From The Frontlines: A Conversation With Matt Lowerre on Post-COVID Hospitality HR systems

Welcome back to From the Frontlines! In this series, Harri highlights members of our team who are up to big things and have big insights into the hospitality industry. This week we chat with Matt Lowerre, an Account Executive here at Harri. This week, we discuss HR systems in a post-COVID hospitality industry, specifically the need for stronger communications and team culture.

Thank you for joining us today, Matt! What are technology trends that you’ve been seeing in hospitality today?

Thanks for having me. COVID-19 has emphasized the need for communications tools to strengthen employee culture, especially in hospitality where working conditions can change suddenly and dramatically.

More and more restaurant groups and HR teams are looking for an HR tech solution to supplement that need, but most aren’t sure how to take that first step. Some aren’t fully aware of how to use the technology to benefit their teams, either.

Why do you think there’s such a large knowledge gap there?

A lot of these restaurant groups are 10 or 20 years old and culture has only recently become a focus, so they’re playing catch up. There are a lot of great solutions out there, but none of them were built specifically for hospitality. So while the one platform might be great for a remote office worker, it does little to help hourly, front-line employees. 

Then there’s a lack of education. These restaurant groups are taking formulas built for office workers and trying to apply them to service-based scenarios. Because they don’t have hospitality-specific examples to build their own cultural frameworks off of, they’re unable to use the technology to its fullest potential.

You make a great point there. What are some examples of how HR tech can be used to create a stronger working environment in hospitality?

Social media-type feeds are growing in popularity in companies trying to build up a great culture. In a restaurant setting, a manager might take a picture of something great happening in a store location. Employees can like or comment on it just like you would on Facebook. Maybe managers want to shout out a teammate’s birthday or inform everyone of a new menu item. Feeds are a great way to connect everyone on a personal level.

We’re also seeing a focus on moving employee communications to one cohesive mobile app, as opposed to one-off texting or WhatApps. Let’s use Harri as an example. If you’re hired as a host or a hostess, you’ll immediately be dropped into group chats with other hosts/hostesses, your managers, and any other position-based groups that your HR team deems helpful This makes team member communication so much easier if you’re looking to swap shifts, general work pointers, or assistance from your direct reports.

This is all excellent! Are there any final benefits of hospitality-specific technology that you’d like to touch on?

Working with an all-in-one HR or HCM platform makes sure that nothing is siloed, and that in itself is a hugely underrated component of team culture. When you add data insights, employee sentiment, and more, HR teams can create a much more effective company culture roadmap. But that’s only possible when your system can connect with employee scheduling, payroll, compliance, and more to connect all of those valuable data points.