Empower your Frontline Employees with the Right Technology

Frontline employees are the face of your business, directly impacting customer satisfaction and retention. By prioritizing technology for the frontline over back-office systems, you ensure smoother operations and happier staff. 

Frontline workers often face high turnover, complex schedules, and inadequate training. Addressing these challenges with tech solutions for efficient hiring, onboarding, scheduling, payroll, and training solutions can significantly improve their work experience. Optimizing these tools specifically for the frontline ensures that employees can manage their work more effectively, and according to the Lighthouse Research & Advisory Report 2024, when employees have access to tools like schedules or mobile punch, they are less likely to plan to quit.

This leads to higher retention rates, better customer service, and ultimately, a more profitable business.

Finding the Right Tech Partners

Finding the right tech, however, can be challenging for multi-unit operators. Restaurant leaders are often pressed for time and must frequently delegate the task of vetting technology partners. Still, the responsibility sometimes falls to departments that may not specialize in technology. For example, the marketing team might seem like a good choice because they often work in a digital environment, but realistically, their expertise lies in marketing, not restaurant technology. As a result, tech partners might be selected without thoroughly ensuring they are the best choice for frontline workers. 

To make this process more effective:

  • Identify Needs: Start by understanding the specific needs and pain points of your frontline workers.
  • Delegate Wisely: Assign the vetting process to knowledgeable staff members who understand both operational challenges and technology.
  • Pilot Programs: Implement short pilot programs to test new solutions in real-world scenarios.
  • Check Reliability: Ensure vendor reliability by thoroughly checking reviews and references to select a partner with a proven track record of success.

Hiring and Onboarding Tech for Frontline Optimization

Hiring and onboarding technology plays a critical role in optimizing the frontline worker experience. The most important features of this type of tech include the seamless integration of hiring and onboarding processes. This integration ensures that new employees can quickly transition from candidates to productive team members without unnecessary delays or paperwork. By streamlining these processes, managers are relieved of much of the hiring burden, allowing them to focus more on day-to-day operations and enhancing the overall restaurant experience. Additionally, engaging new hires from day one is crucial; modern hiring tech can provide personalized onboarding experiences, interactive training modules, and immediate access to necessary resources.

Harri: A Solution for Hiring and Onboarding

Harri stands out as a platform designed specifically to optimize the frontline worker experience. With its comprehensive suite of tools, Harri integrates hiring and onboarding seamlessly, reducing administrative tasks for managers. The platform engages new hires through personalized onboarding journeys, ensuring they are well-equipped and motivated from their first day. Harri’s focus on the frontline means that the technology is intuitive and supportive, helping to create a more efficient and satisfied workforce. By leveraging Harri, restaurant leaders can ensure their teams are ready to deliver exceptional service, ultimately driving better business outcomes.

Optimizing Training for the Frontline

Traditionally, restaurant training involved paper-based methods, including handbooks and tests, which had to be completed in-house during shifts. This approach was not only time-consuming but also inflexible, often disrupting daily operations. Today, this process can be significantly optimized by digitizing training materials and incorporating them into a workforce management system. Digitized training allows employees to access materials at their convenience, even from their mobile devices, ensuring they can learn at their own pace without disrupting their work schedules. This flexibility improves the training experience for frontline teams and ensures consistency and accessibility of information, leading to better-prepared employees and reduced training time.

Training Providers

Upskill People are exclusive Harri training content partners and trusted innovators in the global online learning market. For over 25 years, they have revolutionized Learning and Development (L&D) by providing businesses with actionable and measurable plans that enhance employee skills and knowledge.

Arrow Up Training offers an online hospitality tool designed to build safer and stronger teams. Their customizable online training tools help level up teams while minimizing liability, risk, and turnover. By integrating these platforms with Harri, restaurant operators can ensure their frontline teams receive top-notch training that is flexible, accessible, and effective, ultimately leading to a more skilled and confident workforce.

Explore all of our partners and integrations in the Harri ecosystem.

Optimizing Scheduling for Frontline Teams

Traditional scheduling methods, such as manual spreadsheets or paper-based rosters, are often time-consuming and prone to errors. Modern workforce management systems offer robust scheduling tools that automate and streamline this process, providing significant benefits for both managers and employees.

To optimize scheduling, it is important to leverage technology that offers real-time updates, flexibility, and transparency. Automated scheduling tools consider employee availability, shift preferences, and labor laws, ensuring that schedules are fair and compliant. This reduces scheduling conflicts and last-minute changes. Additionally, these systems can send instant notifications to employees about their shifts, allowing them to plan their personal lives better and increasing their overall job satisfaction.

Another critical aspect is the ability to easily swap shifts. Modern scheduling tools allow employees to request shift swaps and approvals through a digital platform, reducing the administrative burden on managers and increasing flexibility for staff. Furthermore, integrating scheduling with other workforce management functions, such as payroll and time tracking, ensures accuracy and efficiency across the board. 

By optimizing scheduling with advanced technology, restaurant operators can ensure their frontline teams are well-informed, fairly scheduled, and more engaged, ultimately improving both employee morale and customer service.

Optimizing Payroll for Frontline Workers

Optimizing payroll processes enhances the overall experience of frontline workers in the hospitality industry. Traditional payroll methods often involve multiple manual entries, which can lead to errors, delays, and frustration for both employees and managers. By leveraging modern payroll systems integrated into workforce management platforms, operators can streamline these processes and provide a more efficient and accurate payroll experience.

A key feature of optimized payroll systems is the integration with hiring and workforce data. This eliminates the need for multiple data entries during hiring and onboarding, reducing administrative burden and minimizing the risk of errors. Automatic time tracking and tip reporting, when integrated with the restaurant’s existing POS system, ensure accurate and timely payroll calculations. This integration simplifies the end-of-day closing process, preventing discrepancies in pay rates and significantly reducing the time spent on paperwork.

Offering direct deposit as a payment option is another way to enhance the payroll experience for frontline workers. Direct deposit is a popular choice among employees, providing them with timely and convenient access to their wages. This method also simplifies payroll processing for employers, reducing the need for physical checks and the associated administrative tasks.

An optimized payroll system also supports compliance with labor laws and regulations, ensuring that employees are paid accurately and on time. By providing clear and detailed pay statements, employees can easily understand their earnings, deductions, and any other relevant information. This transparency fosters trust and satisfaction among staff, contributing to higher retention rates and a more positive workplace environment.

Payroll Provider: ADP

ADP is a highly recommended payroll system that offers an all-in-one, cloud-based platform for payroll, HR, time, talent, and benefits. Its flexible payroll and HR solutions provide all core services on a single-database platform, simplifying the management of employee information. ADP also features a connector that integrates with Harri, enabling seamless transfer of new hire data to ADP Workforce Now. Once enabled, the Harri Payroll Connector moves applicant information and creates new hires in ADP Workforce Now, streamlining the onboarding process for existing Harri clients.

Discover more partners and integrations within the Harri ecosystem.

Ultimately, optimizing technology for frontline workers is a strategic move that can lead to higher retention rates, better customer service, and an improved bottom line. By leveraging advanced hiring, onboarding, training, scheduling, and payroll solutions, restaurant operators can ensure their teams are well-equipped, satisfied, and efficient. 

To explore how Harri and its integration partners can help optimize your frontline operations, book a demo. 

Request a Demo