Operations

3 ways QSRs can engage their frontline staff

Technology can help QSR workers do their jobs better, making for a happier employee. Here are three ways restaurants can leverage digital tech to better engage their frontline employees.

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October 17, 2022 by Andrew Masterson — Sr. Client Director, YOOBIC

Anyone who's eaten at a quick service restaurant (QSR) has seen the frenetic pace at which team members work. The clue is in the name: the food has to be prepared fast, and then served with a smile, no matter how stressful it gets behind the counter.

Getting those two things right — efficiency and the customer experience — is the key to running a successful QSR business. It's also a big challenge, because QSR work can be incredibly demanding. With our collective appetite for fast-dining options still expanding — by 2027, the global QSR market will have grown 77% according to Market Watch — those jobs aren't going to get any easier. Meanwhile, America's Great Resignation rumbles on, with labor shortages adding to the pressure on frontline teams.

For QSR leaders, this is a big problem. Their employees deserve to be seen as far more than merely front-line restaurant workers — they are the face of their brand and the key to both business growth and customer loyalty. To drive enduring success, QSR leaders need to find ways to make their frontline teams feel energized and engaged so that these vital workers, in turn, can elevate the customer experience and drive value all across the business.

With that in mind, here are three ways restaurants can use digital tech to better engage their frontline employees:

Focus on onboarding

Almost half of retail and hospitality workers say their employer's onboarding process didn't prepare them well for their job, according to a Yoobic survey. In the chaotic, high-octane setting of a fast-food restaurant, employees can find that steep learning curve especially jarring. Not everyone can find their feet quickly while dealing with hungry, impatient patrons — so perhaps it's little wonder that the average restaurant employee leaves their position after less than six weeks.

To address this, QSR managers should remember that tasks that are second nature to a veteran employee are often mystifying to new team-members. Effective onboarding is needed to bridge this knowledge gap and help employees to get up to speed. Done right, your induction process should also communicate the company's culture and welcome recruits into the brand's wider professional family.

To achieve that, it isn't enough to rely on a quick one-off training session. Instead, many QSR brands are going digital and using smartphone or tablet apps to bring continuous training into the frontline workflow. Digital worksheets and checklists make it easier for both new and established employees to stay on top of proper procedures for everything from cooking and cleaning to greeting guests, digital alerts can ensure vital tasks aren't forgotten and gamified online tools can make the whole process far more inviting and motivating for team-members.

Foster a sense of community

Onboarding is, of course, just the beginning. Digital tools can also make it easier for QSR brands to make staff-members feel included, valued and heard — something that's often lost sight of in fast-paced quick-service settings. With teams rotating on and off shift, and plenty of work that always needs doing, there's seldom much time left for staff meetings, team-building exercises, or other ways to convey information and foster a sense of community. r

To help workers feel valued, it's important that leaders at both the local and regional or HQ levels go the extra mile to communicate and connect with their team-members. Emails can only get you so far: using new digital tools, it's possible to create more fluid social media-style news feeds and forums that feel much more engaging and organic to young workers.

That's important because it makes it possible to develop a dynamic back-and-forth in which employees can ask questions, air concerns or share insights with one another, rather than simply receiving incoming information. Stronger coworker and managerial bonds invariably blossom from this kind of engagement — bonds that weave together to form wider support networks and a sense of security.

An inclusive, company-wide communication hub also helps mitigate an issue all-too common in the QSR setting: staff members feeling left out and forgotten. With large teams and a high turnover rate, it's easy for employees to drop from a store leader's radar. Having a digital workflow system that's accessible to everyone, from anywhere, is a potent cure to this problem, empowering employees to communicate with management and vice versa.

Provide opportunities for growth

Once you're connected to your frontline employees, it becomes far easier to provide them with the recognition and growth opportunities they crave. Modern QSRs are vibrant organizations where rapid career advancement is possible, and that's a big selling point: many QSR employees dream of moving quickly from new hire, to shift leader, to supervisor, to manager in just a few short years.

That kind of rapid development doesn't just depend on the employee's ambition. It's up to QSR employers to create environments where staff members grow instead of stagnating, and where success is continuously recognized, acknowledged and rewarded.

Here, again, digital tech can make a big difference. Digital tools can make it easier to track performance and flag high-potential team-members as future leaders, making internal promotion far more efficient. And instead of setting aside upskilling and development for dedicated training days, digital workplace tools make it easier to provide growth opportunities within the flow of the regular workday, by putting new learning tools and training at the employee's fingertips.

With micro-learning sessions woven into an associate's daily workflow, it's possible to unlock growth without taking team-members away from their regular jobs, while also ensuring new procedures or equipment are mastered rapidly.

Kitchen staff struggling with a new recipe could, for instance, pull up a quick instructional video produced by HQ. To make sure that the knowledge is retained, short, snappy quizzes might be pushed out at the end of the week, with the highest scorers getting both praise and prizes. This helps reinforce employees' sense of personal and professional progress, while ensuring the highest standards of work are adhered to.

Serving up a better experience

Eating out is about the service, the smile and the human touch provided by restaurant staff — otherwise diners would simply order takeout. Well-trained and highly motivated frontline employees are a QSR brand's greatest asset, so it makes sense to invest in their success.

These are challenging times for the restaurant business. To succeed, QSRs must focus on connecting and supporting their frontline staff, building a happier, more engaged workforce — and continuing to serve up stellar experiences that will keep diners coming back for more.