry that specifically address components of the L.E.A.D. pledge of listening, empowering, addressing harassment, and defining culture.

R E S O U R C E S F O R B E S T P R A C T I C E S


How to structure a handbookA handbook provides an opportunity to formally welcome new employees, introduce the restaurant, and explain expectations.

It is a centralized place for employees to look for answers to common questions.

Handbooks and signed acknowledgements can assist in an employer’s legal defense.

Employers should make handbooks available to employees at hiring, such as at the new employee orientations, and each time the handbook is updated.

Guide to Creating anEmployee Handbook



Welcome Statement • A brief description of the employer, its mission statement and culture.

Opening Disclaimer• Disclaimer noting that (1) nothing in the handbook creates a contract of employment; (2) the employer

has the right to modify or delete policies in the handbook without notice; and (3) the employment rela-tionship is at-will.

EEO Policy• Employers implement and maintain an EEO policy to:• Demonstrate their compliance with anti-discrimination laws.• Support a legal defense against discrimination claims.• Outline a complaint procedure for employees who feel they have been subjected to discrimination.• Anti-Harassment Policy • It helps to demonstrate reasonable care to prevent and promptly correct harassing behavior.

Anti-Retaliation Policy• Employers should always include anti-retaliation provisions in their EEO and anti-harassment policies

and consider a stand-along retaliation policy because retaliation can occur in contexts other than dis-crimination or harassments.

Disability Accommodations Policy • Best practice is for employers to implement and maintain a disability accommodations policy.• Paycheck Deductions• Describe mandatory and voluntary payroll deductions and to include a complaint mechanism for em-

ployees; it helps an employer meet the criteria for the safe harbor for improper deductions under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Lactation Breaks• The FLSA requires employers to provide reasonable break time for employees who are nursing or breast-

feeding mothers to express breast milk.

Standards of Conduct• If an employer has to take corrective action against an employee, the standards of conduct policy can

serve as a neutral resource to demonstrate that the employee was aware that certain contested conduct was prohibited.

Health and Safety in the Workplace Policy• To help create and maintain a safety conscious culture and comply with OSH Act recordkeeping re-

quirements, many employers implement and maintain a health and safety policy.

How to structure a handbookR E S O U R C E S F O R B E S T P R A C T I C E S


Employee Benefits• Employers frequently provide benefits to their employees such as health insurance coverage and 401(k)

retirement plans.

• Refer employees to the benefit plan documents for specific details. Best practice is to remind employ-ees where these documents are located, for example, on the intranet. State that benefit plan documents are controlling.

Family and Medical Leave Policy• Employers covered by the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) must include a general notice explaining

the FMLA’s provisions. Employers should ensure that the policy accurately provides which category of employees are eligible for leave and the requirements that need to be met for such eligibility.

Military Service Leave Policy• Employers must provide military service leave to employees under the Uniformed Services Employment

and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994 (USERRA). Best practice is to implement and maintain a mili-tary service leave policy that outlines the eligibility requirements and procedures for employees who are absent from work to perform military service.

Employee Handbook Acknowledgement• Employers should include an acknowledgment of receipt, review and understanding at the end of their

handbook.

How to structure a handbookR E S O U R C E S F O R B E S T P R A C T I C E S


Drafting Guidelines Although a handbook must be tailored to meet the specific needs of an employer’s workplace, employers should consider:

• Using a positive and professional tone that matched the organizations culture• Using plain language to explain the employer’s policies and procedures• Evaluating the demographics of the workforce. For example, if employees speak a language other than

English, consider providing the handbook in an alternate language.• Including contact information for an employer representative who employees can contact if they have

any questions about the policies.

Welcome StatementMany employers begin their handbook with an introduction. This takes the form of a letter or memorandum from the General Manager or someone in management introducing the employer and the handbook, and wel-coming employees. It can also include a brief description of the employer, its mission statement and its culture.

EEO Policy

Anti-Harassment Policy

Anti-Retaliation Policy

Standards of Conduct

Performance Review Policy

Many employers implement and maintain a performance review policy to help employees understand how their employers structure the review process and what is expected with respect to their performance accountability.

