A young team member stands behind the counter as a guest approaches. They look down, mumble something and wait. The guest walks away thinking the service was rude. The team member walks away thinking they did their job.
Both are wrong, and it is one of the most common and costly problems in customer facing businesses today.
Employers are noticing
This is not just a hospitality issue. In a DWP survey of 500 businesses carried out for the Milburn review, 41% of employers said soft skills or work readiness was their biggest challenge when hiring young adults. With around 981,000 young people aged 16 to 24 in the UK not in education, employment or training, according to the ONS, the gap between what employers need and what young people have been taught is real.
It is confidence, not attitude
When younger staff avoid eye contact, hide behind tasks or freeze when a guest complains, it is easy to label it as a poor attitude. In our experience it almost never is. Most young people want to do a good job. What they lack is practice.
Many have had few chances to hold conversations with adult strangers before starting work. Face to face interaction with a demanding customer is a skill like any other, and nobody has taught it to them.
What it looks like on the floor
- Little or no eye contact, especially with older guests
- Greetings that are quiet, rushed or skipped entirely
- Staying busy with tasks to avoid approaching people
- Freezing, or fetching a manager, at the first sign of a complaint
- Answering questions with the minimum possible words
Guests do not see a nervous young person. They see a business that does not care.
What does not work
Telling someone to "smile more" or "be more confident" rarely helps, because it tells them what to be without showing them how. Throwing them onto a busy shift and hoping they pick it up usually makes them more anxious. Online modules can explain the theory, but they cannot give someone the experience of actually saying the words out loud.
Six ways to build face to face confidence
1. Give them the words
Confidence grows when people know what to say. Give new team members a handful of simple, natural phrases: how to greet, what to say when they do not know the answer, how to apologise and how to hand over to a colleague.
2. Let them practise somewhere safe
Short role plays in a small group, away from guests, let people try, get it wrong and try again without embarrassment. The first time they welcome a real guest should not be the first time they have ever done it.
3. Teach one skill at a time
Start with eye contact and a greeting. When that feels natural, add a recommendation, then handling a simple complaint. Trying to fix everything at once overwhelms people.
4. Give feedback in the moment
Quick, specific and kind feedback straight after a guest interaction is far more useful than a review weeks later. "Your welcome to that couple was brilliant, you made them smile" teaches as much as any correction.
5. Celebrate small wins
Recognise progress publicly. A young team member who is praised for their first confident welcome will want to do it again.
6. Make sure managers model it
Young team members copy what they see. Managers who greet every guest warmly, stay calm under pressure and treat their team with respect set the standard far more effectively than any training manual.
The bottom line
Young people are often written off as having the wrong attitude when what they really need is the right training. Give them the words, a safe place to practise and managers who coach, and the same team members who seemed cold become your warmest ambassadors.
Run a college course or employability programme? See our work readiness programmes for young people.