Case Study: Leveraging Hospitality to Build Employee Retention

A large, global hospitality brand built a model that connected improved on-site hospitality to higher employee satisfaction and retention by improving food/beverage offerings and launching an online adjacency

Executive Summary

Client Challenge

• To improve employee retention given the war for talent by:

  • Leveraging employee amenities in food and beverage on site

  • Doing that at a reasonable cost

  • Aligning with millennials craving for a food and beverage “experience” not just availability

 Solution

• Align inside the company offerings with those available outside by:

  • Targeting a specific set of food/beverage amenities to a particular work group

  • Leveraging the “food experience” trend wave pioneered by Starbucks at retail

  • Replicating that experience in the workplace

  • Improving employee interaction, creativity, and problem solving

  • Improving the design, graphics and colors to make the former spartan break room a bright, colorful social center for employees to interact

Business Impact

• Quantitative research showed an improved food/beverage program had a direct impact on employee satisfaction

  • The food/beverage program was typically ranked 1^st or 2^nd of the most important parts of the workplace experiences

• New online ordering resulted in minimal out of stocks while keeping inventory low and key items that employees wanted in stock

• Created a social center that helped to connect employees

• Continuous innovation kept the platform up to date and responsive to employee input

• The model worked at large national customers such as Silicon Valley tech headquarters, as well as small cap businesses served by a localized route system

Client Challenge

• The client thought of coffee service as an expense item to be minimized. The result typically was a lower quality, basic offering that did not meet employees’ expectations. This resulted in employees leaving the premise for refreshment since many clients are in a high-density geography where a number of alternatives are available, thus reducing work productivity.

• It also hurt overall employee satisfaction since the offering did not reflect the stated culture of building employee engagement.

Solution

“The solution was to share basic research with the client that we had done. The research focused on the entire area of employee satisfaction and retention, and resulted in a list of specific items the employer could do to promote engagement in the workplace. Of the top 20 items, having a break area where employees could interact and have a refreshment offering that reflected food trends of higher quality coffee and great tasting, nutritious options was the #1 item. Once this was shared with the client, it changed the whole conversation from an expense purchase to a larger discussion of how we could help employee engagement.”  -Gary Fassak, Partner, CMO

Impact on Client Business

Measurable gain in employee satisfaction, ranging from qualitative feedback to specific quantitative measurement depending on the work site.

“Positioning coffee service as an employee benefit that increased satisfaction and productivity via fact-based research changed the entire conversation – it allowed broader penetration into different client stakeholders and a more robust service offering – a win/win for us and the client.”

-Gary Fassak, Partner & CMO, Chief Outsiders