Health and Safety in the Workplace Policy

Substance Abuse in the Workplace Policy

The Occupational Safety Health Administration (OSHA) considers substance abuse in the workplace an avoidable workplace hazard and strongly supports drug-free workplace programs.

Checklist for Defining Culture



Workplace Violence PolicyOSHA recommends employers create a zero-tolerance policy for workplace violence. Implementing and main-taining a workplace violence policy also can help an employer defend against a claim the employer violated the general duty clause.

Holidays, Vacation and Sick Days• Employers typically designate paid holidays. Some employers provide a certain number of vacation days

or sick days.• Determine whether vacation or sick days may be carried over from year to year.• Determine if the employer pays out any unused but accrued vacation or sick days at termination and the

conditions under which an employee can receive payment.• Bereavement Leave Policy• Best practice is to implement and maintain a written policy that outlines the eligibility requirements and

procedures for employees who are absent from work for bereavement leave.

Family and Medical Leave PolicyEmployers should ensure that the policy accurately provides which category of employees are eligible for leave and the requirements that need to be met for such eligibility.

Witness and Victims of Crime Leave PolicyMany employers accommodate employees’ need to attend courtroom proceedings. Outline the eligibility requirements and procedures for employees who are absent from work to act as a witness or attend to legal matters.

Employee Handbook Acknowledgement

Checklist for Defining Culture (cont.)



1. Self-Assessment and Summary of AccomplishmentsInstructions: This section should be completed by the employee and returned to the employee’s manager.

Which of the goals that you and your manager set in your previous review meeting did you meet in the past _______________ _________________________________ [TIME FRAME]? Which goals did you not meet and why?_______________ _______________ __________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ ____________________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________

Please describe any successes you have had in the past ____ _______________ _____________________________________[TIME FRAME] and explain what, if anything, you learned from these experiences._______________ _______________ __________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ ____________________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ Please describe any challenges you have faced in the past ____ _______________ _____________________________________[TIME FRAME] and explain if and how you overcame them. What could ____ _______________ _____________________________________ [EMPLOYER NAME] have done to help redress these issues?_______________ _______________ __________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ ____________________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________

Additional job specific questions..._______________ _______________ __________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ ____________________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________

EMPLOYEE NAME DATE OF HIRE

JOB TITLE MANAGER

DATE OF EVALUATION REVIEW PERIOD

Evaluation Form for Employee Performance



2. Performance RatingInstructions: This section should be completed by the manager. Using the rating key below, describe the employee’s performance in each of the listed performance categories, referring to the examples listed in each category that are relevant to the employee’s position. For each category, include specific, detailed examples illustrating your rating.

Exceeds expectations (3): Consistently exceeds expectations.Meets expectations (2): Meets all relevant performance standards.Needs improvement (1): Consistently underperforms in role.No basis (N/A): Insufficient opportunity to observe or not relevant to the job.

Job KnowledgeUnderstands restaurant’s products, policies and procedures; has appropriate technical skills, analytical skills and problem-solving skills; proficient in area(s) of expertise.

1 2 3 N/A

Comments___ ________________ _______________ __________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ __________________

Communication SkillsHas appropriate verbal and written communication skills, including, for example, presentation skills, listening skills and customer service skills.

1 2 3 N/A

Comments___ ________________ _______________ __________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ __________________

Productivity and Quality of WorkCompletes all assignments; performs work according to current guidelines and directives; pays attention to detail; produces work that matches expectations; produces work that is organized, presented professionally, thorough, complete, accurate and free of errors.

1 2 3 N/A Comments___ ________________ _______________ __________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ __________________

Evaluation Form for Employee Performance (cont.)



AdaptabilityWillingly accepts a variety of responsibilities; adapts to new situations in a positive manner; displays openness to learning and applying new skills; is resourceful; generally seeks work process improvements.

