Employees want to be informed and engaged. They want to be involved in what’s happening at your company, privy to organizational strategies, and communicated with from the top. Otherwise, you risk disengaged employees in the workplace and a cut to your bottom line.

In fact, you could see a major cut to your bottom line, with actively disengaged employees costing their companies between US $483 and $605 Billion (!) every year.

But if you can engage your employees? Companies with high engagement can expect to see an increase in profitability by 23%.

But how do you engage your employees? The answer is effective internal communications.

It’s so effective that 85% of employees are more motivated when their company has great internal communications.

Danish restaurant group Sunset Boulevard was experiencing this pain. With a workforce consisting of around 80% part-time and casual employees, they were not always looking at their emails, and this was their only form of digital communication- meaning they were not always informed.

This was not just a problem for them; it is experienced globally throughout the hospitality industry.

Restaurant managers for the more than 40 restaurants at Sunset were responsible for dispersing information, meaning increased pressure to communicate everything was placed on one person.

However, with their communication platform, MySunset, all employees can be easily communicated with and stay informed to the minute, resulting in engaged employees and a greater sense of community.

Before

Communication and operations challenges

Sunset Boulevard had 2 key pain points:

1. Communications
2. Operations

Let’s start with communications. How did Sunset communicate before they implemented the app?

Facebook.

That’s right. All communication between managers and employees was via Facebook. While managers would receive emails from HQ, there was no direct communication from the head office to the casual employee. It simply did not exist.

As an employee, you knew what was happening within your own restaurant, but you were clueless as to what was happening in other restaurants and at a company level. This meant that employees were only social within their respective restaurants, whereas today, they feel they are a part of the wider Sunset team.

Another issue with using Facebook for company communication is security.

People were added to Facebook groups but not deleted when they left the company. This resulted in old employees from years ago accessing information they no longer needed, and therefore, they had access to information that should be kept within the company.

And operations? All operation manuals were printed on A4 sheets of laminated paper and placed into ring binders. Not only were these heavy, but they were also rather impractical.

How can you continuously update a paper-based ring binder? You would have to update the necessary information, print it out, laminate it, and then make sure all restaurants have the same information: a job in itself.

This, of course, meant that not all employees were up-to-date with their operations. And with so much paperwork, how could they ensure they knew what specific tasks they needed to complete individually?