Smart Tech for a Smart Workforce

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Time is money, and hospitality companies are banking on gaining efficiencies and improved customer experiences through workforce management solutions.

Low unemployment (rates in the U.S. hover around 4%) and high annual turnover rate in the hospitality sector (in excess of 70%) contribute to a perfect storm of workforce woes for many brands.

To help turn the tide, savvy hospitality companies are leveraging a variety of labor management solutions. In this special report, Hospitality Technology examines four areas of opportunity for hotels and restaurants to leverage technology to make the workforce more engaged, productive and effective.

1. Streamline the Onboarding Process
Grand Traverse Resort & Spa (www.grandtraverseresort.com) in Michigan streamlined its workforce management, including onboarding of new employees, with Dayforce from Ceridian (www.ceridian.com), a cloud-based program that includes HR, payroll, talent management, benefits and workforce management.

Dayforce has helped Grand Traverse Resort and Spa streamline the onboarding process and has helped them eliminate mountains of paperwork.

Prior to Dayforce, the resort managed all recruiting, onboarding and scheduling manually and the property had piles of paperwork to prove it. These days instead of a paper file, each employee now has a digital file.

“From an HR perspective, the best thing it allowed us to do was to go virtually paperless,” explains Caiti Anthony, benefits manager. With HR forms being completed securely in the cloud, Grand Traverse Resort and Spa has “cut down onboarding time tremendously.. “It was a two-hour process to get forms filled out. Now they get an email link and fill them out at home.”  

New hires’ burning questions are answered from the start. They’re trained on how to access their pay stub, timesheet, schedule and request time off – all which can be done via the app.   

 

2. Simplify Scheduling
Writing out a schedule manually in Excel used to take Jason Evanochko, owner of the Smoke’s Poutinerie (http://smokespoutinerie.com) franchises in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, two to four hours a week before switching to 7shifts (www.7shifts.com) scheduling solution three years ago.

“I found it excruciating,” he says about the manual process. “Now, we walk over to the computer, essentially push a button, and it is done in five to 10 minutes. 7shifts takes the hard data and auto-generates the perfect schedule.”

Managers, who now prepare the schedule at Smoke’s Poutinerie, have more time to spend with employees, monitor product quality and interact with customers and staff.

Since switching over to 7shifts, there has been a reduction in the number of callouts. With 7shifts app, employees can reach out to find someone to fill their shift or to swap shifts if they need to change their schedule. They can send a group message or an individual message to offer up a shift.

“It definitely makes it easier for staff to find a solution. We get less no-shows. This puts the ownership back to the employee … to solve the problem,” Evanochko says.

Time-off requests are streamlined as well.

“Gone are the days of the lost piece of paper with time-off requests,” says Evanochko. “When they request a day off or time off or change their availability, I get a message on my phone. I can approve or deny it right on the spot.”

42% of hotels prioritize data from staffing and labor management as top insights.
Source: 2019 Lodging Technology Study

3. Remove Communication Barriers
A benefit of many workforce management solutions is that they foster communication across the enterprise. Smoke’s employees can reach Evanochko and his managers via the app, and Evanochko can send out a company-wide communication and know who has read it.

Communicating across multiple locations can be a challenge for any company. It can be even more problematic when the majority of employees are not connected, and outdated communication tools are used.

Beekeeper helps SIXTY Hotels foster communication between managers and employees, between teams and across properties.

Before adopting an app-based employee communication platform, SIXTY Hotels’ (www.sixtyhotels.com) communication tools consisted of group emails and notes pinned on bulletin boards. About 80% of employees do not have a company email address or access to a desktop computer, and without a workforce communication tool, only 25% of staff were up to date on in-hotel events and accolades, estimates Christopher Horn, Vice President of Operations.

SIXTY Hotels launched Beekeeper (www.beekeeper.io), an employee communication platform, last year at its five luxury hotels. The app fosters communication between managers and employees, between teams and across properties. Through the app, managers can recognize staff for a job well done, teams can chat about daily operational activities, HR can poll employees, and the company can share news and its social media streams.

Across the five properties, there has been “tremendous adoption,” says Horn. “Nearly 100% of employees use the app. It is not mandated. About 50% of employees are active in a 24-hour period. That’s a huge win for us.” 

With communication barriers removed, employee feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

“All teams at all levels echoed a huge improvement in company-wide communications that is clearly seen in our increased employee retention rates,” Horn said. “Beekeeper breaks down old-school mentalities on how to manage. It lets you see every person. You can touch every associate.”

SIXTY Hotels uses the app to contribute to team building even before a new hire’s first day.

“Prior to someone starting, team members are notified about their new coworker,” Horn explains. “It helps create a family-feel on the property. You can get to know everyone on the property. It builds camaraderie.”

 

 

40% of restaurants name increasing employee productivity as a top tech objective.
Source: 2018 Restaurant Technology Study
Gamification makes training more fun and more memorable for Dog Haus' employees.

4. Staff Training Gamified

Like SIXTY Hotels, Dog Haus (https://doghaus.com) struggled with the communication challenges of multiple locations.

“As a franchisor, one of the challenges is to communicate with every single employee and to insure the Dog Haus culture is permeating through the brand,” says Hagop Giragossian, one of three founders of the fast-casual restaurant. “These things are important to us.”

Dog Haus’ 30 locations started using 1Huddle (https://1huddle.co/) last fall, and started creating games that reinforced its brand, company culture and product knowledge.

With the Dog Haus’ games, employees play once a day for seven days, and at the end of the week, the employee with the most points receives a prize such as a gift card. At the end of the week, the leaderboard resets, and a new game and a new contest starts.  

One way the fast casual brand is using 1Huddle is to educate employees on core knowledge.

“Everybody working in the restaurant should know all about the menu and flavor profiles,” Giragossian adds. There’s a game with “fun stuff about the company.”

They’re also using it to help cross-train staff. “We have created position-specific games, so if an employee wants to move over from working as a cashier to a bartender, there’s a game for that,” he says. It takes literally minutes to create a game. [The game] can be just a bit of reinforcement to talk about something that is important.”  

The feedback has “been amazing,” Giragossian says. “We were teaching stuff in an archaic way. It’s much easier to get staff to read on their phones than getting them to read a 20-page manual.”  

Gamification makes training more fun and more memorable for employees, and they are incentivized to play through competition, points and leaderboards. The fun quotient shouldn’t be discounted. Employees retain more information and are more engaged. Plus creating a fun and enjoyable workplace can energize employees, and strengthen relationships and lead to increased productivity and improved customer experiences.

 

 

 

 

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