1 2 3 N/A

Comments_________________ ________________ _______________ __________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ __________________

Professional DemeanorMaintains professional appearance appropriate to the job; exhibits sound judgment; maintains a high level of character and professional attitude; has positive relationships with managers.

1 2 3 N/A

Comments___ ________________ _______________ __________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ __________________

Initiative and CreativityPlans work and accomplishes tasks effectively and of own accord; acts independently while keeping manager informed; makes constructive suggestions; continually looks for ways to improve and promote quality; looks for opportunities to take on more responsibility; actively seeks performance feedback.

1 2 3 N/A

Comments___ ________________ _______________ __________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ __________________

Consistently meets deadlines; is punctual and can be relied on for planning purposes; displays effective planning and organizational skills.

1 2 3 N/A

Comments___ ________________ _______________ __________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ __________________




Interpersonal SkillsWorks well with others to achieve restaurant’s goals; accepts constructive criticism; reacts positively to instruc-tions and procedures; effectively resolves conflict.

1 2 3 N/A

Comments___ ________________ _______________ __________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ __________________

LeadershipProvides clear direction and purpose; models ethical workplace behavior; sets clear goals; empowers employees to achieve objectives; motivates, mentors and develops employees; displays effective decision-making skills.

1 2 3 N/A

Comments___ ________________ _______________ __________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ __________________

ManagementMaintains a safe and healthy work environment; organizes and distributes work effectively; communicates behavioral expectations and performance standards; monitors, documents and evaluates employee conduct and performance; provides appropriate and timely feedback; builds a team that reflects high morale, clear focus and group identity; encourages and provides opportunities for employee growth; promotes equal opportunity; protects the rights of all employees.

1 2 3 N/A

Comments___ ________________ _______________ __________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ __________________

Additional Job Specific Performance IndicatorAdditional job specific example.

1 2 3 N/A

Comments___ ________________ _______________ __________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ ________________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _____________________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _______________ __________________




3. GoalsInstructions: This section should be completed by the manager with the employee’s input during the performance review meeting.

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________



4. Training and Development NeedsInstructions: This section should be completed by the manager with the employee’s input during the performance review meeting.

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________


5. Employee Comments

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________

________ _______________ _______________ __________________________________________ _______________ _______________ _______________ _________________________________________

By signing this form, you confirm that you have discussed this review in detail with your manager. Signing this form does not necessarily indicate that you agree with this evaluation.

_____ _______________ _________________________________________ _____ _______________ _________________________________________Manager Name Employee Name

_____ _______________ _________________________________________ _____ _______________ _________________________________________Date Date




Value and Philosophy

_____ _______________ _________________________________________[EMPLOYER NAME] believes that understanding, investigating (where necessary), and responding to employee concerns promotes workplace satisfaction and improves the workplace overall by rooting out and correcting problems as they arise. Supervisors are often the first members of _____ _______________ _________________________________________[EMPLOYER NAME] to learn about a workplace concern. Employee concerns may include violations of rules or misconduct related to:

• Discrimination. • Harassment (sexual and otherwise). • Safety or health. • Working conditions. • Wage and hour issues. • Workplace rules. • Workplace violence or threats. • Theft.

_____ _______________ __________________________________________[EMPLOYER NAME] has developed these guidelines to assist all supervisors to respond effectively to employee concerns and to promote consistency in responses. If you have any questions about the guidelines or their application in a particular instance, please contact _____ _______________ _________________________________________ _______________ __________________________________________________ _______________ ______________________________________________ [NAME/POSITION/DEPARTMENT].

Guidelines for Responding to Employee Concerns



Responding to an Employee Concern, Grievance, or Complaint

Your reaction to an employee presenting a concern is a reflection on _________________ _______________________________________ [EMPLOYER NAME] and the employee’s perception of how ____________________ _________________________________________ [EMPLOYER NAME] treats its employees. When an employee approaches you with a concern, you should do all you can to represent _____ _______________ _________________________________________ [EMPLOYER NAME] in the most positive manner possible. Specifically, you should:

• Remove distractions to provide the employee with your full attention. Hearing employee concerns is an important part of your job, so ensure you focus on them when they arise. Consider moving to a quiet private location where you are less likely to be interrupted and be sure to let employees know they have your undivided attention.

