Managing hundreds, or thousands, of dispersed employees in decentralised sites across the country is a burdensome conundrum for centralised directors. Whether it’s a chain of fast food outlets, cafes, restaurants, pubs, wine bars or hotels, the challenges for the HR department to manage this human element are the same.
Staff have to be recruited fairly and onboarded (and retained) efficiently; there’s payroll and benefits, holidays, sick leave and pensions, not forgetting the processes involved when staff leave the company. And HR documents need to be well-kept on every step of the way — including disciplinary records in the event of a tribunal.
Maximising time
In a hospitality environment, area managers need to maximise the time their staff spend behind the bar, on the front desk or in the kitchen. So any tool which helps achieve that aim is worth its investment five times over.
A new way of working: 24/7 HR
Today’s 24/7, consumer-focused culture is driven by technology. But now the same self-service technology employed by online retailers to communicate with their customers is being used by forward-thinking hospitality organisations for internal communications in order to improve productivity. Imagine if you could create a similar consumer-style experience for your staff, so they were in control of HR from any device, in any location, regardless of the time. That’s got to be worth investigating.
Supporting the self-service culture
The good news is that this ‘new’ technology is already here, and it’s tailored to hospitality organisations. ServiceNow HR Service Automation streamlines and improves HR service delivery by offering a consumer-like self-service catalog to employees (backed up by a customisable knowledge base) along with out-of-the-box request and fulfil process automation.
What this means is that employees can log HR issues through a ‘catalogue’ of pre-defined services (such as benefits or employee relations items) through a self-service portal from any mobile device, even when they’re away from work. Once requests are submitted through the HR service catalog, cases are automatically allocated to an appointed HR team member — and the staff member can track their own case.
The result: staff feel empowered and motivated; they have more time to deliver outstanding customer service.
Integrated insights
Empowering your retail staff
Using integrated reporting, directors of HR, finance and operations get valuable insights into volume, types of requests, and individual workloads so their resources can be aligned and opportunities to improve services and HR operations can be identified on the fly.
The results: lower operational costs, more transparency, increased productivity and enhanced performance.
Data protection and compliance
Using technology like ServiceNow hospitality businesses can also collect and control the data of staff securely and accurately, maintain compliance records for defence against tribunals and ensure recruitment is fair and unbiased.
