How Automating Tasks Can Help Make Employees Jobs Easier and Reduce Turnover
These days it’s hard to ignore the phenomenon dubbed The Great Resignation, but for business owners everywhere, it’s even harder to keep employees. Workers are leaving their jobs at unprecedented rates—47 million Americans called it quits in 2021—which has left employers struggling to keep establishments fully staffed and even open in more extreme cases. In today’s job market, employees aren’t just looking for more; they expect it. As a result, implementing strategies for increasing employee retention, especially in hard-hit industries like foodservice and retail, has become more important than ever for running a successful business.
In a recent article, Fortune suggests it’s time to stop blaming workers for giving notice and start looking at the jobs they’re leaving. It’s not extremely surprising that the highest quit rates are in accommodation and food services, an industry often synonymous with high employee turnover. While change doesn’t happen overnight, facility managers have a tremendous opportunity to reduce labor challenges, eliminate employee stress, and increase happiness by automating tasks and removing burdening processes. Here are three strategies that will help increase employee retention when using connected equipment.
1. Automate workflow management
In a previous blog, we talked about how using connected equipment prevents cognitive overload and automates workflow management. Adopting this strategy helps employees focus on what’s really important, like superior service and customer satisfaction. Solutions like Open Kitchen and SiteSage can provide alerts, automated checklists, reporting, and more. This helps employees remember proper procedures, reduces stress, and improves operational efficiency.
Connected equipment can do things like text and email staff about equipment issues, automate lighting and heating, and ensure compliance with cleaning and other safety practices using a mobile app and workflow templates. Employees can even better manage protocols like capturing and automating Covid-19 checklists, which alleviates a lot of worry.
2. Maintain comfortable working conditions
Foodservice and retail employees have made headlines for walking out during their shift due to unacceptable working conditions. When temperatures are soaring, the last thing a facility manager wants to deal with is a broken air conditioner or workers protesting uncomfortably hot work environments. However, when proper HVAC settings and timely maintenance aren’t maintained and performed, this is a real consequence that can lead to disastrous results.
Connected equipment solves this problem in a number of ways. It makes it possible to constantly monitor the energy usage and temperatures of an HVAC unit to help maintenance technicians make preventative repairs while onsite for seasonal checkups. Connected equipment also leverages proactive text and email messages to your staff when there are equipment issues to alert them to problems before they become catastrophic failures.
3. Reduce employee stress
Automating tasks to make work processes easier and eliminating burdensome busywork is a surefire way to reduce stress, increase employee happiness, and raise productivity. For example, connected equipment allows foodservice workers to receive real-time alerts and use digital checklists to automate, archive, search and distribute HACCP Food Safety reports. Facility managers can also alleviate employee stress by using connected equipment to text and email staff about equipment issues, automate lighting and heating, and ensure compliance with cleaning and other safety practices.
Many experts predict that high turnover rates will continue, at least for the short term, which places the burden on employers to raise the bar. To entice workers to stay put, foodservice and retail establishments should focus on automation, lessening the burden on employees, and reducing stress.
Curious how connected equipment can help your establishment increase employee retention? Send an email to one of our experts to start the conversation.