• Explain your role to the employee. Specifically let the employee know that your role is to obtain the facts and help resolve the situation. Tell the employee to be as specific as possible so that you can respond in the most effective manner possible.

• Listen to the employee without interruption. Let the employee explain any concern without interruption. If the employee is not making sense for any reason, politely say “let me stop you for a minute to be sure I understand” and then paraphrase what you have heard so far to confirm its accuracy.

• Ask as many questions as necessary to understand the issue fully. Be sure to get the complete picture and all relevant details and issues from the employee. It is important to understand the entire situation before making decisions about how to act (for example, ask who, what, where, when, how, and why?). Ask follow-up questions until you feel confident you have exhausted the employee’s knowledge of the issue.

• Take the concern seriously. Thank the employee for reporting the concern and communicate your appreciation that the employee raised the concern so that you can ensure it is addressed. Refrain from reacting defensively or jumping to conclusions regardless of whether you believe the employee’s concern has merit. Avoid phrases like “Oh, that’s just how she is. Just ignore her” or “She did that to you? That’s sexual harassment!”

• Demonstrate understanding, but not necessarily agreement. Displaying empathy and understanding goes a long way toward alleviating employee concerns and building employee satisfaction. However, given the possibility of conflicting stories and facts, be careful not to express agreement with the employee’s position. Instead, empathize by using statements like, “I can understand why that would upset you.” Remain neutral about issues involving other people or whether the conduct complained of occurred.

• Clarify what assistance the employee is requesting. Understand how the employee would like to see the issue resolved so you may address the concern most effectively and to the employee’s satisfaction (assuming the employee’s requested resolution is the most appropriate one). Refrain from making specific promises about how the concern will be resolved or indicating that the requested resolution is appropriate.


Guidelines for Responding to Employee Concerns (cont.)


Informing the Employee of Next Steps

Once the employee has provided you with all of the information the employee possesses related to the concern, explain the next steps to the employee. Specifically, you should state that you will:

• Take steps to investigate (or initiate investigation by another_____ _______________ _________________________________________ [EMPLOYER NAME] representative) as necessary and resolve the concern to the best of your ability. Let the employee know that you will follow up and take steps to resolve the concern in the most effective way possible, even if you just elevate the concern to your supervisor or Human Resources, which will complete the investigation. If you can, let the employee know the likely next steps while leaving yourself room for flexibility to adjust as necessary. You might tell the employee that possible steps also may include discussing the issue with:

• Human Resources personnel to alert them to the issue and determine how to proceed; your supervisor; - the employee’s supervisor (if that is not you); - those accused of being involved in perpetuating any alleged wrongful activity; - those affected by any alleged wrongful activity; - witnesses to any alleged wrongful activity; - a designated investigator if appropriate, whether internal or external; and - law enforcement if necessary.

• The section Taking Action below provides specific guidance on the steps you should take once you have received the employee’s concern. If the matter involves ongoing or imminent danger or harm to any individual, advise the employee that you will take appropriate immediate action to end or prevent the harm and follow through.

• Handle the matter as confidentially as possible. Tell the employee you cannot promise complete confidentiality and that certain people will need to be made aware of the concern to address it. However, assure the employee that you respect the employee’s privacy and that you will do your best to share information only on a need-to-know basis. Explain that people who will need to know will likely include relevant _____ _____ ______________________________________ [EMPLOYER NAME] administrators, people mentioned in the complaint, and others with relevant information. If the employee refuses to go forward if the employee’s identity will be disclosed, explain that you cannot conduct a meaningful investigation or resolve the issue without making at least limited disclosures general findings and whether any corrective action has been taken to address the issue.





Informing the Employee of Next Steps (cont.)

