Hospitality intranet
The nature of hospitality, and industries with frontline workers in general, means engaging and informing employees is a real challenge. To engage employees you need to do it in an environment where unsociable shift patterns and dealing with difficult customers are the norm.
A lack of continuity for employees working unusual hours can also make it difficult for them to build workplace relationships and for information comms to be consistent given their deskless nature.
Oak Engage’s Future of Working Report found that 55% of leaders in retail and hospitality say disengagement has contributed to people leaving their business. That speaks for itself.
It’s no surprise that the employee turnover rate in hospitality is double the average , but if you can engage employees, retention will naturally be higher. Not to mention the more cohesive workforce and better customer service as a result of higher engagement.
You may think it’s easier said than done in an industry where retention and engagement are issues across the board, but it CAN be done. We are here to tell you how an intranet can help to keep your hospitality workforce engaged…
Engaging your deskless and frontline workers
It is a fact that in several industries, deskless workers are the last to know. 57% of deskless workers want workplace information ‘on-demand’, but often their organisations don’t have the technology to provide it.
It’s not enough to inform and connect with deskless workers through engaging content. The delivery of it has to be right.
This is where a mobile app comes in. Hospitality workers who are always on their feet are hardly going to want to check the in-house computer for company updates, payslips, rotas etc.
With Oak Engage, all information and content that can be accessed through desktop, is available through the mobile app.
Push Notifications can also be sent to inform employees of urgent updates so that they’re kept in the loop at all times.
Whilst the nature of the content you put out is important, delivery through the right channels is equally as, if not more important.
Why your current employee communication could be flopping
You may be thinking that you already have internal comms channels and practices in place, but they’re not having the desired effect.
Here are some reasons why that could be…
Lack of collaboration
When shift patterns vary so much and personnel changes happen all the time, it’s difficult to build a cohesive team unit. Collaboration and innovation suffers as a result. You will miss out best on some of the best ideas within the organisation and with it more efficient processes, exciting customer initiatives to name just a couple.
The best way to replicate this is in a virtual setting to build some sort of consistency within the team and encourage employees to share ideas with each other. Department pages and hubs can be the perfect structures for collaboration outside of formal meetings.
Too many channels
Having several communication channels is akin to having too many cooks spoiling the broth. Particularly for hospitality staff with limited access to workplace desktop apps, there’s a necessity to unify your comms.
By having several apps, all you do is make it more difficult for employees to syphon any information and to communicate with colleagues. Through their Oak Engage app they can communicate with their manager and each other through social and community features.
Uninformed staff
From uniform policy to shift patterns and opening times, there is a lot to keep employees updated on.
Hospitality workers will rarely check their company email or may not even have an email address at all, so rather than rely on this or word of mouth you need to look at more effective means of communication.
Technology can create a much more informative experience for employees and mobile employee engagement apps give industries like hospitality an unprecedented opportunity.
Recommended reading 📖:: What is an employee engagement app? [with video guides]
Need to update someone on an urgent shift change?
Is there a change in health and safety policy you need employees to read and understand?
Are there any timetable related confusion?
An employee mobile app can solve these and several other issues, with third-party integrations so they can view rotas from their home page, push notifications and mandatory reads for information when the urgency requires.
How Oak can set you up for success
Oak Engage’s solution is adaptable to suit any industry and our hospitality customers enjoy the benefits of connectivity that come with a modern intranet and mobile app.
Jessica Anson, Operational Comms Manager at Pizza Express, said: “Oak’s modern platform brought us out of the stone age and was the source of information for all levels of the business. “
Five Guys have also found the very real connection they are creating with their workers through their Oak Engage app. Bastian Bauermeister, Communications Manager at Five Guys, said: “Without Oak & Chatty Patty, I don't know how we would've engaged with our people.
“For us, this has been a huge success in terms of engagement & communication and continues to be.”
So, how does Oak Engage help to keep workers engaged and informed in the hospitality industry?
Recommended reading 📖: Customer stories: Pizza Express
Keep all your employees connected using a mobile app
Automate your messaging
Through personalised news, messages will be targeted to the right people through the right channels. This means that employees can cut through the noise and enjoy content curated especially for them. Based on algorithms, behaviours and their role, employees will only be sent information or content that is suitable or of interest to them.
Take some of the stress from internal comms by streamlining and automating your information comms, safe in the knowledge that Oak Engage’s Adaptive Intelligence platform means information reaches the right people, at the right time, through the right channels.
Connect everyone, everywhere
Communications Manager of Five Guys, Bastian Bauermeister, spoke to us about how their Oak Engage mobile app, Chatty Patty, has helped to create communities and shared interests within their mostly deskless workforce. He said: “It’s a place where they can share their experiences. Everybody has a preference or hobby that they like, and they're really passionate about.
“Chatty Patty has given employees a platform where they can really express themselves.”
This goes to show that just because you have a multi-location and deskless workforce, your employees can still bond over shared interests and find commonality with their peers in a virtual world.
In the form of multimedia content to their newsfeeds and community hubs to cover any topic, employees can feel the sense of belonging and build better workplace relationships.
Conclusion
Whilst a modern intranet like Oak Engage can help engage hospitality workers in so many ways, the real key is through the intuitive mobile app.
You have learned, or even re-lived, many of the issues facing employees in the industry from the restaurant floor to internal comms managers.
A lack of access to information and collaboration are key themes throughout the blog, almost exclusively pointing to poor communication channels and delivery. This is where Oak Engage comes in to connect employees wherever they are.