Flexibility & Front-Line Workers

This month we’re talking with Maryanne Robertson from Kings family restaurant chain about how they give front-line workers flexibility.

Barbara: Maryanne, since front-line workers are the majority of your workforce, many people believe you can’t offer them flexibility. Is that correct?

Maryanne: On the contrary, we can and we do. Flexibility is more than where and when the work is performed or working from home. Indeed, our customer-facing employees have to be in our restaurants during our hours of operation, but they do have a say over their shifts.

We get input on their availability, and post schedules as far in advance as possible. Our IT department works closely with our regional management and keeps really good metrics on staffing needs in each restaurant.

And we also ask about flexibility to accommodate last minute changes, such as if they are willing to come in at the last minute to cover a coworker’s shift if someone calls in absent. 

Technology helps us to do this — we can track all of these preferences in a database. Then when a last-minute change occurs, we can push messages to those individuals willing to pick up extra shifts as soon as possible.

Cornelia: That’s really amazing. Technology has given us so many tools to work smarter. Is there anything else you do to give employees flexibility?

Maryanne: I’m so glad you asked that. Flexibility also includes giving workers some say in how they do their job. And we value the input from our front-line workers. After all, they are closest to the customers.

Barbara: I’m fascinated by that, Maryanne. I’ve a background in the hospitality industry, so I’m interested in giving your wait staff more of a say in how they do their jobs. 

Maryanne: We consider our wait staff as primarily customer service professionals and not merely food deliverers, Barbara. Let me tell you about processes we’ve been testing with the help of technology.

We’ve been introducing QR codes in place of paper menus in certain locations. Before we do it, we ask the wait staff for their opinions and how they think their individual customer base will react. It’s interesting when they say they love the idea, but are concerned about their customers. One restaurant said ‘bring it, but let’s not eliminate the paper menus.’ While they enjoy teaching customers, they don’t want to overwhelm them. So, they insisted on keeping paper menus as a backup.

Cornelia: That’s interesting. Are there other processes that use technology that you are introducing?

Maryanne: In our downtown Indianapolis restaurant, we are very close to a university. Students are a big demographic in our customer base and our wait staff. A perfect location to test using digital menu screens for ordering. The wait staff loves it because they can cover more tables in a shift and make more tips. The cooks love it because it’s efficient. And the customers are tech savvy, so no complaints there. 

We’ve been getting input from the staff. The customers love the pictures of the food. People are used to online menus. Once we have it perfected there, we’ll carefully roll it out. We maintain demographic information on our customer base for each location which helps us make these decisions. Of course, we’ll poll employees in other locations to better understand their concerns and how the customers might react.

Barbara: That’s great to determine how the customers will react, but what about the staff. I’m sure there’s diversity in that population. Don’t you expect some resistance from them? There are always those people who say we’ve always done it this way.

Maryanne: Indeed, there are and we do expect resistance. One thing we’ll do is use staff members to make training videos for the rest of the company, which will make it more authentic. Employees in other locations should be receptive when hearing from their peers rather than the leadership.

Cornelia: It sounds like you're a very people-centric company, Maryanne.

Maryanne: We are. Our CEO’s father founded the company, and he was very concerned about the customers and the employees. Ralph has maintained that philosophy.  We continue to strive to have our customer experiences and our employee experiences be positive ones.

If you want to know more about Maryanne and the challenges she faces, pick up a copy of  They Did What?