• Request that the employee cooperate fully with any investigation and use their best judgment and discretion when discussing the investigation with others. Employees can be reminded that the employer expects its employees to cooperate fully in investigations and that the employee should not interfere with any investigation. While you can explain that the investigation may be more effective if the employee uses discretion about the investigation, you should not routinely instruct a non-supervisory employee not to discuss the investigation with the employee’s coworkers. However, you may request that non-supervisory employees not discuss the substance of investigations if you determine that confidentiality in a particular investigation is necessary.

• Inform the employee of the _____ _______________ _________________________________________ [EMPLOYER NAME]’s anti-retaliation policy. Remind the employee of _____ _______________ ____________________________________________[EMPLOYER NAME]’s policy against retaliation for making a complaint or participating in the investigation of a complaint. Assure the employee that _____ _______________ _________________________________________[EMPLOYER NAME] will not take any steps to retaliate against the employee and that the employee should immediately report any conduct the employee believes to be retaliatory. Also make clear that the employee cannot take any retaliatory action against any other employee who participates in the investigation.

• Notify the employee of the results of your follow-up or_____ _________________________ _________________________________________ [EMPLOYER NAME]’s investigation, if an investigation is necessary. Do not commit to promising the full scope of related information but inform the employee that you or another_____ _______________ __________________________ [EMPLOYER NAME] administrator will let the employee know the general findings and whether any corrective action has been taken to address the issue.

• Ask to be notified if any further related incidents occur or if any new information develops. Even when _____ _______________ _________________________________________[EMPLOYER NAME] becomes aware of a workplace problem, it cannot fully correct it if the employer is not aware of the full scope of the problem. Please remind the employee of this and ask to be notified about any further incidents or relevant information.




Taking Action

Once your conversation with the employee concludes, you should:

• Immediately report the complaint to the _____ _______________ _________________________________________[EMPLOYER LEGAL DEPARTMENT] and appropriate external authorities if there is an imminent danger to any employee. _______________ _________________________________________ [EMPLOYER NAME]’s first concern is to prevent or stop any imminent or ongoing danger to employees, so this should always be your first action if necessary.

• Immediately report the complaint to the ______ _______________ __________________________________________________ [EMPLOYER LEGAL DEPARTMENT] if any legal problem has been identified. Whether you think the employee’s complaint has any merit, you should report it to the legal department if the complaint raises any legal issues such as wage and hour issues, discriminatory or harassing conduct, or health and safety violations.

• If imminent danger or a legal issue is not immediately identified, report the issue to the Human Resources Department. While the employee initially contacted you about a particular concern, you must elevate the issue to the individuals who are most qualified to deal with it. When the issue does not involve imminent danger or a legal issue, the Human Resources Department is the most appropriate group. Specifically, you should contact _____ _______________ _________________________________________ [POSITION NAME], who will assist you in determining the best way to proceed with the concern. _____ _______________ _________________________________________________ [POSITION NAME] will also help you determine who else might need to be made aware of the concern (for example, your supervisor or the employee’s supervisor, or _____ _______________ _________________________________________ [EMPLOYER NAME]’s lawyers if any legal issues may be implicated).

• Confer with the appropriate _____ _______________ _________________________________________ [EMPLOYER NAME] personnel as determined above and decide on a plan for investigating the complaint as necessary. Before conducting any investigation, all administrative parties involved in the investigation should agree on an effective procedure for conducting the investigation. At this point, the Human Resources Department may decide that it is best equipped to further investigate the complaint, that the complaint should be elevated to the _____ _______________ _________________________________________ [EMPLOYER LEGAL DEPARTMENT], or that you should investigate.




Taking Action (cont.)

• If you are the individual conducting the investigation, ensure that you understand _____ _______________ _________________________________________ [EMPLOYER NAME]’s best practices for conducting internal investigations before proceeding. If it is decided that you should investigate the complaint, make sure to confer with the Human Resources Department and _____ _______________ __________________________________ [EMPLOYER LEGAL DEPARTMENT] for information about best practices for conducting internal investigations. Review any and all instructions provided to you and follow them to the best of your ability. Seek clarification where necessary. Inform the employee of the reasons for the investigation and the protections afforded to all participants, including that the _____ _______________ _________________________________________ [EMPLOYER]: - has a compelling interest in protecting the integrity of its investigations; and - has a strong desire to protect witnesses from harassment, intimidation, and retaliation, to keep evidence from being destroyed, to ensure that testimony is not fabricated, and to prevent a cover-up.

