New Activity
Play Matching Pairs

Know the activities that are to be completed

Understand what is urgent and important

Be flexible

Order activities by the amount of effort

Assessing the value

This means that if something comes along which takes priority over the activity you are doing, e.g. the phone rings, a guest arrives to be served, or supplier arrives with a delivery, then don’t just carry on with the activity and ignore whatever is happening. Stop what you are doing and take the time to serve the guest or sort out the delivery. Just make sure you follow up and finish whatever else you were originally doing!

If some of your activities on the checklist are going to take time to complete then these should be prioritised first to give you plenty of time to get them done – especially when you’re doing them alongside other elements of your role - like serving drinks, cooking food or taking telephone orders. Efficiency is all about being sensible about the amount of effort and time you put into certain jobs. You can be efficient by following instructions for activities, avoiding needing to do things twice because of mistakes. Efficiency doesn’t mean cutting corners – we still need to be thorough while working and following health and safety standards. We could cause accidents if activities are not completed safely and this could have serious consequences for the business, members of the team or a guest. Make sure you raise any questions you have about activities or the prioritising of activities to reduce the risk.

This means understanding which activities need to be done quickly, or identifying the ones that may have a big impact on the business. Some important activities may be documenting temperatures or cleaning food preparation areas correctly. If the business was visited by Environmental Health and this wasn’t done correctly, then this could be very damaging to the reputation of the business, and in the worst cases could even make someone sick. Urgent activities generally need to be completed as soon as possible, like dealing with guest queries or problems.

The value of an activity will be associated with how much it costs the business if it is done incorrectly. If activities are not completed on time, like placing an order with a supplier by a certain time this could mean the business has to spend additional money to put mistakes right or will lose sales due to not being able to sell a product or offer a service.

This may be from a daily to do a list, like the opening and closing checklist mentioned earlier, or this might be a list that is composed at the end of the previous shift.