The hospitality and leisure sectors have been among those most hard hit by the pandemic. Frequent lockdowns over the past eighteen months or so have been vital in combating the impact of COVID-19, but the price paid by bars, restaurants, hotels and resorts has been exceptionally high. While consumer confidence in the sector has started to slowly bounce back, in Q2 2021 overall spending was still less than 70% of pre-pandemic levels. Job vacancies have also soared and are higher than pre-pandemic levels, despite the overall workforce shrinking by around 11% in the past year. 

This gives employers in the leisure and hospitality sector a very unique challenge. Not only are they competing with one another to win back customers, they also need to replenish their workforce in a sustainable way that puts emphasis on employee engagement and retention. For those in the so-called “deskless” world, this can prove to be exceptionally challenging at the best of times, let alone the requirements to quarantine and the reduced opportunities to socialise. So how can a bar, restaurant, hotel or holiday resort engage, unite and retain its workforce in a post-pandemic economy?

Even prior to the pandemic, more than 80% of deskless businesses were already planning to empower and unite their workforce with technology.

Even prior to the pandemic, more than 80% of deskless businesses were already planning to empower and unite their workforce with technology. If anything, COVID-19 has accelerated this need to adopt new solutions, and it’s given businesses in the leisure and hospitality sector a reason to look beyond the usual run-of-the-mill solutions.

When it comes to cohesion, team spirit and the cultural ‘glue’ that holds a business together, deskless businesses are used to being at a disadvantage. There’s often no central office or communal space in which to regularly connect with all colleagues at once, share advice, pass information back and forth and foster work-based relationships. These things have to happen off-the-cuff in a messy way, often involving a plethora of different channels from emails and texts to WhatsApp groups and Facebook pages.

In a post-pandemic environment where new staff is already difficult to attract and retain, there must be a better way of engaging with staff that are frequently on-the-move, working opposite shifts and tagging each other in and out. Leisure and hospitality businesses simply cannot afford their onboarding, engagement and retention practices to be so loose and disparate in 2021.

If only there was a comprehensive, cloud-based platform that all staff members could access easily from their smartphones, allowing them to share, communicate, learn, train and organise all of their HR information in one place. That platform exists, and it comes in the form of Engage4, the ultimate employee engagement app designed specifically for deskless teams and distributed workers. 

Engage4 is a mobile app designed to help leaders in deskless businesses like hotels, resorts and restaurants connect, onboard, unite and retain their workforce. It’s a deskless solution for a deskless environment and can be as agile, scalable and flexible as your team requires. 

With Engage4, your staff will feel connected no matter where they are. Important message from head office that affects all branches and teams? Why not push it out via one of Engage4’s community forums? Onboarding a staff member remotely? Send them a video message welcoming them to the team and encourage them to get involved in the social side before they even begin their first shift. Run regular check-ins with team members, centralise operational content like timesheets and other documents, swap shifts and carry out training sessions – all from the convenience of one single cloud-based platform. 

Learn more about Engage4 as an all-encompassing solution to help your leisure or hospitality business connect, onboard, unite and retain teams post-pandemic by registering your interest here.