• If there are strong reasons to insist on confidentiality (such as witness safety concerns), then get the em ployee to acknowledge this before proceeding. Specifically, unless the employee is a supervisory employee, you should have the employee acknowledge in writing that: - _____ _______________ _________________________________________ [EMPLOYER] may decide in some circumstances that in order to achieve the objectives of the investigation. _____ _______________ __________________________________ [EMPLOYER] must maintain the investigation and its role in it in strict confidence; and - if _____ _______________ _________________________________________ [EMPLOYER] reasonably requires strict confidentiality and the employee does not maintain such confidentiality, the employee may be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including immediate termination.

• If you are the individual conducting the investigation, ensure that you conduct it as promptly as possible so that the concern can be addressed quickly. If your work schedule precludes you from conducting a prompt investigation for any reason, inform the other administrative parties involved in the investigation so that another individual can conduct it promptly or your schedule can be modified.

• Maintain confidentiality of the issue and the investigation consistent with your statement to the employee. Although complete confidentiality cannot be assured, disclosing facts and circumstances haphazardly can harm the investigation as well as the employee’s trust in management and ultimate job satisfaction.

• Once the investigation concludes, confer with the appropriate _____ _______________ _________________________________________ [EMPLOYER NAME] individuals and determine your findings, including what, if any, corrective action is required. It is important to make a group determination about the facts of the events, responsible parties, culpability, and appropriate corrective action where necessary to minimize any risk or allegations of bias by a single person.

• Once a decision has been made about the merits of the complaint and any corrective action and implementation has occurred (if necessary), meet with the complaining employee privately to update the employee about the findings of the investigation and whether any corrective action was necessary and implemented. Ask the employee to update you if the employee’s original concern persists, even after corrective action is implemented.




Final Considerations

Remember the following important points:

• Retaliation against any employee for raising an employment concern or participating in an internal investigation is absolutely prohibited. Retaliation could subject you and _____ __________________ ______________________________[EMPLOYER NAME] to legal liability. _____ _______________ _________________________________________ [EMPLOYER NAME] will discipline anyone who retaliates.

• Do not reinforce repeated complaints about invalid concerns. While it is important to acknowledge all legitimate employee concerns and to investigate where necessary, you are not obliged to acknowledge and empathize with repeated invalid complaints. When managing meritless complaints, remain polite and professional, but explain why you do not believe that further action by the employer is necessary and suggest that the employee raise the issue with _____ _______________ _________________________________________ [POSITION/DEPARTMENT] if the employee feels further attention must be paid to it.

• Do not respond rashly. Always check with the Human Resources Department or the _____ _________________ _________________________________________ [EMPLOYER LEGAL DEPARTMENT] before altering the terms and conditions of any employee’s employment (for example, terminating employment or modifying job characteristics).




This interactive map, created by Fisher Phillips LLP, shows just how much your state protects you against unfair pay practices.

Why a Map on Pay Equity?Pay equity issues are of increasing concern to employers and employees alike, and with good reason. The Equal Pay Act has been reinvigorated by recent political and legislative initiatives as well as social media. A number of bellwether states, including Massachusetts, California, New Jersey, Delaware, and Oregon, have enacted robust pay equality statutes, with more legislation on the horizon. Equal pay litigation is on the rise and multimillion-dollar settlements of class action lawsuits are being reported on a weekly basis. Activist shareholder groups are demanding that companies conduct pay audits to ensure employees are being paid fairly and in compliance with these new laws.

In response to the recent increase in new pay equity legislation and the challenges facing employers working to understand and comply with equal pay laws, Fisher Phillips has developed a Pay Equity Interactive Map. The map allows visitors to explore the pay equity laws of states and major cities by simply clicking on each state on the map.

The web-based tool delineates each state’s distribution of pay, by the following categories: • Gender-specific • Gender, plus Other Protected Categories • Salary History Inquiry Ban (State and/or Local Law) • No state-specific pay equity laws in effect at this time

The map is updated with the current statistics and includes a state-by-state breakdown of: • Statute • Classes protected • Key language on pay discrimination • Exceptions for pay disparities (including affirmative defenses) • Anti-retaliation • Other key provisions

Click on your state for easy access to state-specific rules, regulations, and tips regarding best practice.

FISHERPHILLIPS.COM/EQUITY

P A Y E Q U I T Y I N T E R A C T I V E M A P

http://FISHERPHILLIPS.COM/EQUITY


Kara M. Maciel is founding partner of Conn Maciel Carey—a law firm focused on Labor & Employment, Workplace Safety, and Litigation—and Chair of the firm’s national Labor & Employment Practice Group. She focuses her practice on representing employers in all aspects of the employment relationship, with a special emphasis on the hospitality industry. She has represented employers including national hotel chains, hospitality management groups, restaurants, spas, trade associations, food and dairy distributors.

Ms. Maciel works to create workplace solutions for her clients. She counsels clients on issues related to wage hour compliance, tip pools and tip credits, prevention of harassment and discrimination, effective employment policies and procedures, and developing a compliant employee handbook. Ms. Maciel advises unionized and non-unionized workplaces about rights and obligations under the National Labor Relations Act, including leading collective bargaining negotiations, defending unfair labor practices, and representing employers in union election petitions. She also defends employers in litigation at both the federal and state levels, including matters related to ADA, FLSA, FMLA, and Title VII, and the Department of Labor’s EEO/AA regulations.

Ms. Maciel lives in the Washington, DC area and has been selected to the Washington, DC Super Lawyers list from 2014-2019. A popular speaker at conferences and events across the country, including HR in Hospitality, Hospitality Law, Resort Hotel Association, she is also a member of the board of directors of Women Chefs & Restaurateurs.

Kara M. MacielC O N N M A C I E L C A R E YW A S H I N G T O N D C


Wendy McGuire Coats is a certified specialist in Appellate Law by the California Board of Legal Specialization, a distinction held by fewer than 400 California attorneys. Coats is a partner in the Fisher Phillips San Francisco office and leads the firm’s California Appellate Practice. She represents clients in all aspects of appellate litigation in state and federal appellate courts, particularly in navigating questions of first impression or rapidly evolving labor and employment issues.

Coats has briefed dozens of appeals and writs in the United States Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit and Federal Courts of Appeals, the California Supreme Court, and the California Court of Appeal. Coats is a passionate and skilled oral advocate, who has argued before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the California Court of Appeal, and the California Supreme Court.

A trusted and recognized legal leader, Coats serves as Treasurer of the Contra Costa County Bar Association Board of Directors and chairs the Membership & Education Committee. On the state and national level, Coats is a regular contributor to the ABA’s Council of Appellate Lawyer’s publication, Appellate Issues and the California Women Lawyers amicus committee’s appellate briefing and recommendations. In 2016, she was named to Super Lawyers in Appellate Law, after receiving the Rising Star in Appellate Law – Northern California designation in 2009-2010, 2012-2015.

Prior to law school, Coats taught high school English, studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, lived in London, and trained as a Writing Fellow with the Missouri Writing Project. In law school, Coats served as Editor-in-Chief of the Pepperdine Law Review. She won both the Vincent S. Dalsimer Moot Court Competition and the Armand Arabian Advocacy Tournament.

Wendy Coats has served on the board of directors of Women Chefs & Restaurateurs, where she launched their monthly Legal Bites column, addressing labor and employment issues facing the food and beverage industry. At the time of publication, Coats was just appointed California Superior Court Judge.

Wendy McGuire CoatsS U P E R I O R C O U R T O F C A L I F O R N I AC O N T R A C O S T A C O U N T Y , C A

Copyright © 2018-19 International Association of Women Chefs & Restaurateurs. All Rights Reserved.

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